In the mid-1990s, Gilles Perraudin decided to pursue winemaking and found vineyards in Vauvert, a town in the Gard region of southern France. He planted olive trees and sought ways to build his wine cellar. The inspiration came from a scrap dealer near the Pont du Gard, a Roman aqueduct, who used large stone blocks to hide his wrecks. This sparked Perraudin’s idea to use similar stones for his cellar. Perraudin and his wife, Françoise-Hélène Jourda, had four children, which made travel challenging. Seeking a place where the family could gather and something could be produced, Perraudin naturally thought of wine. He chose Vauvert, where the property was located on a plateau, away from the flatlands of Petite Camargue. There, vineyards, olive trees, sun, and wind were abundant. While working as an architect, Perraudin managed the wine production, organizing the grape harvest, directing teams, and overseeing the pressing and decanting of wine. Although a novice, he studied extensively, learning about the history and sociology of wine. His father had owned vineyards, so he had childhood memories of harvesting grapes, but making wine himself was a different challenge. Perraudin was influenced by the philosopher Albert Camus and his work Noces (1939), which reflects on the connection between people and their environment. For Perraudin, this connection was expressed through grapes, juice, vats, and harvests. He was also inspired by the historian Fernand Braudel and the Mediterranean region, its landscapes, and the civilizations that had lived there. He preferred Burgundy’s wine culture, which he felt was more closely tied to the land, over Bordeaux, which he associated with the vineyard owner and the château. During his travels, he tasted wines from various regions, from Provence to Jura, and always emphasized that "wine and architecture are born from the place." The scrap dealer near the Pont du Gard had used stones from the quarry of Vers to build his fence, and Perraudin realized this could be an economical solution for his cellar. He visited the quarrymen of Vers-Pont-du-Gard and learned about the extraction, cutting, and transport of stone blocks. The wine cellar he designed was built from these 52 cm thick blocks, arranged without mortar. The structure was a square building of 30 meters on each side, centered around a patio. The 900 square meter building included a cellar, fermentation room, storage, and office. The thick stone walls provided natural insulation, while the roof, covered with earth, added further thermal protection. The construction was efficient, taking only a month from the foundation to the roof. Perraudin participated actively in the building process, working alongside others. The wine cellar became a symbol of his journey, and the wine took the name of the land: Sud de la Cabane de Magnan, named after the cadastral name of the parcel. The first vintage, 1995, was noticed, and Le Monde published an article about him in 1998. Eventually, he named the estate Domaine Perraudin, putting his name on the label. Sud de la Cabane de Magnan remained the name of his flagship bottle. Perraudin described the Vauvert wine cellar as a turning point in his life, a step into the unknown that would shape his future. Christophe Leray’s series L'Expérience Perraudin is part of an exhibition at La Cité de l'architecture in Paris, running from October 16, 2026, to January 3, 2027. The exhibition is dedicated to the work of Atelier Architecture Perraudin, which received the Grand Prix national de l'architecture in 2024.