Geology of the Estate

 

 

(Transformations are continuing, gentle and permanent: It is not uncommon to feel slight earthquakes in Centernach, like those observed under the press in 2015 ...)

 

 

 

The Fenouillèdes, and more precisely the Agly and Maury valleys where the vines develop, are the expression of a rich and most complex geological history:

 

 

 

From the Triassic to the Cretaceous (-240 to -65 million years)

 

The reign of marine reptiles and dinosaurs, angiosperm plants and their insects’ allies.

 

A long, calm period of 200 million years sees enormous thicknesses of sediment accumulate at the bottom of the seas.

This area has long been a seabed at the bottom of which massive limestones have formed. Only the Fenouillèdes and the southern reaches of the Corbières are still covered with these limestones ...

Black marls are formed and transformed and, under the action of pressure and temperature, appear black schist marls: slightly metamorphosed into schists which disintegrate easily, presenting a regular lamination in parallel planes today very present on the surface and which are the basis of the Maury terroir.

 

Eocene (-55 to -36 million years)

 

The era of large forests, development of gastropods and first mammals: marine pachyderms ...

 

The Pyrenean uplift (collision of the tectonic plates of the Iberian Peninsula and Northern Europe) and the violent folds it operates draw the astonishing landscape that we discover today: the heights of the white limestone cliffs limit the hilly valley small hills, darkened by the presence of these generally vertical schists which allow optimal rooting.

 

Oligocene (-36 to -24 million years)

 

The megafauna from Asia and reptiles, cool forests and the expansion of grasses.

 

Erosion attacks these new mountains at their own pace and sculpt them while the uplift continues. This is how typical granitic formations appear, such as those of Lesquerde: a very recognizable landscape with these large grey-pink rocks posed precariously in the form of chaos, at the foot of which the sands, granite arenas, from the erosion.