In 1860 Abbé Rous, the new Curé at the Chapelle de la Rectorie, first tasted the naturally sweet wine of Banyuls and found it so good that he decided, through his network of Catholic contacts, to make it the communion wine of France.

It was recently revealed that the former ‘maison Mazard’ in Le Soler, now destroyed, was a safe house for Dutch refugees, Jews and resistance members fleeing the nazis in the 1930s.