Le Couvent Diary

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

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.

Well it had to happen. We'd been looking at the muscat grapes for ages, tasting and wondering when the Cave would put out a call for the grapes to be picked. We took a selection off to our friends, Hans & Christa, from Domaine Bourdic to test. On squishing the muscat sample and squirting some of the juice onto his shiny refractometer, Hans let out a guffaw and declared they were already too mature to make wine, unless we were prepared to wait to make a sweet 'tardive' later. We don't have enough for that, so we just picked them.

 

And the guests squashed them in buckets using their very clean feet, and squeezed the slush through an Ikea muslin curtain. Who needs a pressoir? Well we do actually, and one's on order, but it hasn't arrived yet.

 

 

 

 

 

We gave gallons away and we've all had glass after glass of the sweetest, most luscious juice imaginable. It doesn't last long so it's a good excuse to dive in head first.

With just over a fortnight to go I'm beginning to panic about our grape harvest (le vendange). Ali says it will just happen. I, as a Virgo, tend to think we need to plan it a bit. So our unsuspecting pals are about to be coerced into spending a few days bent double over our vines. I fear many of them will feign memory loss when we contact them. " Who are you? Never heard of you. Sorry. Bye"

Our wine cuves are still in northern France despite days on the phone and visiting transporters to beg them to bring them to us in time for the vendange - or indeed ever. We're having no luck with it at all. Looks like all our grapes will have to go to the cave co-operative in Roujan. We'd been very much looking forward to having a go at turning some of our Syrah into stuff that turns our tongues blue. But hey ho.

Meanwhile we are having a charmed summer on the guest front. Not only has it been our best season ever bookings-wise, we have had a stream of utter charmers. Everyone's been a complete delight. Ali and I feel very unstressed thanks to having such lovely, kind, thoughtful and easy people to stay. Thank you, each of you. We've loved having you here - and doesn't the old house smile when it's full of happy people?

We have just five weeks to go before then end of our season and as I sit here in lightweight summer clothes in brilliant sunshine it's hard to bring myself to phone the log man to ask for a delivery of 12 cubic metres of logs for the winter. But if I leave it until we actually need it he won't have any - or it'll be sopping wet and impossible to heave into neat stacks. Both Ali and I look forward to winters here. I can't say I felt the same when I lived in England. I love the crisp chill that puts a spring in your step, the bright sunny days that mean you can work outside, even if you have to wear a thick jumper. I'm looking forward to days cool enough to tidy up the garden, giving everything a haircut that will last the winter. Everything smells different as September rolls past. The air fills with the scent of smoke from wood-burners stuffed with fruit woods and oak.

But before then the air will be infused with the sharp smells of grape juice running through the streets. Small tractors will hurry along towing great trailers heaped with grapes, small blackboards on the back marked with the variety of grape. They'll deposit a trail of juice which will leave us in no doubt about how this region earns its keep. As one drives along towards Pezenas great draughts of wine-perfume blast out from the Cave Cooperative and Domaine Bourdic and the Chartreuse de Mougeres and Domaine de Montpeyrat and Chateau Fondouce - and all the other thousands of wine producers here in the Languedoc.

And the great thing is, it just happens.