Let me start by explaining what a Cadole is!
A cadole is a kind of dry stone shelter or hut, with an incomparable charm that we all like to see here in Burgundy!
These are old shelters for vineyard workers that remain in the vineyards in some cases but because of displacement of vines can also be found on other hillsides.
The winemakers built them themselves with the materials found on site. The stones removed from the ground were sorted out, and the coarser ones made it possible to enlarge the “muras” which served to delimit the parcels and the most beautiful and flat stones were used for the construction of the cadoles.
Round for the vast majority they consist of a skilful pile of stones that meet as the pile is stacked towards the upper centre to form a corbelled vault in which the chimney is located.
A slightly larger stone serves as a lintel for an entrance opening always lowered and facing east.
They are the testimony of a popular and anonymous architecture of former winemakers to whom they served as a refuge against the vagaries of time. “We ate there, we rested a little, we drank a glass.
This is the only thanks that we can give for phylloxera. It is in the woods of conifers that have gradually invaded the vineyards abandoned after the vines were destroyed that we find the best preserved cadoles.
Fortunately, they are now protected by the descendants of the original winemakers.
We try to protect and look after our cadoles!
Like the winemakers who built them, they are all different and all alike, similar in the way they are built, different in the choice of height, more or less rustic or elaborate, they poetically enhance the hiking trails of Burgundy.