Le Figaro Bordeaux
On the balconies of Sauternes, a Gironde village of less than 1000 inhabitants draws its fame from its exceptional soil.
Built on fossilized oyster cliffs, Sainte-Croix-du-Mont has one star in the Michelin green guide for its terrace offering a breathtaking view of the Landes plateau.
An exceptional site which attracts 50,000 tourists per year in the summer season, according to the electricity meters installed by the town hall.
Facing the vineyard of Château d'Yquem, Premier Cru Classé of Sauternes, these very special cliffs make up a lumachelle.
“This is an exceptional and extremely rare phenomenon, because they are made up of a single type of shell
,” explains David Sony to Le
Figaro
.
According to the director of the Histoires de Pierre design office, a graduate of the University of Bordeaux in medieval history and tour guide, the history of this extraordinary site began 170 million years ago.
Plunged under the sea, Sainte-Croix-du Mont is then only a reef among
“the great coral barriers which run from Niort to Tarbes”
.
It will be necessary to wait - 40 million years for its land to emerge thanks to the formation of the Pyrenees chain, then - 22 million years for the exceptional properties of the commune to appear.
At the time, on the land located on the seafront of the Gulf of Agen, oysters, of an ancient breed now extinct, abounded.
And this is how these oyster cliffs appeared - 13 million years ago, when the waters retreated pushed by the erosion of the seafront, and while a geological fault detached the Landes plateau.
A wealth of great fragility is then born on the hillside.
Download the document
Also read “It’s a bit like an island”: meeting the inhabitants of the smallest village in France, near Bordeaux
A natural and fragile treasure
“Between the oysters there is only earth and sand. This holds together because they are intertwined,”
explains David Sony.
And if the hand-painted signs displaying
“do not touch fossilized oysters”
seem almost as old as the husks of their fellow molluscs, you only need to look at them to understand their fragility.
On the 400 meters of fossilized oyster cliffs accessible to the public, which extends within the private property and in the cellars of the Château de Loubens, certain rough edges are already damaged.
Here a section of earth has rolled down the cliff and torn off a piece of it.
There, vegetation and erosion covered the fossilized oysters on a bad day.
And in this land where the Ciron flows deep, a small cold stream which causes sheets of clouds to rise when meeting the warm waters of the Garonne, floods are frequent.
Just as famous as it is secret, the last visible face of these walls of fossilized oysters is hidden in the chapel of the former home of the Gironde deputy Pierre de Rosteguy de Lancre (1553-1631), a notable whose posterity is controversial.
Due on the one hand, to his witch hunt in Bayonne, carried out under the orders of Henri IV, and on the other hand, to his odes to the natural mystery of Sainte-Croix-du-Mont.
A mayor without a label
In love and so proud of the beauty of his commune, Michel Latapy, 72 years old, was
“born on the lands of his ancestors”
in Fargues, just opposite Sainte-Croix-du-Mont.
He has lived in the town since 1975 and became deputy mayor for the first time in 1995, before taking on the role of chief magistrate of the town in 2001. In his office, housed with the town hall within the castle grounds of the 14th century - which also served as a municipal school until 1964 - the unofficial city councilor fought to promote his canton.
“Saint-Croix-du-Mont is a unique site, I regret that it is not more highlighted at the departmental and national level
,” sighs the elected official, emphasizing that the last researcher who came to study the place was Belgian.
Despite
"the lack of means",
the village church, just as renowned as the oyster cliffs for the tympanum of its pediment and an inverted canvas of
The Descent from the Cross
which would come from Rubens' workshops, is well maintained and restored.
To highlight his terroir and the sweet wines of Sainte-Croix-du-Mont, Michel Latapy would now like to develop wine tourism.
A project in this sense,
“
Orterra
”,
was developed by the community of municipalities and voted on in 2016, before the reform of the new municipalities upset it.
“The new community of communes is called Convergence Garonne, I call it Divergence Garonne.
Everyone there is navel-gazing and the mountain has given birth to a mouse
,” laments the elected official, disappointed.
In the meantime, a small bar
“opens in fine weather”
on the oyster cliffs promenade.
And without despairing of creating new alliances on the right bank, the mayor is considering promoting the old cellars of the Château de Tastes, which houses the town hall and the municipal library.
“It has been the idea for 20 years to create a space dedicated to art on the ground floor and guest rooms to accommodate tourists upstairs
,” dreams the septuagenarian.