Le Couvent Diary

 

Yesterday we picked the white grapes. We don't have the right equipment to make white wine - you need a method of chilling the grapes quickly and as we have so few it simply isn't worth the outlay.




So we picked our Muscat petit grain, along with a few black and white eating grapes,  just for juice.  Ali & I were joined by four of our lovely guests; Nicolette, Frances, Kristin & Justin. (For one moment this morning we had Justin Gosling and Justin Swan in the house.)

 

 The pre-squish footwash

 

 De-stemming the grapes

 

Waiting to squish

 

 Treading the grapes

 

 The pre-sieved gloop

 

 Bottled

After removing the stems and treading the grapes we ended up with about 50 litres of juice which we gave to our B&B guests at breakfast and to any of our pals who'd take some. It's absolutely delicious, but only lasts a few days in the fridge before it would start to ferment. So we glug it merrily while it's around. Last night we had it with champagne. Nicky named the cocktail a Le Couvent Grappellini.

 

 

...well, apart from the slinky clothes, the smart tractor, the regular rows of vines, the children wearing grey headscarves - what is that all about??!!

For some months the dogs have been intrigued by the presence of an, until now unseen, inhabitant in the vineyard mazet. A beautiful stoat.

 

 

But yesterday we saw her for several seconds while she dashed about trying to pass us.

Unfortunately it was too quick for me to fire off my camera, so this picture is pinched from It's Nature .   We're thrilled to have Hermine the ermine staying with us and hope that neither of the dogs will have a go at her. I suspect her teeth are fearsome and they may come off worse than she does.

I've been checking out a few facts about stoats. In French they are les hermines and in English stoat are called ermine when they go white in winter. The young in English are called kit. I had a favourite great-grandmother called Ermine and we have a dog called Kit, so there's a sweet serendipity.

It's be good if she stopped using the mazet roof beam as her loo though.

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Our dedicated Le Couvent Wine blog will tell you more, but here's an update on how the grapes are coming along. They're tiny this year, but starting to change colour - and fast. This slideshow will have extra photos added every few days, so do come back to see how this bunch is doing.

 

 

Ali & I are usually too busy to go far from Le Couvent during the summer, so when we found we had a moment one evening last week we went off on a jaunt.

Our first stop was the wonderful Oppidum d'Enserune a pre-Roman hilltop village with spectacular views over the Etang de Montady. This was a lake which was drained in the 13th century, leaving a vast circular area of land which was then divided up into wedge-shaped plots. Here it is from the air and from the road.

 

 

It's just a short hop from there to the Canal du Midi as it runs through Poilhes, so we took a stroll in the calmer evening heat, beside the water in the shade of huge plane trees.

Poilhes is a good-looking village which happens to be home to our current favourite restaurant, hence the real reason for the visit.

 

 

 

La Tour Sarrasine is a really lovely restaurant which serves jolly good food in great surroundings. Take a look at the menus on their rather busy website ! If I'm honest I prefer it in winter when there are fewer diners, but don't let that put you off - it's well worth the trip anytime. The service is excellent and the prices are restrained for the quality. Dinner for two including a good wine was 100 euros for the two of us.

It's been so hot that guests have been spending whole languorous days by the pool. I suspect that no-one wants me there gardening while they're trying to relax, so the garden is looking rather relaxed itself.

 

Recently lovely Kate-The-Human-Fish and her kind husband Darren came to stay. I was apologising for the fact that the garden looks a tad dishevelled. Today professional gardener Kate sent me this fab photo, with the reassuring words "I wanted to send this photo of the garden by the pool because you sounded so worried about how it looks. This is how it looks to guests - gorgeous! So stop worrying!"

You see what I mean? People who come to stay at Le Couvent are just So Very Lovely.

Thank you Kate.

 

 

 

We've moved our vineyard and wine diary to this site: Le Couvent Wine Blog

Why not bookmark it?

Happy mid-season! We've been choc-a-bloc with guests, hence no blog.
 

 

 

However now I have my slippery new multifocal contact lenses I'm likely to be blogging more frequently. It's amazing just how tiring not being able to see properly is. But now, thanks to clever Dr Magnier at the optical clinic in Pezenas, I have the joy of no specs at all. Am I the last person on Earth to learn that one pair of contact lenses can replace readers and distance glasses?  No more scrabbling around for the right pair. No more
 whipping my specs off before kissing (a very frequent occurrence here in France) lest I become ensnared in the kissees own specs. Finally I will be able to see to prune the vines. They'll make better wine and I will have to hone my taste buds to measure up to my fab new eyesight.

I'm thrilled with my lenses which took about 15 minutes to get used to. If you're contemplating the change from specs I would thoroughly recommend it. And yes, the French word for contact lenses is lentilles - the same as lentils. So now I poke lentils into my eyes each morning.

