Visit and tastings of the Coudoulet estate

Domaine coudoulet  Professional seller

Prehistory The small road that passes in front of my cellar climbs very quickly to the assault of the causse, the vast limestone plateau to which the village is leaning. We enter the hard, the mineral,... See more

Prehistory The small road that passes in front of my cellar climbs very quickly to the assault of the causse, the vast limestone plateau to which the village is leaning. We enter the hard, the mineral, the arid, but also in Time! Over the millennia, the water of the Cesse has dug a canyon, sculpting a powerful and spectacular scenery. There, in the hollow of a cliff, 45 meters above the bed of the river, we discovered the cave of the Aldene which sheltered, more than 320,000 years ago, the "oldest European", the cousin of the Man of Tautavel. He did not yet know the fire and ate his raw meat. He hunted aurochs, bison, sheep and reindeer for food, lion and cave bear for their skin. The Middle Ages Here, history is always at hand: I was about fifteen years old when I helped exhume the ruins of the old Chapel of Saint-Salvy, destroyed during the wars of religion. The village church, Saint-Geniès, characteristic of southern Gothic, had to be rebuilt in the fifteenth century after the looting of the Rovers during the Hundred Years War. The bell tower, a powerful crenellated tower, is the only vestige of the earlier Romanesque building. It was integrated into the fortifications of the village which also houses the remains of the seigneurial castle where Raimond Trencavel II would have died, this lord who had to submit to Saint-Louis after having tried to reconquer the City of Carcassonne taken by the royal army at the time of the Albigensian Crusade. Minerva, a mecca of Catharism, is nearby. I have a particular tenderness for the Chapel of Saint-Germain de la Serre, a jewel of Romanesque art in Minervois, nestled in a bouquet of maritime pines two kilometers from the village. See less

Languages French