On our way to the Loire Valley we stopped in two small troglodyte villages Souzay-Champigny & Turquant where the houses and shops are built into the side of the hill in caves.
There were two distinctly different types of these areas - one a very old area where the caves had not been developed much - there were no "buildings" here just openings and tunneled areas and caves.
Some caves had openings above where the cave dwellers used to drop the grapes down into the cave, they would fall into containers where they were pressed by foot, and the juice stored in the caves.

The other was more developed where shops and houses had been built utilising the caves.

One of the places made a product called Pomme Tappees. These are dried apples, but not like the dried apples we know which are ade and stored in the caves.
The apples are is peeled and cooked for 5 days at constant temperature.
Then they are tapped with a hammer 60 times- to reduce the size to about an inch high. This reduction in size allows them to be stored more easily in jars - and they can last for 10 years. They are used by being rehydrated in wine, apple juice or cider for several days and then warmed gently before serving - or they are used in casseroles or other recipes.
One of the interesting things we learnt is that these dried apples became very important in the 1800's when a virus killed off all the grape vines in the Loire Valley and it was around 100 years before the grapes were re-established. They were also used as a souce of vitamins to prevent scurvey on ships.

Scott: I found 37 geckos again today. These caves didn't have any carvings in them.
Sarah: The process of making the flattened apple was interesting. The caves were really old looking.
April: Hitting the apple 60 times seemed a bit pointless - 10 big hits would have done the job. The caves were pretty awesome.
Darryl: Really it's just an old way of just preserving and then reconstitution fruit.