Gazeteer of France’s great oak woods – Orient, the promise of the aube
23 July 2019
Published in October 2018, the book The oak in majesty, from forest to wine highlights the concept of forest terroir: a specific soil, aspect, and rainfall, as well as a particular exposure to sunlight, to which should be added the species or variety of tree, the density of plantation, as well as average age, all of which will influence the grain and quality of the wood. The value of a mature high forest will thus depend on both the terroir and in the way in which it has been “led,” as French winegrowers say, or managed, in the words of the forester.
The book, fully illustrated with photographies, compile, through a gazeteer with a lot of details about geography, mesoclimate and history, a list of twenty-six beautiful oak wood forests, as the forest of Orient.
Looking towards the rising sun, to the east, south of Champagne, stands the forest of Orient, a vast ensemble extending over 26,300 hectares (65,000 acres), that is essentially private (20,500 ha; 50,650 acres), though also communal (3,700 ha; 9,140) and national (2,100 ha; 5,190).
Ensconced between the valleys of the Aube and the Seine on one side and between the chalky Champagne and the Côte des Bars on the other, the forest sits on an argillaceous aureole depression in the dampness of Champagne. On these relatively deep silt deposits that quickly become gorged with water (750 mm or 291⁄2 in. rainfall per year), oaks are in the majority, at 80%.
This forest massif is very old, since it already appeared on Cassini’s map in the 18th century, and is composed of several forests even more ancient: that of the Grand Orient, named after the Knights of the Orient, a military order of monks of the Middle Ages. It later became the property of the hospices of Troyes before being sold to the luxury leather goods firm, Hermès, which subsequently ceded it to the Conservatoire du Littoral. The forest of the Temple belonged to the Templars until 1312 when the Order was dissolved by the Pope. The woods were then transferred to the Knights of Malta before being returned to state-owned property at the Revolution. It is managed today by the ONF, as is the forest of the Petit-Orient more to the west that forms an ensemble covering 4,500 hectares (11,120 acres).
The massif has been incorporated into the Regional Natural Park of the Forest of Orient and features three immense reservoirs created in the 1960s to control the flow of the Seine and so protect Paris from flooding. The lake of Orient, initially known as the reservoir of the Seine, alone covers 2,300 hectares (5,683 acres) and is served by a feeder canal and a tailwater canal. The Amance and Temple lakes form the Aube reservoir (2,320 ha; 5,732 acres). Farther to the north the reservoir-lake of the Der that branches out from the Marne recalls the ancient name of this vast forest, since in Gallic Der means oak.
Find out the entire gazeteer of France’s great oak woods, and much more, in The oak in majesty, from forest to wine written by Sylvain Charlois and Thierry Dussard.
