Built in the 15th Century, the windmill that overlooks the appellation and gives it its name stopped milling grain in the mid-19th Century. But it has remained proudly on the hill at a height of 258 metres, on its dome of granite injected with manganese. It was restored in 1960, having been listed as a historic monument some thirty years beforehand, and its sails now turn again, thanks to its tail pole, an oblique wooden beam that faces the sails into the wind. It was re-fitted with sails in 1999, in celebration of the ‘cru’s 75th anniversary. The mill had lost its sails in the terrible storm of 1910 that ripped them off, and has now restored to its former glory and its initial raison d’être. It is now in a perfect state of preservation.

History again, but let’s move from wind to stone. In the 19th Century, Romanèche-Thorins had four manganese mines, among the biggest in France, from which the famous ‘glazier’s soap’ was extracted and used to whiten glass. The mines, in which the local population worked (the farmers who grew vines and lived from mixed farming were also miners) closed in 1919. But the manganese remained and gives the wines their particular Moulin-à-Vent cachet.