Tag: boulangerie

La Vendange part two – wine – champagne – food. I meet an American who can’t speak English and admire the statue of Pope Urbain 11. And in LHR, what do I say to the customs man?

Here I am, on my first morning, cutting away, blood being lost, frozen fingered, stiff backed, but all was not lost, as after only about 90 minutes, who turns up but Madame Beaumont, with a big basket of bread and saucisson and some really hard cider.  So we all had to stop for a quick nosh and drink.  I think we all felt a lot better and our work continued for a couple more hours.  Once my basket was full, I hiked to the end of the row and dumped the grapes into a big wooden tub.  My nighttime mate Hercule was there and the tubs were manhandled on to his cart and off he trundled. I’m not sure he had anyone with him.  What the need?  He had been doing for ever or at least since he left a cave.

Then midday approached and there remains nothing more sacrosanct in France than LUNCH.  Home we went and after minimal handwashing, sat down at the table and Madame Beaumont appeared with food that could have been served in some posh French restaurant in London.  Here, it was just lunch. And sublime bread from the boulangerie, which was located en route back from the fields, so we picked it up.  Just once, I was allowed actually to hold the baguettes.  It felt like I had really been accepted in to la famille Beaumont!  Oh boy, it was just basic peasant fodder and we inhaled it and wiped our plates clean with the leftover bread and sat back very fat and happy.  But what is this?  This is dessert.  Oh how lovely to live in France, I thought, where tarte aux pommes or mousse au chocolat seem to flow from everywhere. Eating is just a greatly appreciated experience here and this made me a fan of French food for life.

I caused much mirth the first lunch time, when all looked done, sitting closest to the sink, I piled up some plates and cutlery and moved them in that direction.  What was I doing?  Have you gone mad? Well, I was just trying to help.  No way.  Even Madame agreed … this was HER job and not mine.  She was a one woman union and I was some scab who was taking her job away from her.  Oh dear.  I did not try again and every meal was silently hoping my mother was not looking.

Back out we went for only about 3 hours, as in northern France at the end of September, days were becoming radically shortened and no one can pick grapes in the dark.  Well, actually I thought, you almost could, as so much of the finding the hardpacked bunches was done by feel rather than sight.

One thing I would never forget were the rifle shots.  Of course, hunting is a way of life here and there was always someone out there stalking something that moved and a shot or two would echo down the valleys.  The champagne vines were basically terraced down the hillside, leading to the Marne, one of France’s great rivers.  And of course, one of the major battlefields of WW1 was just north of us.  What amazed me was how just one single shot echoed around.  You could practically hear it coming and then is whizzed past and went on its way.  Whatever did WW1 sound like?  Something I had never thought of, but it must have been deafening to be in the wrong spot.

Back home by 5:30, we cleaned up and then a bottle or two would come out.  A bottle or two of champagne, as the rellies, who were possibly being paid en liquide, as the French call cash payments, but here it had literally turned to liquid.  Dinner was at 7 and everyone ate heartily, so all done by eight thirty. We also had some red wine, usually Bordeaux and cheeses, all local of course.  So here we are, in a rather damp ancient stone house, built in, it felt like, c1500, with faces that dated from that era too and the wooden shutters of course had been closed and the fire stoked, so what do we do now?   Well, we put on our coats and go to make a social call on the Joubert’s two doors along. In an equally damp feeling house, there was nothing to do but try M. Joubert’s house tipple and do a bit of blind tasting.

Little did I know when I started out from the UK, that I was entering the most seriously alcoholic three weeks of my life.  It seemed that if we were not cutting or eating, then all we could do was drink red wine and champagne.  It was total hell of course and I only did it to be polite.  And the amazing thing was that in all their blind tastings, they could recognize their own homemade tipples and just who had made what.  99% of the grapes went off to the big co-operative and then to some champagne house in Reims or Epernay, but there were always enough bunches for a little home enterprise.  I nearly drowned in champagne.

We did get Sunday off.   So we piled in to some ancient French vehicles (there was absolutely nothing new in this village) and off we tootled to either Reims or Epernay, the two big champagne cities and what did we do?  We went to a champagne house, where someone had a brother or cousin or the like and we got a behind the scenes visit. I was shaking hands with never to be seen again strangers on a par with the queen touring the colonies.  Everyone was ravi to meet me, the foreigner.  It was like I had come from the moon.  And of course, we ended up in the wonderfully named ‘salon de degustation’ or tasting room and the bottles came out and I don’t think anyone ever said no. We were very merry on the way home. Of course, this was way before anyone had invented a designated driver and we had to make several stops for countryside peeing too.  We were all equally looped.

