Jean-Louis Deniot Finds an Intoxicating New Purpose for a Historic French Watercress Farm

The firepit terrace outside the farm’s original stone building

When French interior designer Jean-Louis Deniot and his partner, William Holloway, want to reconnect with nature, they head to their country retreat—a 19th-century manor house located between Chantilly and Senlis, some 40 miles north of Paris. Shortly after acquiring the property in 2000, they discovered the existence of France’s oldest watercress farm on a 10-acre neighboring plot. At the time, it was barely functioning. “It was all over the place,” recalls Deniot. Only four of the 42 beds were still in use. The rest were overgrown, and its early-19th-century stone farm building was in a state of collapse.

When the opportunity arose to lease the farm from its owner, the Domaine de Chantilly, the couple jumped at the chance, without knowing exactly what to do. “We’d heard there was a plan to turn it into a museum and didn’t fancy having people picnicking at the end of our garden,” says Holloway. Initially, they just hired a farmer, cleaned up the beds, and tried to sell the watercress for salad. The returns, however, were minimal. “The other wrinkle,” adds Holloway, “is that it’s very perishable. Its lifespan is two days, even when properly stored.”

Deniot on the pontoon bridge that links the farm’s various buildings; a 30-foot tall folly constructed of reclaimed wood and galvanized steel rises in the background.

In the tasting pavilion, designer Jean-Louis Deniot replaced the broken trumeau mirror with a window that opens to the view; 19th-century wood mantelpiece.

A Louis XVI–style carved wood canopy bed covered with original floral fabric commands the tasting pavilion.

Antique copper vessels gleam in the distillery room where a 17th-century two piece cupboard stands next to a custom freestanding counter.

The idea of using watercress to produce vodka actually came to him over dinner with Joan Rivers in Las Vegas. “Her niece Caroline Waxler is a writer and she told me she’d just worked on a story about how artisanal vodka was being made out of all kinds of ingredients,” he recalls. “She suggested we try watercress.” His early partner in what would become Vodkress was Yves Carcelle, Louis Vuitton’s late CEO, who introduced him to a distillery owned by the Cointreau family. The watercress brings a distinctive peppery, faintly herbaceous taste to the brew they concocted. Holloway enlisted the Los Angeles–based artist Konstantin Kakanias to develop the brand identity. The poetic, hexagonal label he came up with features a hand-drawn sprig of watercress. “We wanted something based on historical design, but also modern and fresh,” explains Kakanias.

Today, now working with master distiller Hervé Grangeon, Vodkress remains a small-batch, craft spirit (only 7,000 liters are produced each year), available at select venues, such as the Surf Club in Miami and chef Bruno Verjus’s Parisian eatery, Table. To sell it, Deniot and Holloway also opened a small sliver of a store in Paris’s 1st arrondissement, in front of which are boxes filled with watercress that they give away for free. When asked about the concept for its long, narrow interior, Deniot quips, “It’s called corridor design.” Christened La Cressonnière au Palais Royal, the shop is decorated with Empire-period furnishings, as well as a custom wallpaper and fabric with a confetti-like floral motif that gradates from watercress green to refreshing aqua. There are also straw and copper pendants made in Tangier, whose form Deniot likens to witches’ brooms, as well as portraits of a young Napoleon and Henri d’Orléans, Duke of Aumale, both of whom have close ties to the watercress farm.

A Berber rug from Asilah, Morocco, anchors the office, which is furnished with a mix of antique and contemporary pieces.

In the barn’s meeting room, 19th-century scales in a wooden cabinet stand atop a table draped with a striped Berber rug.

A set of 19th-century English rustic mint green chairs cushioned in a Fortuny fabric pull up to a 1940s bleached white oak dining table in the barn’s reception room; 19th-century lantern; hexagonal distressed copper mirror frame designed by Deniot.

The tasting pavilion lit up at night

Looking down into the distillery room. The circa 1900 copper lantern was found in Los Angeles.

