Le Couvent Diary

Around 30 people pitched up at Domaine Bourdic at 9.30 this bright, sunny morning. Hans & Christa, the winemakers who own the domaine, had organised a 'ballade vigneron' - a stroll through the vineyards, followed by a fab lunch outdoors.

Hans struggled to be heard over all the chit-chat of the walkers, such was the twitter going on.  Strolling through the vineyards with a wineglass in hand, ready for tastings of Le Mori and Destiny - a rich red and a grassy white, whilst standing next to the vines that inform them, is a wonderful way to spend a Sunday morning.

Chat wasn't the only sound in the air. This was the first day of the hunting season and the blokes in their camouflage fired off an arsenal in neighbouring fields. Fortunately we could see them easily, despite the camouflage, as they wear bright orange jackets on top. This is to reduce the number that shoot each other. Why the wild boar should be fooled by the camouflage and fail to notice the luminous jackets is beyond me, but there you go. Despite all this we had a wonderful walk and tasted some jolly good wines.

I didn't make the lunch as I had offered to eat at home with my lovely niece, Poppy, whilst my pals and family pass an equally enjoyable afternoon at the opera in Montpellier. However, I know it will have been wonderful - Christa's a good cook. Watch out for the next ballade at Domaine Bourdic here .

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Now this must be a fairly unusual sight. Madame is fishing in the Canal du Midi and her man is watching from the comfort and safety of the car.

Yesterday, after a rapid bit of shopping in Beziers, we took a stroll by Les Neuf Ecluses de Fonseranes - The nine locks of Fonseranes.  And what a marvel it is. Needing to overcome the problem of a 30 metre drop over a 132 metre distance, the builder of the Canal du Midi, Pierre Paul Riquet, unfazed, built a staircase of nine locks. It is a stunning feat of engineering, especially when you realise it was constructed in the late 1600s, but as he'd already built dozens of locks in the earlier parts of the 240 mile canal, it can't have seemed too much of a problem. Here is a very good short history of the Canal du Midi.

These days, merely using the lock presents some boat-hirers with problems. It's obviously a stressful hour when you have to wiggle your big boat into a smallish space along with a couple of others, under the critical eye of people like me, who've never stepped foot on a canal boat yet know we would do all this so much better than the hapless twit on the wheel. Tensions run high and there can be very public fallings-out between members of the crew. The least onerous role seems to be that of hanging on to the ubiquitous dog while everyone else runs about shouting. Ali has thought it would be a fun thing for us to do, taking Kit & Flynn with us. Having seen the lock business, I cannot imagine how we could possibly manoeuvre the boat AND deal with two large and excited dogs. So maybe we'll do it alone.

This flight of boat-stairs is very sweetly controlled by a young woman who looks about sixteen. It's good to see women have their place on the canal.

If you're thinking of visiting the locks next time you stay at Le Couvent, there are some lovely walks to be had along the canal from the locks, and there is also a place where you can hire bikes or small electric boats so you can explore a bit further.

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Yep, finally we're into the other half of our lives - the B&B is closed for the off-season. One of the most frequent questions we're asked (along with "Is Kit really a labrador?") is how we spend our winters. Follow us through until the end of April and you'll see.

So far the best thing we've done is to move bank accounts - yippee!  We've left Cretin Agricole at last. Having had enough of battling with the indifferent bunch in the Roujan branch (open four mornings a week for banking, but much longer if you want one of their 'products') we went to the Pezenas branch to ask how we should deal with six unauthorised payments online from our account. The gum-chewing teenager who told me I should not be using a credit card on the internet (give me strength) could not have been more confidence-draining. However, the final straw came when, after (my suggestion) cancelling my card, a further two payments were made using it.

Now we are with a bank which our friend Suzelle, who works there, says is well-managed and humane. It's only taken five hours over two days, and a great deal of talking to open three accounts. This is France, after all. We were recognised with beaming greetings on our second visit, unlike at CA where I could have walked in naked for the past six years and they still wouldn't have wasted a smile. Wish us luck.

Our other wonderful thing is that, inspired by a raft of guests who were great walkers, we've decided to explore bits of the Languedoc we don't know, i.e. nearly all of it - on foot.  The wonderful Decathlon , seller of sports equipment for the masses at good prices, has kitted us out fantastically well. So, with our lunch, water, collapsible dog bowl, map, outer jackets, guide book, mobile phone, camera and (I kid you not) torch, all tucked in to our new backpacks, we set out yesterday.

