Le Couvent Diary

The sun's shining, the wind's dropped, my sickly hens are looking better, we're off to prune vines this afternoon and all's well.

Over breakfast this morning Ali and I were discussing the terrible exchange rates and decided we'd do our bit for your holiday plans by reducing the room prices for next year.

So for 2009, a double room is now reduced to 90 euros per night and a single room 80 euros per night. Of course this includes a luscious breakfast, a bottle of delicious Le Couvent wine, free wireless internet, use of the bikes, freedom to swim, read or sleep all day long, aperitifs and assorted other treats as they come to mind.

Have a very merry Christmas and a healthy, happy 2009.

Lizzie & Ali xx 

In an idle moment yesterday I was meandering through Youtube videos and came across this one. The chap's name is Michael Schulte. I like it a lot. Click on the big arrow, sit back with a coffee and think happy thoughts.

Ali and I wish you a very Happy Christmas and a peaceful, healthy and happy 2009. We hope to see lots of you next summer.

Bisous à tous de Lizzie et Ali du Couvent, Roujan.

Six hens weren't enough to keep up with demand for luscious boiled eggs for all the guests this summer, so we bought five more today. The new girls are Light Sussex and should lay creamy pale eggs to go alongside the brown ones our older biddies produce.

Although they are just babes at 5 months old, they will look like this in a few weeks' time, but for the moment they look like this:

Meanwhile, the old girls are looking mean and moody, ready to jump the new ones when they're released. We currently have the babes in their own quarters until they've settled in.

It'll be a week at least, by which time the old ones will have forgotten the new ones are new. This morning one of the white ones rewarded us with an egg. Just 16 hours after moving in. I guess that means she's happy enough.

I'm thinking of naming them after small Sussex villages. So we'll have Firle, Glynde, Ripe, Chiddingly & Cowbeech. God knows which will be which - there's not much difference between them yet.

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?

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.