At the crossroads of ancient Roman roads leading to Anjou, Touraine and Poitou, Saint-Cyr-en-Bourg is located on a plateau delimited by the valleys of Thouet and that of the Loire. This gives it a micro climate that has given its name to the name "Champigny" which means "fire land" in old French.
At the time of the Cretaceous, 90 million years ago, the sea level had covered the entire region to form the Sea of Tufa. The accumulation of marine sedimentation has formed the so-called tufa rock. The extraction of this rock was the first wealth of this region and began as early as the 12th century. The excavated cavities served primarily for the habitat (more secure and comfortable than wooden constructions of the time). Then the extracted rock was sold for the construction of the castles and other buildings of the region.
All these cavities were gradually abandoned to be used later for the cultivation of mushrooms or by the vine growers for the pressing, the breeding and the storage of the wine. The cultivation of the mushroom disappeared at the beginning of the XXI century but the new generation of vine growers reinvests these cavities for the wine aging in barrels. Some quarries such as those called hillsides (ie excavated horizontally along rivers) have given way to cavities still inhabited today by those who are called troglodytes.