Schist

Schists have been present in Languedoc for many years. Some of these terroirs are located on primary era schists. They are among the most common and oldest sedimentary rocks on earth, a brown or green rock, sometimes red, with a flaky appearance. It is a fine-grained rock, composed mostly of clay flakes and tiny fragments of other minerals, all laminated by the compression of clay in the heart of the earth's crust. In other words, it's kind of cooked like a « Mille feuilles » at high pressure deep in the earth's crust.

This laminated and fractured rocks give the possibility to the roots of the vine to infiltrate in the ground seven or eight meters deep, where the rainwater naturally circulates.
The hills and Roquebrun valleys are formed on different layers, the hard rocks exposed are Ordovician schists and Devonian dolomites.

This mineral has two virtues: it retains water and stores heat to release it slowly at night. In fact, the local winegrowers say that here the grapes still grow during the night.