One day I was taken to meet one of the oldest inhabitants of the village, as they thought I should.  Because he was American.  Most amazingly, he had arrived there as a soldier during WW1 and had never ever gone home.  I was introduced all in French and of course he spoke it back and then I thought he might like some English, as I appeared to be the only English speaker in this area and it turned out he had totally forgotten everything.  You would not think it possible that you could forget your native language, but he had not used it in 50 years and it had gone.

Chatillon-sur-Marne did have one son who had made it big in the world.  How about becoming Pope!   Given the unusual name of Odo, when he was born in 1035 (yes, 1035), he became Pope in 1088 until his death in 1099.   He was known as Urbain 11. And to celebrate this fact, there was a large statue of him, overlooking the valley and blessing us all.  Apparently, he was best known for starting The Crusades, which was the movement to reclaim the Holy Land from all those heathen Moslems.  He started it all!!

As all good things come to an end, I bade my dear family au revoir.  They insisted I take some champagne with me, to the tune of four bottles and I could have had more if I could work out how to carry them.  BUT, what would I be faced with at customs in Heathrow?  This was way before red and green channels and all that.  You had to line up and be grilled, as if you were going to sabotage the whole country with the contents of your bag.  And the alcohol limit was just one bottle of anything and I had four.  I was going straight to jail. I knew I was.  My knees were knocking and I was in sheer panic mode and then suddenly, I had an idea. Look for the oldest customs guy and get on his line. 

So I did.  When my turn came, I confessed right up front.  “I have been to France to pick grapes for the last three weeks, so that when your daughter gets married, you will have champagne to drink.  I have four bottles”.   Best line I have ever given to anyone.  He laughed and said “How did you know?  She is getting married next week. Thank you.  Off you go”.

A visit to rural France. 2001 Calvados production and great countryside living.

Hello Readers,

Back on the road again. This time, it’s our new trip – Human Odyssey – the Origins of Man – (cudda saved a lot of money and walked around some bits of Brooklyn, but our punters want even better…). This was an instant bestseller of a trip when it came on the market over a year ago, but then September 11th happened and we are now going around the circuit with 21 pax such a waste of time and effort, not to mention costing us a fortune.

I started in France – no problem for me to go there – any chance I get, I take it. Took some days off beforehand, chez brother Dick and wife Janet, in the departement of Mayenne (and I bet none of you can put that one on the map) – kinda about three to four inches west of Paris, about halfway to Brittany). Just pure rural France, the leaves barely turning, the roads muddy with soil from passing tractors, odd gunshots anytime (the French farmer basically considers anything that walks or flies as fair game – Dick says the first day of the hunting season sounds more like the Battle of the Somme and the papers next day are full of reports as to the human toll …… he stays home that day and wears a red hat indoors just to be sure). We did some gentle touring around to look at rustic villages and local markets and sort of did nothing on a rather large scale and the weather cooperated wonderfully, with thin sunshine and no rain, so a good time was had.

There were many mounds of gently rotting apples around and the air was gently scented_ This is the Calvados producing area and it appears that it is all the better if the fruit has started to ferment naturally. Huge barrels were being cleaned out and soon a visiting apple crusher would arrive in the village and everyone would have the basic juice, which later would go to the still and then to the bottle and then down the throat – a wonderfully natural progression. Dinner around here will always end with ‘un petit calva’.

When out driving around, lunching in a Routiers cafe is just great. The trick is to keep your eyes open for a line of white vans parked outside some unassuming building at 12 noon. These men know where the good food is. Inside, Madame runs front of house. Monsieur is in the kitchen. The oilcloth table is ready laid with bread and an opened bottle of red wine. You take a seat (or as the French say – I always love saying this: “On s’installe”) and next moment there is a nice fresh salad plate, home made zingy dressing -veggies that came from the market this morning and had been grown, heavens above, exposed to the weather and passing animals – then perhaps a steack frites (that IS spelled right, we are en france, remember, though the spelling is becoming old hat I have to admit) or a stew of some kind and then a choice of local cheeses (Do we need more wine???) and a sweet rice pudding or fruit and coffee and you pay USD12 a head all in …….. I could go everyday just to see what they do next. Madame was having trouble wondering why I kept looking at her and I was wondering just how the hell they did it. She had her regulars in this particular restaurant and we were rather the bump on the log (and foreign to make it worse), so she watched us and I watched her. Seemed fair.

