Saint Chinian is a bustling village dating back to 825 when Saint Anian founded a monastery, possibly on the site of what today is the Marie (Town Hall). The monastery prospered and with it the village that had grown up around it. The village survived the Albigensian Crusades relatively unscathed and emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries as a center for the manufacture of high quality cloth.

During the French revolution the abbey was dissolved and its buildings put to new uses. The former abbey church is now the village hall and hosts everything from exhibitions to village dances. If you enter the Marie you will find an ornately painted staircase leading up to the first floor. In the courtyard behind the village hall, you can still see the remains of the cloisters The revolution put an end to the cloth trade and the village had to rely on wine for its fortune. After the phylloxera crisis of the 1860’s the Languedoc region was producing huge amounts of cheap wine. It was not until towards the middle of the 1900s that the vignerons began to concentrate on quality rather than quantity. Achieving VDQS status in 1945, St Chinian acquired AOC status in 1982. The appellation area covers twenty communes and produces primarily red and rose. The vines grow on hillsides facing the sea at an altitude of 100 - 200m. St Chinian wines have a very long-standing reputation going back as far as the fourteenth century. Today you will often see St Chinian wine for sale in your local supermarket

St Chinian has a lot to offer its visitors. If you are interested in nature you will find endless possibilities for walking. Several times a year there are craft and wine fairs in the village and on Sundays there is one of the biggest markets in the area. North of St Chinian are the Caroux Mountains where you will find Salvatat.
Close by is the Romanesque Abbey of Fontcaude. Surrounding the Abbaye and hidden in the countryside are many dolmens and menhirs, relics of the megalithic era.

Abbaye de Fontcaude