Know-how

It’s brand new, just out, the first edition of Charlois magazine. It’s a condensed version of information about the group, its houses, news, art and culture, women and men. In this first number, we look at the Charlois family and its history through the centuries, from Jacques in 1657 to Sylvain today. It’s also about […]

Through this new series on the professions of cooperage, we will guide you through each step and skill of the trade, covering the roles of scaler, crosscutter, splitter, sawyer, edger, sorter, quality controller, and stacker of staves.   After the Charlois buyers select the oaks in the forest, the most important task in working oak […]

It was a crowd of great significance at Murlin for the award ceremony of the Departmental and Regional Best Apprentices of France competition. Around 300 people, including the 78 participants in the competition, attended the ceremony.   The meeting was scheduled for 6 PM on Friday, May 31 at Murlin. Accompanied by their parents, friends, […]

Loire Ornements and its teams made a brief stop in Nièvre. Located in Maine-et-Loire, specifically in Le Coudray-Macouard, the company was founded in 2017 by Charlotte Duplessis and Luc Debourg. It specializes in architectural roof ornaments and roofing, working across France, particularly on classified historical monuments.   They arrived in a gro [...]

The wood reader   He’s one of those people you just want to let speak, to listen. On a short distance of a well-deserved vacation, José Simoes, 66, has spent over thirty years at Maison Charlois. Meet him.   It is a few minutes past 4pm. José has just stacked and sorted his last pieces […]

For a day, they left their Côte-d’Or vineyard to visit Murlin. An opportunity to discover a site, a story and ancestral know-how. A guided visit on the other side of wine.   They braved the fog and crossed Morvan to reach Murlin mid-morning. They are winemakers, customers of Tonnellerie Marsannay, and their estates cover prestigious […]

Time is something you can’t control. You have to deal with it. For cooperage, it’s the same thing. There are crucial steps to follow. A virtuous cycle to select the best stave oaks to supply cooperages.   The oaks harvested from forests are at least 150 to 180 years old. The oaks purchased by wood […]

In 2010, Carole Georges and Jean-François Dumont took up a rather crazy challenge: to restore the centuries-old art of Nevers earthenware to its former glory by infusing it with a healthy dose of modernity, while preserving its traditional know-how.   Developed in Nevers at the end of the 16th century by the Conrade brothers, originally […]

After Tonnellerie Doreau in Gensac, Manufacture tonnelière La Grange in Murlin is the second Charlois group company to be awarded the EPV (Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant) label. It joins the ranks of some 1,400 companies with this label.   Manufacture tonnelière La Grange has been based in Murlin, in the Nièvre region, since 2016, in […]

Optimizing oak raw material is at the heart of the Charlois group’s commitments, which recycles 100% of its wood raw material, of which nearly 90% in-house.   As Jean-Louis Binder’s photographies from the 1960s and the Maison Charlois archives testify, this policy of recycling production by-products (coquerons, short off-cuts, shavings, sawdust, sw [...]

He took over from his father, who had taken over from his father. At 22 years of age, Florent Bourgeat is a travelling distiller, going from village to village in the Nièvre department of France.   He is young, talks with a Nièvre accent and is approachable and cheerful. We’re talking about Florent, a licensed […]

As mentioned in previous instalments of the series devoted to photographs taken by Jean-Louis Binder in Murlin in the 1950s and 1960s, Maison Charlois used to produce both split timber and sawn timber, including a large number of railway sleepers.   The market for railway sleepers was massive back then. To understand the size of […]