Claim that vines planted on a meteorite crater now evidence-based

hey had been making the claim for the past 70 years, but the owners of the aptly-named Domaine du Météore located in Cabrerolles, 300 metres above sea level in the foothills of the Haut Languedoc Mountains, now have proof that their vines do indeed grow on an impact crater.

“Over the summer of 2021, after stumbling upon a bottle of our wine by chance during his holidays in Marseillan-Plage, Professor Frank Brenker, a German geo-scientist and cosmo-chemist, came to visit the crater which is two hundred metres in diameter and eighty metres deep. He took several samples so that he could study them in the laboratory at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany”, recount Paul Jenkins and Paul Jarman, the two London doctors who now helm the winery.

The professor’s analyses allowed him to identify dark-coloured layers and angular rock debris, potentially stemming from the rock fracturing after the impact. After returning to the estate a year later with a colleague and some students to collect evidence, he explains that he pinpointed a dip in the magnetic field typical of meteorite impact craters which break and melt the rock.

The researchers also found minute spherical particles of iron oxide. When they analysed them in the laboratory, they found iron, nickel and other minerals typical of craters in them, and shock microdiamonds similar to those identified in many of the 190 other impact craters identified worldwide.

“The Professor finally provided evidence of faults and distortions in the quartz which can only be caused by shock pressures of more than 5 or 10 GPa, a pressure which cannot be reached by any known plate tectonic or mountain building process”, add the estate’s owners.