Domaine aux Moines: The Cistercians
Domaine aux Moines lies on the Chemin de la Roche aux Moines, which continues on past the Laroche residence and their many vineyards down to the Château de la Roche aux Moines, which sits above the 12th-century fortress of Guillaume des Roches. While those properties passed into noble hands, monks seem to have continued to work the soil here at Domaine aux Moines. Some evidence for this does exist. First, it seems there was a residence here, of wooden construction, one that persisted until it was replaced by the current château, which is built in the classically bourgeois Anjou style.
The monks would take in travellers, offering a bed for the night and perhaps a glass or two of their wine, no doubt for a fee or at the very least a ‘donation’. Legend has it (there seems to be no shortage of legends when it comes to the Savennières Roche-aux-Moines vineyards) that Louis XI (1423 – 1483) slept there when in the region to visit the Sanctuaire Notre-Dame de Béhuard, a church to honour the Virgin Mary which he had promised to build after surviving a near-drowning incident as a young man.
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