Walk number one comes from a great book called l'Herault à pied .  6kms, just over 2 hours and a bit of a climb in the middle took us along the River Orb, past a pretty pre-Roman chapel, up a steepish climb (glad we had the new fold-down walker's sticks), through a long dark tunnel (glad we had the torch), along an old railway line where we stopped for lunch under five spots of rain (glad we had the jackets) before a descent back down to the Campotel car park where we'd left the car. I haven't been happier this year and the dogs were in seventh heaven. If you come to stay next year we'll have the walk available on paper for you.

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We have three days left until the end of our season. The penultimate guests have just left and we are now waiting for three couples from Australia and a couple from Cheltenham, UK. Two of the guests are called Nutter, so we start with the stoolball team and end with the Nutters. Handily we come full circle.

Our guests have been just wonderful again this year. No-one trashed their room, everyone was impeccably behaved, books that were borrowed to finish arrived back in the post. No-one failed to arrive, only one couple arrived a month early - thank God. The vast majority let us book restaurants for them weeks in advance, saving us the nightmare of trying to find restaurants for nine people on the day.

No-one lost their keys, no-one forgot the gate code. (Burglars please note, we've just changed it.) No-one crashed their car, only one person broke a bone. Everyone enjoyed the wine, but no-one made a fool of themself. Only one person expected to pay in a currency we can't use - thank you. Very few people were defeated by PayPal. No-one ate enough breakfast so our hens are now on a strict diet.

No-one wrecked Ali's beautiful linen sheets, everyone put up with Magali's distant, yet persistent, cockerel. Lots of people wrote lovely reviews and those who hated it here have, thus far, not said so in public. For that we can't thank you enough. People let their hair down, but remained dignified and charming. Only a couple of people found they didn't much like the Languedoc, the rest walked, drove, cycled, cruised, rode and canoed huge swathes of this beautiful region and have gone home enchanted.

Now Ali & I will have time to explore again all those magical places people have discovered through the summer. We even have a couple of new restaurants to try. 150 pineapples, 200+ room changes and 650 litres of coffee later we'd be lying if we said we weren't tired. But we've had a fantastic time. Thank you one and all. Next year?

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Say, what do you think of this? Rather unnervingly, Google has interactive photos of chunks of Roujan. I'm to be spotted chatting to my pal, Mme Maria Picanço & my brother's family are all having lunch at the Grand Cafe. We're all looking gormlessly at the camera - I do vaguely remember seeing a survey vehicle during the Spring. Or maybe it was early Summer. The temperature outside Taxi Andre is showing as 26 degrees and the time on the Mairie clock is 1.15 - hence all the shops being shut and everyone off the streets having lunch. Maria has a bag of lunch scraps in her hand for our chickens. No more secrets eh?

Click your mouse on the picture and you can zoom in, travel up and down the streets and look right & left. Have a fiddle and see what you come up with.

 
View Larger Map

Will this put the end to naked bathing by the pool?

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By popular request we've offered an alternative date in February 2009 to come to help at Le Couvent, Roujan. If you're up for some fun and hard work in the vineyards and here in the old house, do take a look at this page . We've had volunteers apply from several other countries, so the talk should be good and the jokes multi-lingual/cultural.

Don't hold back - this will be an extraordinarily interesting week/fortnight. You'll learn loads and get fitter into the bargain.

There's nothing like a bit of teamwork for getting things done.

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Today's blog post has been written by Doug & Caroline, who came to Le Couvent, Roujan hoping that they could take part in our grape harvest.

Following a long drive to Roujan on Monday two weeks ago, we arrived to a very warm welcome from Liz & Ali, only to find the weather had put a premature end to this year's grape harvest. Therefore no vendange for us this year, however as some of the harvest had been salvaged there was the option to be involved with the next process, turning it into wine (yip-pee).

Thanks to lots of hard work before we arrived the grapes had already been transported into the village were in a vat and starting to ferment. So twice a day the fermenting grape & juice mix had to be mixed by hand & on the 2^nd occasion daily the specific gravity of the liquid had to be measured for percentage of potential alcohol.