We made courtesy calls on various ancient neighbors, whom I had met last time and who wanted to check how I was. On Sept 11, apparently, there was much enquiry after my wellbeing, which was rather touching. Dick, ever resourceful, advised the boulangerie, as the Madame there is the biggest gossip in the village, that I was fine, having actually been in China on that sad day, so about as far away as I could be. Thus the message was effectively, accurately and cheaply spread that I was okay. I made a ritual appearance there later to buy a loaf of bread and got the once over from Madame, who has is pretty tough and not the type to take prisoners. She and hubby are retiring soon, which of course is creating a HUGE scandale in the village – but due to some bizarre sort of French governmental regulation, a BRAND NEW boulangerie is planned for the village (and u should remember this place in MINUTE) and in the meantime the bread wilt be shipped in and probably sold at the restaurant and it’s the sort of thing around here that will remove Mr Bin Laden from the front pages – we DO have our priorities and I think they are, of course, totally right. The chance of the village of Gesvres being bombed is somewhat of a longshot, but living without a boulangerie, well THAT is life itself. French governments have fallen over less.

We visited a sweet lady in town. with sparkling brown eyes and a mop of naturally curly (but rather greasy) hair. Her BO is strong and it’s not even high summer. Dick and Janet’s house had been in her family, though in her time, it was a barn and not a primary residence as it is now termed. Always smiling, she shows no sign of the fact that her husband is terminally ill in hospital on a long term basis. She is a laundress at a small hotel (“beaucoup des anglais”) in a nearby village and has a girl and boy teenage children, who obviously adore her and an elderly mother parked by the fireside – almost Norman Rockwell gone to France. The kids are shy to practice their English, though the girl went with Dick and Janet last year to England and came back with a passion for, of all things, English sausages – “les bangers anglais” were a success fou and she would not ask, but if they bring some back, she will be “ravie”.

Seated around the table in the small, cluttered backroom, with a few momentoes of visits to places like Lourdes (there’s lotsa Virgins in plaster around here) and sepia family photographs of unhappy looking and long dead relations, the white wine bottle is produced and also the blackcurrant and oversweet kirs distributed – the kids of course have theirs. Toasts have to be exchanged, even with grandmama. We hear the latest village news – who is in and who is out, with the sort of fervour that Jane Austen would have brought to the news that Mr Darcy is worth five thousand pounds a year – meanwhile le tele is going in the background. Dreadful French game shows with middle aged housewives who look like the just left half the dishes in the sink and peeled off their bright yellow rubber gloves to go to the studio and make fools of themselves, but somehow you feel that the local news is still more important than matters afar removed. New York may have had its problems, but what about the boulangerie ???? This is une vrai probleme and there is much shrugging of shoulders and the end of the world is almost within sight. Think I’d probably unplug le tele and remain blissfully unaware of what is happening more than 20 k’s away. Innocence is bliss.

Later, one splendidly old couple (both well over 80) arrived on Dick’s doorstep and had to be formally seated at the kitchen table (MUCH seems to happen around oilcloth covered kitchen tables here) – Dick and Janet on one side and they on the other and me at the end, like some kind of game show referee – I felt I should be awarding them points and the Pastis bottle was produced and rituals of asking about each other’s health extensively gone into. If there’s anything a French person likes, it’s an investigation into one’s internal organs and how they are variously functioning. Nothing better than a “crise” of some kind -you are almost a nonperson if you don’t have something to complain about and the French patent medicine industry must be a sure profit maker and it’s my stock tip of the week. You have never heard so many opinions given, all hands-on-bible stuff as to how to be cured from this or that, but the only thing that is a given is that everyone will chime in and EVERYONE WILL BE RIGHT.  I suppose the Brits do it with the weather – big difference being that you can do sod all about that, but a malfunctioning liver can be investigated ad nauseam. The old lady, Madeleine, in her many indeterminant layers of ragged sweaters, wanted to know if Dick would like a rabbit ? We realized immediately this was not some cute bunny to have in a hutch, but rather tomorrow’s dinner. Seemed they raised them on the side and they love Dick and Janet so much that a rabbit was up for grabs. Great clincher line was did they want it alive or dead ??? Well we knew that if arrived with a twitching nose, then all we wudda done would be to let it go in the fields outside – none of us was up to murder or the ritual skinning and dismemberment after that. We decided dead was better, which amused them no end – what wimps we are – seems this sweet little couple are mass murderers in a quiet way. But, she said, she would save the blood … oh Joy. It arrived next day and only the head had to be removed (given to the guard dog at the adjacent building which wolfed it down in almost one gulp) and we had a nice rabbit dinner and did not dwell on its provenance. That’s the glory of being at the top of the food chain.

Anyway, after some local living, like going to the supermarche (where there had been a punch up the very same day we were there, between some staff members no less) and drooling over all the things that I don’t find in its equivalent chez moi, it was time to go off to work.