Le Couvent Diary

The guests have all gone home, the rooms are cleaned for winter, the cooling fans await their winter home in the loft, but the pool's still swimmable. Yesterday was our first day without guests for five months and I felt truly ill after a rather-too-long lie-in. 

However, today has been magical. I woke at 6.19 am, just as I have all summer - one minute before the alarm, although it is now turned off. I felt fit as a fiddle and zipped off to the market in Clermont l'Herault. My basket crammed with plants, 20 Christmas cauliflower, 2 basil, 15 oak leaf lettuce, 3 celery, along with finely cut jambon sec, a paillasse loaf, tiny coffee meringues, yellow courgettes, five different types of tomatoes, leeks, french beans, pork loin and the crowning glory - huge cep mushrooms from the hills in Lozere, I was home again by 10am.

 

 

I'd be very happy to spend this winter gardening, so this afternoon found me planting all that I'd bought this morning. The potager has been easy to prepare this autumn, thanks to a fantastic attachment made by Wolf tools. It hoes and breaks up the soil to a fine tilth like nothing I've ever used before. God knows what it'd be like in wetter, heavier soils, but here, in the dry, fast draining bauxite of our vineyard it is brilliant. 

 

 

 

The potager is so packed with winter vegetables that I've started filling up the extra space with Australian everlasting flowers. I have no idea how they'll do, but we'll see.

 

 

I'm just waiting for guests to come to breakfast on this, the first day of autumn. The skies are rather grey and there's a brisk breeze blowing. It's not particularly cold; I went to buy the bread at 6.40 in the usual single-layer summer garb.

After breakfast I have to clean the pool. To be frank the water's decidedly nippy and I guess only the hardiest of guests will venture into the pool, but I'll clean it because it looks so inviting when it's glassy. In any case the sun is due back out for the rest of this week, with temperatures forecast at 27 degrees.

Ali's been in England since Friday and is due back this afternoon. She's currently driving my late step-father's ancient VW Golf laden with a Sainsbury's order. My mother wanted the car to go and it's worth nothing in the UK, so we'll have it here in Roujan where we can share it around. Finally, a car with no dog hairs. Curiously, it's probably worth thousands here if this example is anything to go by. It's a year older - 1992 - and a mere 2000 euros.

 

 

Well, one hopes this isn't too much, but no-one's made an acceptable offer for nearly a year now, so we have to assume it's either expensive or no-one wants it - surely not.

 

And this girl looks none too happy at having to hold the essential long thing.

 At just 25o euros this is hard to resist don't you think?

With winter work in the vineyards approaching, I find myself trawling small ads and second-hand websites for any equipment that will make the job easier. Of course I never find any, it’s such difficult land that manual is the only method that works. But what never ceases to amaze me is the price local people charge for what, in the UK anyway, could only be considered worthless junk. It’s the same in the flea markets and brocantes. The prices are, frankly, eye-popping. My theory is that the French aren’t driven by the hormone that says you have to have new stuff all the time. Largely, if it works it’s fine. There’s no need to replace a cooker if it’s still working after 50 years. Consequently most interiors look like the ‘50s, and everything serviceable has a value. It’s a way of living that I hugely admire, it’s just the prices I can’t get over. If you’ve seen the Australian film, The Castle, you’ll know what the title of this blog post means.

 

So over the next few days I’m going to show you some adverts for second-hand stuff available right now in the local area. See what you think. The prices are on the bottom left and in Euros.

It's been a long time since the last post. August has been our busiest month of the season - not only choc-a-bloc with B&B guests, but also with our grape harvest and wine-making. After the heavy rains in April we had a diminished number of tiny grape florets, already reduced by the after effects of the terrible hail storm last September. This summer has also been officially heatwave hot, so the result for us has been a tiny harvest of very early ripening grapes. We ended up with just three trailer loads like this. A ridiculously small harvest from 2.5 hectares.

 

 

We picked during the third week of August - at least a fortnight early. Since then we have moved our wine-making operation to Le Couvent, where we now have a miniature cave, complete with fermentation tanks and all the paraphernalia you need to make wine.

 

 

Thanks to help from several unsuspecting, yet willing, guests and friends we got our meagre harvest picked in record time, over three early mornings, before the temperatures began to soar.

 

 

Since then we have completed the initial fermentation on two of our three cuvées and will work on the third today. After that it's just a question of regular checking that all is OK until the spring, when a secondary fermentation should take place.

 

The good news is that people seem to really like the wine from last year's fated harvest - L'Orage, a blend made on the hoof while we were picking, Syrah, Cinsault & Grenache. But the truth will be known when our lovely Master of Wine pal, Rosemary George , tastes it on Sunday evening. I'm nervous.

With just over three weeks to go before the end of our season, and a fully booked B&B, I'd be lying if I said Ali and I weren't a bit tired. But reserves get tapped at this time of the year, and we have such lovely guests that it's easy to rise to the occasion. We seem to have laughed our way through the summer thanks to some very funny people, especially all the jolly Americans and Canadians who've pitched up at Le Couvent. Thank you all!