Star Trek's Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) may be most at home among the stars, but canonically his actual birthplace is in La Barre, France, where the Picard clan owns an ancestral home and vineyard. This pastoral estate featured in some of the most lauded and memorable episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and it returned to screens in the 2020 spinoff series Star Trek: Picard. However, as keen-eyed fans of the franchise may have noticed, Château Picard looks rather different in the future (well, the even farther future).

The Château plays a key role in Picard's character arc in The Next Generation, despite only appearing in two episodes. In the fan favorite episode "Family," it's the place he returns to while recovering emotionally from being assimilated into the Borg, a time when he's at his most vulnerable. This rare sojourn at home reveals crucial backstory about the captain, like the fact that the young spaceship-obsessed Jean-Luc was the black sheep in his traditional, technology-adverse family. It also gives him the chance to heal a painful rift between himself and his brother Robert.

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Star Trek Chateau Picard Robert

Decades later, Picard opens with the aging and retired captain living in lonely exile on the Picard estate, with only a couple of Romulan caretakers and a dog for company. He's clearly bitter over the way his career at Starfleet ended, and his choice to confine himself to the home he once left behind is once again illustrative of the vulnerable state he is in.

Thus, the Château is more important than ever in Picard, and it's where a good amount of the action takes place in the first few episodes. Moreover, the crew embraced this chance to update the look of the iconic home. Director Hanelle M. Culpepper told Syfy that she had always had a problem with the location chosen for the Château in The Next Generation -- namely, that it just didn't look enough like a château. When the time came, she was determined to give the place the French countryside grandeur she thought it deserved. "I loved The Next Generation but didn't feel like the house from The Next Generation felt like a château. It was crucial to me that felt like it was in France," she explained.

In fact, Culpepper proposed the idea of actually shooting on location in France, but the producers quickly shot that suggestion down, presumably due to budgetary restrictions. Instead, the production team found the perfect spot closer to home: a place called Sunstone Winery in Santa Ynez, California. In addition to a sprawling vineyard, the winery boasts a rustic villa built from brick and reclaimed architectural elements actually imported from France. As Culpepper said, "It's about as authentic as you can get!"

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Star Trek Chateau Picard

This was something of a coup for the Californian winery, which has begun to attract Trekkie tourism in the wake of Picard's release. As stated in an interview with general manager Dave Moser, the vineyard was a perfect match for the show's needs. "They were looking for an authentic-looking French château within driving distance of L.A.," Moser said. The production made full use of the gorgeous locale, taking drone shots of the grounds and filming scenes with pivotal characters such as Data (Brent Spiner), Dahj (Isa Briones) and of course Picard himself among the vines as well as around the villa.

The changes to the Château weren't limited to architecture, nor were they confined to real life. By the time Picard begins, Jean-Luc has been living on the estate for over a decade, and futuristic technology such as watering drones and holographic screens can be seen everywhere on the grounds. Given that "Family" revealed that the Picards were vehemently opposed to such technology -- both Jean-Luc's father and brother refused to allow even a kitchen replicator in the house, much to their wives' consternation -- this is quite a transformation. Between the beauty of Santa Barbara wine country and the sleek new gadgets, the look of the new Château Picard is certainly an upgrade from its past appearance in The Next Generation.

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