Up until when can one go back in the history of that isolated place? The answer is, until the 11th of August, 1717 precisely. It is in fact on this day that, by signed act before the notary in their own hotel in Mâcon, Melchior-Esprit de La Baume (1679-1740), thirteenth count of Montrevel and lord baron of Lugny, master of cavalry, knight of the royal order, and military of Saint-Louis, after having received the permission from the king by the authorization of the 5th of February, 1715, sells to Jean Olivier, merchant based in Saint-Oyen, the woods on the place then called Les Grands Bois de Lugny, now corresponding to the Grand Bois, for the merchant to cut it.

 Multiple documents testify that the locations were not replanted with woods and became a clearing on the plateau on top of Lugny. Moreover, a paper from 1778 confirms that the place does still belong to the Lugny's lords, the son of the one that sold the wood. On these records already, vines are appearing. Up to twenty-five people were counted living in the Grands Bois de Lugny.

Lugny's napoleonian land register of 1809 attests that the Grand Bois was the property of an Lyon lawyer, the biggest land owner of Lugny at this point. It also gives a precise idea of what the Grand Bois was at this point, a domain merging woods, meadows, vines, cultivated lands. In 1825, though, the registers show that the domain now belongs to another Lyon inhabitant, called Jacques Alexis Saint-Martin.

Half a century later, 24 people live in the Grand Bois, according to the 1881 census. At that moment, most of the domain is covered in vine, that will be entirely removed because of the phylloxera crisis. At the start of the XXth century however, the domain is partially replanted with vines again, owned by the Blanc family, one of the richest of Lugny. Before the war, the Grand Bois counts the top of its population: 30 people in 1911.

After the second World War, the Grand Bois is owned by Marcelle Blanc, that inherited it from her father, deceased in 1936. The domain is at this time in two parts, each being rented to farmers.

What do we know about the post-war Grand Bois? We only have tracks of the biggest part of the two. The Grimieau-Papillon family dedicated their efforts to breeding, with pigs, and, to a lesser extent, poultry farming. They even put together pre-cast buildings. They also had silos, which was rare at that point in the french agriculture. All in all, the Grand Bois was a domain ahead on its time, until the fifties.

In 1958, Marcelle Blanc put up the larger part of the domain for sale, bought by a Cluny farmer, willing to put one of his son there. It will be the older brother, once he'd come back from his military service in Algeria. A few years later, the second part will also be put up for sale, and the older brother will acquire it, reuniting the domain as the Grand Bois it used to be. He will exploit the domain during about thirty years. At the end of the eighties, there only remains 5 hectares of vines in the domain, the owner having asked a winemaker in Lugny for some help to exploit. They will become friends, and the owner will even rent the wines to his friend, that started planting the vineyard with chardonnay.

In 1995, after the owner stops exploiting the domain, he sells the Grand Bois to his winemaker friend. The agricultural activity will progressively transform into a softer agriculture whose activites are, on one side, the reception of, from spring to fall, boarding cows, and on another, the production of hay. To that, of course, one can add the vine culture.

In 2011, a wine tourism structure is created: the Clos du Grand Bois, completed, a few years later, by a winery: the domain Joseph Lafarge.