We're well and truly into the busiest part of our season now. The days have turned long and hot and air is alive with the sound of cicadas. When we walk the dogs in the vineyard we frequently hear a speedy rustle ahead of us as one of these big beauties runs for cover.

 

 

 

Lézard ocellé - Ocellated lizard

I absolutely adore them. They are magnificent creatures with beautiful markings and are a protected species. But Kit and Flynn don't know that and can sometimes spend a quarter of an hour barking at a dense bush until, eventually, one of them manages to grab the lizard, and with one swift shake of the head the poor lizard's life is over. Any ideas how to stop them?

The weather's taken a grand turn for the better and we've had unbroken sunshine for days and days now. With temperatures in the mid-30s (90s for those on the old scale) guests are enjoying long lazy days by the pool or chasing Cathars in their many castles in the region.

 July marks the start of the fetes/festival season and wine domaines open their doors now that the heaviest of the early Summer work is just about done. The grapes are left to get on with growing fat, fullsome, flavoursome and ripe. So the winemakers party. Our pals Hans and Christa open their doors each Monday night for a couple of months so you can go to taste their lovely wines in the middle of the vineyards.

 

 

We still have some availability at the end of July as a result of a cancellation, so why not escape the bustle and come to sunny Roujan for a few days? There's no-one in the pool right now - it could be all yours!

 

 

I haven't blogged for ages because there's been an elephant in the room. How could I have written and not mentioned the awful weather? It's been the worst June for forty years, but I could hardly have told you that. You'd have cancelled in droves! However, everyone has survived and had a good time visiting the lovely Languedoc's wildest places instead of lolling by the pool.

But THE SUN's BACK. That's the forecast at 9.07 this morning. So now we look forward to the return of the cicadas and their heat-driven whistle.

We've been battling with vine-spraying between showers. A mixture of heat, rain then plunging overnight temperatures has meant that the vines have been very susceptible to a number of conditions such as powdery mildew and shatter - the latter producing poor fruit set. But now I'm hoping we can hang on to as much of the good-looking berries as possible and that we have a long hot period from now until harvest. We need sun-soaked guests and grapes.

I'm about to have a rant, so look away if you're not up for it on a fine June day. Four days ago I received an e-mail from a guest who'd booked to stay for four days with her parents who were coming all the way from Rio de Janeiro. She wrote to say how much she was looking forward to cycling through lavender fields here in Provence. PROVENCE, LAVENDER FIELDS? Eeek. I wrote immediately to say that she did realise that Le Couvent is in Languedoc surrounded by vineyards, didn't she? She didn't and could I show her on a map when they got here?

They duly arrived two nights ago and were clearly bemused by where they'd pitched up. No lavender fields and no castle. CASTLE? What castle? Our lovely Brazilian then went off to find the picture she'd cut from a magazine three years ago and had been carrying in her pocket and her dreams ever since. At this point it all came clear.

In 2007 we had an e-mail from a journalist from Elle Spain who asked us to send photos of Le Couvent as she wanted to write an article. We sent photos and expected her to turn up. She didn't, but the article was published and I found it online. To my horror I saw that she'd said Le Couvent was in the lavender fields of Provence and at the top of the article was a Photoshopped stock image of Senanque Abbey sitting in a field of lavender. I wrote to the journalist immediately and pointed out her mistake and told her that I was furious that she could be so misleading. She told me I was worrying unnecessarily and that it didn't matter.

Lots of people contacted us to book and we told all of them the truth. Some of them came to stay anyway and we all had a lovely time. Some really wanted the lavender - just as our lovely guest who's here at the moment. So yesterday I suggested that we find them somewhere in Provence and I've now booked them in to a B&B that looks lovely and definitely has lavender there right now.

But lazy journalism has cost us about 400 euros and our lovely guests the loss of two days of their long-awaited holiday. Sure, they've made the best of it and have had their heads turned towards the delights of the Languedoc, but that's not the point. In the eight years that we've been open as a B&B there have been many articles that mention us. We have never sought it, though we've been grateful more often than not. However, only one journalist - the lovely Louise Hurren - has ever bothered to actually visit us. Pretty poor show eh? So don't believe everything you read in the papers - good or bad.

 

 

Just before we re-opened for the summer season I was planting geraniums and  petunias in pots all over the gardens here at Le Couvent. Imagine my surprise on finding a hen's egg when digging out an old plant in one of the pots by the pool. I lifted it out carefully and took it in to show Ali. I was reluctant to crack it open knowing how revolting it would smell if it had been there an age. So I ditched it.

