Informations directionnelles

Face au bâtiment technique sur lequel le panneau est posé, prendre le chemin à gauche jusqu’au pupitre de la ferme de Launay.

Prochain point : lat="49.137417" lon="2.161385"

The Distillery
The tradition of growing sugar beets in the Vexin français dates back to the early 20th century.

An industry that shaped the landscape and sustained the region...

Sugar beet farming developed under Napoleon Bonaparte. A portion of the crops were used to make alcohol. In 1915, the prefecture approved the construction of a distillery to produce neutral spirits from beets in Nesles.
This involved the construction of several buildings: a warehouse for the beets, an office, a scale bridge, alcohol storage facilities, a garage, lodgings for the director, a dormitory/canteen for the workers and of course, a factory and chimney.
The distillery was only operational for 3 or 4 months a year. In summer, many workers came to hoe the fields by hand. They returned in Autumn for the harvest (also by hand before mechanisation) and to work in the distillery.
The beets were cut into fine strips then transported via a system of gears into large cast-iron “cooking pots”. From this was made a sugary liquid, used in some types of yeasts for fermentation. The process ended in a type of industrial still. The alcohol obtained was stored in large tanks then transported by a delegated worker. The waste, pulp and vinasse, soon caused environmental problems, giving rise to numerous petitions.

...but which disappeared during the second half of the 20th century

The distillery was bought in 1958 by the Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône sugar refinery. The brick buildings and the chimney were dismantled. Only the offices and the director's lodgings remain today.

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