From the first recorded traces of Piéguë to the changes of the twentieth century.
The name Piéguë comes from Puy-agu, a term sometimes found in France to describe the topography of a place.
It aptly describes the château, set on a plateau enclosed by the Besnarderie valley, eighty metres below.
The first written record of Piéguë dates from the early seventeenth century and refers to a small manor belonging to the Brouillet family. Its stair tower still forms the central part of the château.
The property then passed to the Metayer family, who occupied it throughout the eighteenth century. The long building on the left of the château terrace was built during this period.
In the nineteenth century, the property passed by inheritance to the Moron family, notably René Moron (1775–1859), who undertook major enlargement and improvement works.
René Moron served in the campaigns and wars of the Consulate and Empire, and received Napoleon’s congratulations in 1813 after the Battle of Leipzig.
Appointed colonel during the Restoration, he retired to Piéguë in 1836 with his Tuscan wife, whom he had married during the Italian campaign.
He created the successive terraces in the slope in front of the château and planted the first umbrella pines. The first vines were also planted during this period.
He added a new eastern wing with its tower and pepper-pot roof, characteristic of nineteenth-century architecture, and built vaulted cisterns to collect rainwater.
The miniature château used as a henhouse and dovecote on the right of the terrace was probably also built at this time.
After Colonel Moron’s death, the property was sold to the Soulard family of Cholet in 1875. It then remained almost abandoned until the Van der Hecht family arrived and occupied it throughout the twentieth century.
Léon Van der Hecht, a Belgian former director of the Cairo tramway company, returned from Egypt in 1920 to retire in Anjou and settled his attention on Piéguë.
At that time, the property covered around 12 hectares, including a small seven-hectare vineyard.
Under his direction, it grew to 95 hectares of land, including 17 hectares of vines.
In 1929, a modern winery was built beside the château to vinify the property’s grapes.
In 1934, a new western wing gave the former manor the definitive configuration we know today.
After Léon, three further generations of the Van der Hecht family succeeded one another until the beginning of the twenty-first century.