A midcentury armchair by Fritz Hansen covered in sheepskin and a 1950s black metal floor lamp with a straw lampshade stand in a corner of the office. The meeting room with its 17th-century Dutch oak ball table can be seen through the doorway.

The latter, a son of King Louis-Philippe, restored the famed Château de Chantilly and shaped so much of what the Domaine is today. Meanwhile, it was Joseph Marie Étienne Cardon, an administrator in Napoleon’s army, who established the farm back in 1811 after spotting watercress abroad and discovering it was given to soldiers for its medicinal properties. “When Hippocrates created the first hospital in the world, he built it around watercress,” notes Holloway. Cardon chose the location of the farm both for the presence of natural spring water and its relative proximity to Paris.

While Holloway was busy developing Vodkress, Deniot set to work renovating the farm. The one stone building still erect had a raw dirt floor and was filled with a multitude of metal tools that had accumulated over three decades. He decided to extend it with several wooden structures, parts of which he stained a bluish-green. “I love wood buildings,” he says. “They’re cheaper, easier, faster, more organic. Plus, at the same time as I was working on the farm, I was restoring Yves Saint Laurent’s former Normandy dacha for its new owners, and that’s made out of wood too.” He chose to fit the new additions with both hexagonal and pointed-arch windows. “The existing building was so crooked that everything would have looked completely off if I’d used rectangular ones,” he explains.

Another view of the tasting pavilion, which is topped with a clover-shaped ornament.

A view out from the tasting pavilion

A glimpse of the tasting pavilion through a hexagonal window in the farm’s stone building

His most magical intervention was to connect the farm building via a 165-foot pontoon bridge over a watercourse to a newly built folly reminiscent of the ones Charles de Beistegui created at the Château de Groussay. Topped by a form reminiscent of a four-leaf clover, it rises 30 feet in height and is composed of reclaimed wood and rusted galvanized steel. “I needed to add a rustic element to it,” asserts Deniot. “Otherwise, it would have looked like a wedding gazebo.”

Chairs by René Malaval line up alongside the stone building.

The galvanized steel-roofed tasting pavilion was inspired by the follies created by Charles de Beistegui at the Château de Groussay.

Looking toward the farm’s original stone building from the tasting pavilion. In left foreground, a set of Louis XVI painted wood chairs with cane seating pull up to a late-18th-century oak games table.

The original stone farm building is now home to several spaces, including a laboratory-like room with an alembic and old copper vessels, Holloway’s office, where a bust of Hippocrates stands window-side behind a 17th-century desk, and a meeting room  whose antique oak Dutch table has large ball legs. “It was originally designed for a ship and the weight of them helped to maintain stability,” Deniot says. There is also a more bucolic barnlike area fitted out with a bleached-oak dining table and a slate-topped bar—and presided over by a vintage robot sculpture—where they often host watercress-based meals accompanied by Vodkress. The neoclassical decor of the folly is rather more romantic. “I wanted to add a more feminine touch,” states Deniot. “In my mind, William’s office is General Cardon’s and this building was where Mrs. Cardon hung out, drinking vodka and having fun.” The Louis XVI-style four-poster was bought at auction; Deniot believes the birdcage chandelier was originally designed by Jacques Garcia; and the fireplace had been sitting in his storage for 15 years. The mirror in the trumeau over the fireplace was broken, so he simply replaced it with a window that now takes in the lush greenery outside.

The setting could hardly be more idyllic. For Deniot, it acts as a perfect antidote to his jet-setting lifestyle. “I work on palaces and grand residences all over the world, and this is what I call my Temple of Sanity,” he says. “It’s an idealized version of a garden hut, a sanctuary where I can regroup and recharge my batteries.” Kakanias sums it up more succinctly. “It is,” he says, “a microcosm of beauty, nature, history, and friendship.”

This story appears in the July/August issue. Never miss a story when you subscribe to AD.