Charles-Louis-Marie Lambert de Sainte-Croix[a] was born in Paris on 12 November 1827, son of an advocate.

He contributed to the Courrier du dimanche and then the Journal de Paris with money, writings and speech, and through this gained some reputation as being a liberal.

During the elections of 1863 the men putting up posters for Adolphe Thiers came to the newspaper office and said the police were bothering them.

Lambert de Sainte-Croix inherited the property in a period when the Aude wine industry was prospering, and transformed the domain into a vineyard and the old grange into a neo-medieval castle.

He profited during the phylloxera crisis, which reached the region in 1878 at a time when the approach of grafting vines onto American rootstock was already well known.