Love at first sight in Eus
Founded in 1982 by Michel and Bénédicte Bachès in Eus, at the foot of the Canigou, the sacred mountain of the Catalans, the estate is home to a collection built up over more than forty years, which today makes it the leading rare citrus estate in Europe. In 2017, we acquired the estate, its trees and its collection. We are proud to write the next chapter and to be its guardians today: under the name Agrumes Schaller, we grow this collection, preserve it and keep enriching it.
We took over the estate in a spirit of continuity, respecting the soul of the place.
Both agronomists, we had just returned from New Caledonia, where we had spent three years teaching and working to preserve endemic biodiversity. We fell under the spell of this place where, from October to March, the fruits dot the evergreen foliage with bright touches of colour. Under the greenhouses that shield them from the harsh winter, the atmosphere is almost tropical.
As soon as we arrived, we began converting the orchard to organic farming: since September 2021, our harvests from trees planted in open ground have been certified organic (AB).
Chefs first
It all began with a bergamot. Legend has it that in the early 2000s, the phone rang at the estate: someone was calling from Rungis, looking for bergamot. On receiving the first fruits, this person was reportedly bowled over by the scent of the fruit and its leaf. It was Alain Ducasse. At the same time, Pascal Barbot, William Ledeuil and Anne-Sophie Pic were also beginning to take an interest in the estate's fruits.
Our fruits are rare and our harvests confidential: we work directly with every chef, in a relationship built season after season. We were also the first in Europe to grow citrus for fine dining, finger lime, yuzu and Buddha's hand among them.
We like to think of ourselves as colour makers. The chef is the painter; we compose the palette. Each variety is a hue, each stage of harvest a shade: a brighter acidity, a nobler bitterness, a more floral fragrance. It is up to the chef to create the painting.
Our fruits delivered to your door
Until 2020, our entire production went to chefs' kitchens. That spring, we opened an online shop so that home cooks could also enjoy this diversity.
From October to March, at the height of the season, we put together boxes according to the harvest: a palette of colours, shapes and scents that changes from week to week. The three-box subscription lets you follow the season as it unfolds, from the first autumn fruits to the citrus of late winter. Those who already know what they are looking for can also order their favourite varieties by the kilo.
All year round, our range of jars extends the pleasure: the freshness, textures, fine acidity and noble bitterness of our fruits, in two families. Ready-to-enjoy jars can be opened and savoured as they are; cooking jars bring a touch of citrus to everyday dishes as well as more ambitious recipes.
Schaller Liqueurs Fines
For years, we watched chefs work with citrus. A zest for freshness, a juice for acidity, a leaf for fragrance. We learned that every citrus fruit is an architecture, and that shifting a single balance changes everything. From this came the desire to capture this expertise in a bottle, and above all to share it: to introduce as many people as possible to the aromatic richness of citrus and to educate palates to its extraordinary diversity.
Thus were born the Schaller Liqueurs Fines, crafted at the estate and designed the way a perfume is composed. In 2026, the Mandarin liqueur received the Best Innovation award at the Bar des Innos, scoring 98/100 from Nicolas Julhès and Thierry Daniel, two of France's foremost spirits experts.
Visit the estate
Nothing compares to discovering it in person. We open the estate to the public so you can explore the collection where it grows: under the greenhouses, among the trees, up close to the fruit.
Guided tours, themed tours to explore a subject in depth, hands-on citrus workshops, gastronomic events: several formats let you taste, smell and understand the diversity of citrus.
Nothing here stands still: the collection is a living heritage, and every visit is different depending on the time of year. In spring, the blossom fills the greenhouses with the scent of orange flower. In summer, the green fruits form and swell, already rich in fragrance. From October to March, the trees are covered in colour, from pale yellow to deep orange. Each season has its own scents, colours and discoveries.
Every visit ends with a tasting and the chance to buy our products on site.
THE ESTATE
The terroir of a citrus paradise
Our garden of the Hesperides lies some forty kilometres from Perpignan, in the Têt valley, in the village of Eus, at the foot of the Canigou.
A complex and varied terroir, made up of fine clays, pink marls, granite and gneiss, carried down by floods and erosion over thousands of years. Free-draining and irrigated by an ancestral network of canals dug into the mountainside, these soils are perfectly suited to citrus, fruits of tropical origin that love humidity.
On our small estate, the soils are so diverse that we divide the land into precise micro-plots according to the needs of each citrus, as in winegrowing. The same variety can even produce fruit with different flavours depending on where the tree is planted!
With an average of 320 days of sunshine a year, Eus is known as the sunniest village in France. Yet the nights are cool, even harsh in winter: without the greenhouses that protect them, our citrus trees would not survive. This wide temperature range, especially marked during the citrus season, produces intensely coloured fruit with complex ripening and unique flavour qualities.
Between the infinitely small and the infinitely large
Beyond the site itself, it was the extraordinary reservoir of biodiversity that won us over. Agrumes Schaller is both a small-scale producer and a remarkable citrus collection: 5 hectares, 10,000 trees and more than 800 varieties, often the result of crosses, sometimes represented by a single branch grafted onto a tree.
Everything here is done by hand, with a craftsman's precision, to supply chefs with made-to-measure citrus.
