In Touraine, everyone recognizes Mira Grebenstein’s Morgan ivory. As soon as the pretty car that looks like a racing car from the 1930s parks in Tours, it is a small attraction that attracts the curious. Mira Grebenstein is not just the driver of a vintage car, she is the new owner of the Château Louise de La Vallière, transformed into a five-star luxury hotel. “When Mira arrived four years ago, everyone raved about this newcomer. Now they are running after her: a viscountess friend has been pestering me for weeks to introduce her and everyone dreams of being invited to her champagne bar! », says Alain Magnan, a fine connoisseur of Touraine society and friend of the person concerned with whom he goes antiquing on Sundays.
It must be admitted, the new chatelaine de La Vallière clashes in the Landerneau of Touraine, stuffy and without much fantasy. “I know what they say about me, the Swiss blonde who arrived with her money. I’m not stupid, I know that, for people, I had no place here. But I was looking for a place to create a hotel, and La Vallière imposed itself on me”, explains Mira Grebenstein, sitting in the subdued bar of her castle, impeccable tweed trousers, Hitchcockian blonde hair.
Patron of modern times
The emblem of the castle is indeed Louise de La Vallière, favorite of King Louis XIV, who lived there during the first years of her life. After three years of work and a pharaonic renovation, this jewel, built by successive additions until the 19the century, was inaugurated in October as a luxury hotel, decorated by Jacques Garcia. Nothing has been left to chance, the staff in period clothes even uses borrowed first names with a Grand Siècle touch. The mistress of the place, if she gets her hands dirty and sometimes serves in the restaurant, signs her correspondence by writing it in calligraphy with “Favoritely yours”.
“I defend a form of environmental sobriety that I have put in place in the castle, but also technical inventiveness, which should together make it possible to preserve life. »Xavier Aubry
Today, it is no longer Mira’s reputation that shakes Touraine, but rather the Orwellian projects of her husband Xavier Aubry, whose financial success made it possible to pay for the 15 million euros in restoration work on the castle. In December, the press echoed the affair of the dismissal of the former prefect of Indre-et-Loire, Marie Lajus. This would have paid for its opposition to the incubator project drawn up by Xavier Aubry and supported by many local elected officials. Under the name of Da Vinci Labs, this high-tech laboratory should see the light of day in two years, under the gold of a futuristic building of 4,000 square meters in the heart of the La Vallière estate…
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The astonishing couple of lords behind the project contested by the ex-prefect of Indre-et-Loire
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