Sunday 7 October, 2018
All the weather we wanted pre-harvest comes post-harvest, full of innocent bonhomie and playfulness. The mountains stand at attention on the horizon, dressed in opiate shades of soft blue, vague purple and the lightest pink, like benevolent guardians. Oh well. We enjoy it for what it is, and not for what it might have been.
And then we get a lovely boost. Again, Britain’s Sunday Times zooms in on Rives-Blanques, for the second time in less than a month. What have we done right to get it so right with Britain’s leading national newspaper and its highly respected wine writer?
This time it’s our mauzac, Occitania, in the limelight, most brilliantly paired by Will Lyons with a mezze. Now, why did we never think of that ourselves? It’s so blindingly obvious!
Great tasting notes, too. He says it’s a « wonderful wine », so that’s our Sunday made.
Tuesday 9 October
I’m a sucker for the Brazilian accent, get easily carried away into speaking more than I can remember or am even able to, by a tide of nossa‘s, olha‘s, and maravilha‘s that wash over like an undulating song. so that’s why we ended up with 20 Brazilians in the tasting room today – just for the fun of it. Their leader, Bruno of Campinas, had dressed them up as a group of sommeliers, but forget it, you know a sommelier when you see one. And these sure weren’t sommeliers. But they were very jolly, and gave us a membership pin of their Association, and this nice flag as a souvenir. And stirred up our memories for remnants of nossa‘s, olhas, and maravilhas, ending with a heartfelt foi um prazer as we waved them off.
Monday 16 October
« I’ve never seen this before » Jan says, last night. « Free Méteo says 100% chance of rain. »
He looked an hour later. « Amazing. Still a 100% chance of rain. »
Then he consulted a different forecast. « 100% chance of rain » he said, again. « Incredible! »
This clearly scuppers our plans. There will be no taking the sommeliers and restaurateurs out into the vineyard today, and having lunch in the middle of the vines. 100% chance sounds pretty certain. And certainly, it’s something we’ve never seen before.
I had ordered a large cassoulet from our village butcher to give the visiting group for lunch. They are important and valued customers. Jan goes down bright and early this morning but still only about fifteen minutes before the group is expected to arrive, to collect this work of art. And work of art it usually is too, with sausages and confit of duck neatly arranged in perfect symmetry over a bed of steaming, fragrant white beans. But the butcher’s shop is closed, no sign of life at all. After a few tense minutes wait, one of the butcher’s apprentices shows up. He looks exhausted. « The cassoulet … » Jan begins, but is cut off.
He phones me. « There’s no cassoulet, » he says with deadly finality.
« What? What do you mean, no cassoulet? »
We didn’t know it at the time, and nor did we hear the details after our visitors left late this afternoon – though our rain gauge gave an early warning signal, showing that 80 ml of rain had fallen on Rives-Blanques in the space of a couple of hours in the early hours of the morning while we were still sleeping.
The Aude river burst its banks. Flooding throughout the valley. 14 people killed, several others missing. Our butcher’s main shop in the next village had been completely flooded, his two vans were a write-off, all his smoking and cooking equipment damaged beyond repair. His brother, in the same village, had to be airlifted off his roof as the floodwater in the house crept above the 2.5m mark.
A complete and utter catastrophe of which we knew nothing at all, as we sat around the table eating a cassoulet hastily put together by opening a lot of tins …
Thursday 18 October
Terrible stories keep flooding in. This was the worst flood in a century, they say. « How much more sadness can we take? » the owner of the mini supermarket in Trèbes asked the reporter interviewing him. How much more indeed? This is the same shop where an Islamic terrorist killed a number of people, including a heroic police officer, less than a year ago. Now his shop was under feet of water, and the scene of chaos and swirling filth. Just down the road, Sophie and her chef husband, Pascal, are still trying to empty the Moulin de Trèbes restaurant of the waters of the Canal du Midi. It will be months before they can be functional again. Lots of homes are uninhabitable. The unthinkable, the unimaginable, the impossible have all proved to be real … and in our own back garden.
Friday 19 October
Finally some good news. Jancis Robinson, the eminent and most highly respected wine writer in the world, probably, has published her latest Languedoc wine report. She tasted our new vintages, and gave us some very promising reviews.
Sunday October 21
We travelled a small distance for a bottle of Odyssee … this one in West Cork, in Glandore’s Hayes’ Bar. Tonight we’ll un-Cork another one, at MaryAnn’s in Castletownshend. It’s rather good, we think (not having had a glass for ages), quite at home away from home.
At home the news continues. Flooding has been downrated to the worst since 1999. Somewhere between 40-50% of the Aude Valley vineyard has been flooded. President Macron has been and gone, and promised € 80 million in aid.
We’ve certainly had our fair share of Weather this year.
Monday October 22
More nice review come our way, this time in La Revue du Vin de France, France’s top wine magazine. They’ve done a Tour de France of the country’s sparkling wines, and chosen the best for the November issue. And two of them are ours!
Typical, isn’t it, that too much publicity to handle hits us, just when we have so little wine to sell?
Saturday 27 October
I have to say, I love the Vinfilles, the female winegrowers of the Languedoc, who are so full of feist and fun. And make good wines too. And share and compare. Truly , they are a huge and overwhelmingly positive force to be contended with.
So what chance did I ever have to insist that if I had to translate a book of recipes supplied by our Michelin Star Chef collaborators, I needed to have the original recipes from the Chefs themselves. Nor could I convince them that the cookbook should not be French in the front half and a complete replica in English in the back half. And how to explain that so many French cooking terms require explanation, not translation, and in order to explain, you have to understand? (What is a pigeon au sang? a bloody pigeon? That doesn’t sound very appetising now, does it?) In short, I was fighting a losing battle on all fronts … and I lost (on all fronts). And was left in a mire of misery, well and truly hard boiled, cassoulé-ed, steamed au anglais, gutted, deboned, pressed, air-dried, and finally properly cooked in Mary’s bath.
But they surprised me, as Vinifilles do, and presented us with a night away in a small town called Saint-Girond in the Pyrenees, and off we went with gift voucher in hand, ending up in a mini chateau called Beauregard, which seemed to have ideas above its station. On closer acquaintance, it was not as Faulty Towers as it threatened to be, in fact, it was lovely . And equally lovely was the candle-lit sauna and hammam, which hugely restored the spirits and set us up for a wonderful dinner. Wow! Now this is what I call a truly charmingly rustic restaurant, with hams and sausages hanging from the ceiling and speaking of artisanal produits du terroir, and Chef Laurent effortlessly dancing between his open fire and his closed clay oven. Terrific meal of things that are so bad for you: suckling pig, foie gras …beautifully served and washed down with a Vinfilles wine (Lema, made by the President).
Who ever complained about that Bloody Cookbook (Livre de Cuisine au Sang?)
…/to be continued