Delouis, mustard from a vinegar house in the Limousin
Delouis is a family business from Champsac in Haute-Vienne that has been making vinegar since 1885 and developed its mustard from it. Four generations, one village, one process: soaked seeds, house-made vinegar, time. Not a Dijon mustard conglomerate, but a vinegar maker who knows how to do mustard.
Delouis stands for French zest from the Limousin, produced in Champsac in the Périgord-Limousin Regional Natural Park. What began in 1885 in Limoges as a vinegar factory is today a house for vinegars, mustards, vinaigrettes, and sauces, run by the Brabant family. You can find their mustards with us: the straight Dijon and three varieties that branch off from it.
Georges bought a vinegar factory in Limoges
In the beginning, there was no mustard seed, but spoiled wine.
In 1885, Georges Delouis took over a vinaigrerie in Limoges and gave the merchants' sour wine a second life. Vinegar fermentation is a natural process in which bacteria turn alcohol into acid, and Georges had a knack for it. With a few mustard seeds, he stirred his first *moutarde* out of vinegar and wine. That is how mustard entered the house, as a byproduct of vinegar.
You have to imagine Limoges in those years as a trading city where wine lay in barrels and not every barrel turned out well. What soured was a loss for the merchants – for the vinegar maker, it was raw material. Georges built a business out of others' calculation errors, and that still explains the hierarchy of the house to this day: first comes the vinegar, then everything else.
His son Pierre took over in 1940 and began focusing on alcohol vinegars alongside wine vinegars. However, he discontinued the mustard after the war to expand the vinaigrerie. For a good three decades, there was no more mustard at Delouis, and no one would have bet on it returning.
Philippe brought the mustard back
“Move forward and leave the beaten path," as Philippe Delouis formulated his motto.
In 1964, he joined his father’s company as a simple employee and immediately suggested something that didn't exist yet: a vinegar made from Limousin apples. To make it known, Philippe traveled to chefs all over the world—not to buyers, but to people who actually work with the product. The apple cider vinegar became a success, and the habit stuck.
The apple vinegar wasn't just a whim. The Limousin is apple country, and anyone who presses vinegar from local fruit instead of purchased wine turns the landscape into a product. This exact logic still drives Delouis today, though it is now called a supply chain and sounds less romantic.
In 1976, he moved to Champsac and resumed the artisanal mustard production that his father had let fade away. With that, the mustard was back where Georges had invented it—just a generation later and a bit further south. Some ideas simply need a running start.
The four jars from Champsac
We carry the mustard range: one classic and three variations, all ground with the house's own vinegar.
The extra-hot Dijon mustard is the statement on the shelf, uncompromising and without fruit to hide behind. The mustard with figs adds 18.5 percent ripe fruit to the heat while remaining mustard rather than a fruit sauce. The mustard with lemon is the brightest jar, made with 12.5 percent lemon for fish and anything that comes from the water.
And the Champagne-style mustard completes the circle that Georges opened in 1885: wine in the mustard pot, this time in formal attire. Five percent Champagne takes the sharp edges off the heat without taming it.
Common to all four is the start: the mustard seeds soak for two hours before they are ground. This quiet step and the subsequent aging time carry the flavor—the rest is just the recipe.
Raw materials from French farmers
“80 percent of our raw materials are French," says Gaël Brabant, and he justifies this with the survival of the house and the work of the farmers.
This is not about label appeal, but a decision against the cheapest purchase. Anyone who sources mustard seeds from the region instead of the global market pays more and receives short supply chains and faces at the other end of the chain in return. Delouis is currently bringing parts of the mustard seed supply chain back to France.
The house has grown regardless: the staff has gone from 24 to over 70, 40 of whom are in production. And it continues to be produced in a single location, at Le Petit Clos, 87230 Champsac, a village in the Haute-Vienne that you wouldn't look for on any map unless you had to.
For the area, this is no small thing. A business that maintains jobs in a village over decades instead of moving to an industrial park by the highway has become as rare in rural France as it is elsewhere. That people stay there for a long time, some for over twenty years, says more about the house than any brochure.
An award for passing the torch
In 2004, Philippe Delouis handed over the reins at 65 to the Brabant family, with whom he shared a long relationship of trust.
He spent a full year accompanying Gaël in his new duties before letting go. And the sales contract contained one condition that says a lot about both sides: Delouis remains in Champsac. To this day, the village has remained the only production site, even though everything would be easier elsewhere.
In 2007, this transition was awarded the transmission d'entreprise du patrimoine vivant prize, a recognition for passing on a heritage to people who want to preserve it. What was awarded was not a product, but a departure that succeeded. Hats off.
Where you should start
If you don't know Delouis yet, start with the Dijon – it shows the house's signature most clearly.
Those who prefer it rounder should reach for the Champagne jar, and those who eat a lot of fish in the summer won't want to give up the lemon. The fig mustard is the sociable one of the four, the jar for the cheese board when guests arrive. Feel free to try them all; the jars are small enough for an experiment.
Having two side by side on a board is the best way to understand this mustard anyway. The straight Dijon and the fig mustard show in a single bite what fruit does to heat, and anyone who puts the Champagne mustard next to them realizes that wine approaches it very differently than fruit. Three spoons, three answers to the same question.
This assortment is also practical in one way that rarely gets talked about: mustard lasts. Unopened, a jar stays in the pantry for over a year; opened, it lasts many weeks in the refrigerator without spoiling. Only the heat diminishes over time because the pungent oils are volatile—a good argument for buying a small jar more often than a large one rarely.
You can taste how other French houses operate at Maison Bornibus from Paris, which has relied on verjuice instead of vinegar since 1861, or at Rue Traversette in the Languedoc, where Stéphane Strobl processes vegetables into spreads. You can find all varieties side by side in our mustard category. Let yourself be surprised by how differently four jars from one house can taste.