Within a few days of doing this the mixture was at its prime, and time to extract the grapes from the juice, it was decided that Sunday would be the ideal time for this 1100 to be exact.

Sunday 1100 we all met at the Cave (Caroline, Liz, Ali, Colin, Judith, Justine, Michelle, Josh & I) ready to start the separation process. This involved draining the grape juice from one tank into another (by bucket), after we had transferred approximately 280ltrs of liquid from the first tank all that was left was the remaining grapes. These grapes still had potential to produce more juice so they needed to be taken out of the tank & be pressed, this meant that someone would have to get in to the tank and bucket the remaining contents out. I was that volunteer, so off with the shoes & socks, down to my speedo's and in I got. What a sensation paddling in soggy grapes being overwhelmed by the pungent smell they were giving off. It was great.

Once the remaining contents of the tank had been transferred to smaller containers and put into a van, we all went a few kilometres to where the press was situated. We all then took it in turns to press the juice from the grapes, which resulted in a further 100ltrs of juice that could be added to the 280ltrs back at the Cave. The following day we did exactly that, so there is now nearly 400ltrs of premium Chateau Mal Au Dos vintage 2008 maturing in a secrete location somewhere in Roujan.

Despite not being able to pick any grapes on this visit to Roujan we have had a fantastic time and feel very honoured to be part of the team that helped produced the very first batch of wine from Chateau Mal Au Dos. And who knows what other years will bring..

A very, very honoured & overwhelmed

Doug & Caroline.

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This morning was sparklingly bright and rather autumnal. Perfect for going to the market in Clermont L'Herault.

Having dug over a chunk of the potager yesterday, we're ready for winter vegetable plants, so we bought cabbages, cauliflower, brussels sprout and beetroot.

It's a wonderful market, full of absolute tat and fabulous food. We settled on a spit-roasted pork joint and some roast spuds for a picnic on our way home.

On the way back to Roujan we stopped off at Villeneuvette and had our picnic under a magnificent avenue of plane trees and a brilliant blue sky. Villeneuvette is a very pretty village of workers' cottages which were part of a factory producing fine cloth from the 1600s until it finally closed in 1954. Here are some photos taken this morning.

 Loosely translated - Well brought up dog, but be wary just the same.

Said vegetables are now planted at Chateau Mal Au Dos , but we have a problem with the well & I can't fix it, so we're back to schlepping water. Drat.

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We just had the lovely Rosemary Neave from Women Travel New Zealand & the World to stay. She wrote incredibly kind things about us on her blog . Here she is on Mother Superior's balcony chatting with Ali across the void.

Meanwhile we've had two couples staying, both called Kay & Ian. What's the odds for that? Here they are at breakfast.

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I've just come back from collecting the morning bread, cakes and fruit. Here's the list:

One watermelon, one yellow melon, one green melon, 5 apples,  5 slices of ham from the bone, 5 croissant nature, 4 croissant beurre, 3 croissant abricot, 3 noix de pecan, 2 pain au raisin, 2 pain au chocolat, 1 pain au lin, 1 pain complet & 1 festivale brune.

I already had peaches, oranges, bananas, nectarines, salami and cheeses. The hens have laid enough eggs for me to offer all 9 guests boiled eggs too this morning. It's now 8am and the table is complete. I just have to wait for guests to come down to breakfast.

It's jumper time at 6.30 when I trot off to the village. There's suddenly an autumnal nip in the air. Worry not, if you're still to have your hols here, it warms up wonderfully during the day, but pack a jumper eh? We close in a couple of weeks' time and I love the change to autumn. After the languid summer heat which is just ennervating, I adore the re-found energy that comes with cooler days.

And I'm longing to get going on the vineyards, to help them recover from their hideous hail-bashing of last week. If you're interested in seeing how the wine is going you'll need to nip over to our sister site at Chateau Mal Au Dos . I've copied all the wine-related entries over there and will be continuing the wine story there.

Meanwhile I think I hear footsteps, so I'm off to boil eggs - for exactly 3 minutes 20 seconds. With no food-miles to count, our hens eggs are nest-fresh and take less time to cook to perfection.

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Today's my birthday and my brother's bought me a special rake for whacking the grapes down into the juice. Sometimes the best present is the thing you need right now. The vat of grapes is singing. The yeast is bubbling away and it sounds like a massive bowl of Rice Crispies.

