Wherever we go, I enjoy searching out little-known and/or quirky items. To finish my little reportage on our recent trip to Cantal, I’ll describe a couple of things we unearthed. Have you heard of Sully trees? And have you ever drunk wine matured in a mountain hut or at the bottom of a lake? I hadn’t come across either of these. All is revealed below.

Sully trees

Let’s start with the trees. On the village green between the church and the mairie in Saint-Simon grows a monumental tilleul (lime tree). Even from afar its huge girth and branches told us that this tree must be very old. However, it was in full leaf and looked very healthy.

A plaque informed us that the tree dated from 1600 and is therefore getting on for 425 years old. This is by no means the oldest tree in France. That accolade goes to an olive in the Var, which is reputed to be 2,000 years old. Four centuries is still very impressive.

In 1600, Henri IV occupied the French throne. He promulgated the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which granted considerable religious freedom to French Calvinists, or Huguenots. France was predominantly Catholic, of course.

Le duc de Sully, himself a Huguenot, was effectively Henri’s first minister and wielded considerable power and influence until Henri’s assassination in 1610. Sully ordered the planting of trees throughout France to reverse the deforestation that had taken place as people cleared land for fields.

Many of the trees were elms (ormeaux), now sadly missing from the landscape through disease. At least two places I can think of around here, Cordes and Milhars, have a Porte des Ormeaux, indicating that elms must have been planted nearby. Sully was also responsible for the planting of poplar trees along the verges of the road network, which have become such a symbol of the French landscape.

In addition, Sully ordered every village to plant a tree in celebration of Henri IV’s achievements, in particular the Edict of Nantes. The trees provided an alternative meeting place to the church, a place to shelter from the rain or the heat and a symbol of Henry IV’s regard for the paysans.

Most of the Sully trees no longer exist, having succumbed to lightning strikes, disease or old age. However, there may be as many as 270 that can be dated to the Sully period.

The tree in Saint-Simon has a circumference of 11 metres. At some point it suffered a lightning strike or maybe started to split under the weight of its own branches. A wall binds the two parts together and acts as a bench for people to sit and contemplate the landscape.

Quite a few Sully trees still exist in Cantal. I could find only one in our own département, Tarn-et-Garonne. Someone has made a study of the subject and has visited many of them, creating a dedicated website to these venerable trees. If you see a large tree on a French village green, it could well be a Sully, or a replacement for one.

La Légendaire

Spinning forward several centuries, when we stayed at la Maison Normande in Saint-Cirgues-de-Jordanne, we tried a pleasant wine called la Légendaire. The volcanic soil of the Auvergne produces a small amount of wine, which is light and fruity, but it’s little-known outside France.

This Côtes d’Auvergne wine is matured in two unusual ways. For the last 25 years or so, the viticulteur has aged it in oak casks (not uncommon) and then stored it in a buron (stone mountain hut) near Salers in Cantal at 1,200 m altitude. Every year at the end of March, la Confrerie de la légendaire goes up and removes the wine from its storage.

A few years ago, another experiment took place. This time, 580 bottles of the wine were taken to the bottom of the lac de Graves in Cantal to mature in June 2019. The theory was that the wine would benefit from the stability of the lake bottom and the constancy of the temperature and the light. Ten months later, divers went down to retrieve the bottles. The result was that the pinot held sway over the gamay. The wine was also lighter and clearer in colour than the one matured in the buron.   

Is it a gimmick or is there really a scientific basis for this? It’s hard to say, but we enjoyed the wine from the buron, and it was surprisingly strong at 14 per cent.

Next time, we return closer to home. A bientôt.

You might also like these related posts:

Copyright © Life on La Lune 2023. All rights reserved.