 

 

The day after I returned to clean the pool. The newly planted flowers had been turfed out and a furious search had been conducted - in the neighbouring pots too. So what do you suppose had buried the egg there in the first place? It wasn't a guest from last year - we date all our eggs when we collect them from the nests. It wasn't our dogs since neither is allowed anywhere near the pool in case Flynn the Husky drowns. (He can't swim) It wasn't Ali and it wasn't me. Anyone willing to own up, or offer a suggestion?

 

 

Yesterday Ali and I took a hike up a vertical track in nearby Faugeres to view the flatlands of the Languedoc. The walk is wonderful, but you need to know you can walk back down the easy road when you embark on the mule track that runs for 500 vertical metres of rough stones.

 

 

When we reached the top the 360 degree view was superb despite it being a gloomy , drizzly day.

 

 

There is a precipitous drop from the top which would have UK Health and Safety officers quivering since there are no barriers to spoil the photos.

We've become barbecue freaks. I blame the inventor of the Cobblestone.

 

 

If you haven't heard of it it's a round brick of pressed coconut which lights in an instant and is ready to cook with in less than three minutes. It fits perfectly in the fab Cobb barbecue and it's become my absolute favourite method of cooking.

 

 

So yesterday we left Faugeres with the soggy dogs in the back of the car and headed for a secluded spot in someone's vineyard near a stream where the dogs got even soggier. Rosé wine, Toulouse sausage, sautéed potatoes and a can of petit pois and carrots has never tasted better.

 

 

 

 

So wonderful was yesterday's barbecue that we decided to eat outside again today. We'd thought we might do fish on the beach, but a bank of thick mist made us think twice and we pitched up near the aerodrome at Nizas.

 

 

Delicious sardines were ready within ten minutes of arriving there and we then lobbed two plump trout fillets on the Cobb. Served with salad and followed by hot caramelised pineapple this was the perfect meal.

 

 

With goats clanking not far away and a glass of rosé in hand, what could be a better way to spend a May evening?

Some years ago my mother and her late husband, John, were on a cruise in the Mediterranean. She didn't much like cruises but John loved them. On the wall of the ship was a quote from The Olive Tree by Aldous Huxley. It meant enough to her that she copied it into her diary.

A few weeks ago I spoke to her about the sadness I had felt at hearing olives being wrenched from the land adjacent to ours. The tenant of the land was removing four of these noble trees to the garden of his new pink villa on the edge of the village. They were magnificent 100 year old trees, wide enough to hang a hammock in, but he set about them with a chainsaw before the digger hauled them from the earth with chains. I heard them scream and had to walk away.

When I spoke to her about it Mum was reminded of the piece, and without a word to me set about finding the relevant diary. Then she and her lovely helper, the divine Tara, plotted to find a copy of the Huxley book. Tara searched the internet, found an excellent 1937 copy in Sussex. She ordered, received, packed and posted it to me here in France, along with Mum's original note torn from her diary.

Here it is.

'If I could paint and had the necessary time, I should devote myself for a few years to making pictures only of olive trees'

I like to think that the spirit of olive trees links my mother and I.

 

 

Today I made a gate. Of course. Without success I'd looked high and low for a gate with which we can separate our bullied hen, Darling, from the others. She's been in a small courtyard under one of the bedroom windows, but, as we're about to re-open, she has to be evicted. Darling is soooo noisy in the morning that we can't leave her there to wake our unwitting, sleep-seeking guests. Hence the gate. No-one seems to make a 1.5 metre by 1.6 metre gate for less than 1,000,000,000,000 euros plus tax, so I had no choice. It cost me 34 euros and took about two hours and a lot of tools. I'm hoping it won't be hell to install. I'll have to ask my pal Teddy to help since I can barely drag it, let alone lift onto prongs, handily concreted into the wall at exactly the right intervals. I do hope Darling thinks it worth the effort.

Just to prove that Summer is finally on its way I sploshed into the glacial, but pretty, swimming pool for the first time this season today. I managed half a length before I thought the heart attack imminent and turned around to safety. I was cowardly, but my recall is that it was a lovely thing to do and I can't wait for my next plunge. Maybe I'll get to the other end.

 

 

Another clue to the passing of the Winter is that the barbecue is on its third outing. Here it is happily smoking away with some chicken sizzling away. Ali's been feeling a bit grotty with a bug for the past couple of days so I'm hoping she can't face it and I can have hers too. For those of you who say 'but that's not a barbecue' - oh yes it is. It's a very wonderful Cobb barbecue for which one can buy magic coals made from coconut shells which light and are ready to cook with in less than five minutes. Wonderfuel. It's smelling delicious from where I'm sitting - out here on the balcony at 7.00pm with gentle chickeny, jasminey, lavendery zephyrs passing by.

I've seen planes passing overhead today and not one of them fell from the sky, so I'm hoping tomorrow will herald the very end of all the no-plane shenanigans so our lovely guests can get here safely.