Olive Auction built this page from public records so buyers can find the estate. Its own people can claim it at no cost — complete the story, list lots, answer buyers.
After a claim, we confirm by emailEverything here comes from public sources — award lists, certification registers, the territory inventories. The rest of the story — the family, the grove, the real age of the trees, this year's lab sheet — only the mill can tell, and it is the part buyers bid on.
Moulin CastelaS dates its start to 1997, when Catherine and Jean-Benoît Hugues came back to Provence after fifteen years in the United States and took on olive trees the estate describes only as old, at the place called Castelas on the south slope of the Alpilles. From those few trees the holding grew to 45 hectares inside the AOP Vallée des Baux de Provence plus 65 hectares in the Plaine de Crau, planted to the four cultivars the appellation is built on: Salonenque, Aglandau, Grossane and Verdale. The mill stands at the foot of the Château des Baux. The appellation the oil carries was granted the same year the couple settled, by INAO decree of 27 August 1997.
The record of what has come out of that mill is long. The International Olive Council's Mario Solinas Quality Award gave the Classic AOP Vallée des Baux de Provence fifth prize in 2002 and first prize in 2003. Gold medals followed at the Concours Général Agricole de Paris in 2016 and 2019, at the New York International Olive Oil Competition in 2018 and 2019, and at the Concours National des huiles d'olive en Appellation d'Origine at Nyons in 2011 and 2017. At the 2026 edition of that national AOP competition, run by France Olive, the mill took gold in both Vallée des Baux-de-Provence classes, the standard oil and the matured-olive oil, the latter from a lot of 9,619 litres.
From the public record: castelas.com · franceolive.fr
A producer account takes a minute — name, mill, region. We attach this profile the same day.
Lab numbers, tree references, harvest dates, a photo — the tap-through form asks only for what buyers pay for.
Auction with a confidential reserve, or a fixed-price allocation. We review it and it goes live.
The catalogue goes to this list before it goes on the site. When the sale closes you get every hammer price from it — including the ones that disappointed.
Two emails. Then quiet until Sale No. 2.