Ten of us went to Meze for a lunch of heaps of shellfish. We had to wait long enough for the restaurant to go fishing before we eventually ate, but it was good, and thankfully no-one was in a hurry.

All in all it's been one of those times when our friends have absolutely come up trumps. Thank you so much Teddy, Nicola, Erzsi, Kathy, Richard, Clare, Rachel, Alex M, Alex C, Greg, Kate, Jenny, Jackie, Josh, Freddie, Michelle, Henny, Simon, Hans and Christa. You are complete stars. And to all the other people who were lined up to help with the harvest, can we please book you for next year?

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As soon as we saw the damage and realised we had just a few grapes we could rescue if we did it immediately, we started ringing round our team. Within one hour of seeing the damage we had thirteen pals and all the equipment in the vineyard. What fantastic friends. We hit the remaining grapes like demons possessed in that thundery heat that threatens another storm. To the chorus of endless yells of 'BUCKET' meaning 'this ones full and I need another' - a signal for the porters to hurry over bringing empty buckets and lugging off the full ones, we cleared the surviving grapes in less than three hours.

As you can see, the grapes are not pretty. The hail has smashed them open, but they might just be usable if we're quick.

There's so little that we have decided to use them to make some wine for ourselves, so we take them to our new cuves at my brother, Justin's, house.

The grapes come up to the 750 litre mark on the cuve, but that includes stalks and skins so we'll have precious little when all that gets taken off eventually.

As if the day hasn't already been difficult enough, the cuve containing the grapes decides to lurch into a jaunty angle thanks to a rather-too-soft floor. There's only one thing for it, we have to move all of the grapes into the second tank. And there's only one way to do it - by getting into the tank with the grapes.

Here's Michelle, my sister-in-law, getting down and dirty with the grapes.

Now, you have to understand that we are wine-making virgins and all this has come upon us with a rush. So a hurried phone call to the charming and helpful winemaker, Simon Coulshaw , gave us these instructions.

And those led to a rather inexpert approach to measuring out the stabiliser and yeast.

After the addition of the stabiliser and yeast we got our mate Kate to say a few fine words to encourage the mass to turn to ruby nectar.

Now it's up to Bacchus and a fair wind.

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This is the scene that greeted us this morning. We have almost nothing left. Last night we had the most enormous rain and hailstorm. We spent the morning in the roof repairing a leak, then went to the cave co-operative to see if they had a date for the harvest. 'Have you looked at your vines yet? We have an emergency and if you have more than 20% hail damage you can harvest all your grapes now, whatever variety' We shot up to the vineyards and were greeted by scenes of devastation. A tornado had passed and ripped off every bunch of grapes and the plum-sized hailstones had shredded of every bit of leaf on 95% of the vines. In the picture above you can see one bunch of grapes caught in the branches of the vine. All the others have been ripped off and carried off by the deluge to God knows where. There's no sign of them here.

Not a pretty sight eh? There is barely a leaf left on any of the vines. The only vines with any grapes left on are the Syrah and Cinsault in the amphitheatre. All the vines on the upper slopes are completely naked.

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Today we took a sample of 200 of each variety of grapes, picked at random, down to the cave co-operative to be tested. We stood in line with all the other vigneron waiting for Mme La Cave to squish our grapes and tell us the potential alcohol. When they have gathered all the results they can then declare when we can harvest our grapes and deliver them off to the cave.

Our grapes all came out higher than anyone else's with our Syrah having a potential alcohol of 15.4%. That's enormous and all the other wine-growers had between 10.5% and 12.5%. Ours are this high because we have a relatively low yield, but of high quality thanks to very heavy pruning in the winter. Now we have to wait until the average is high enough, then we get the go ahead. We have all our buddies lined up to go at the drop of a hat and the trailer is loaded with dozens of buckets, crates, secateurs, rubber gloves and sun tan lotion.

Now we just need a date. It's all very exciting. This is how the vines look today. 

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Former guest Vonda had this on her blog and I thought it would be fun to do.

Here is what you do:

1. As a comment on this blog, leave one memory that you had here at Le Couvent. It doesn't matter if you were here a day, an hour , or a month, anything you remember.
2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's fun to see the responses. If you leave a memory about Le Couvent, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.

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