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.

 

 

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!

 

If you'd like to know how the wine's progressing click the picture below>>>>

 

 

I sit here on another sunny morning that portends a perfect day for the guests who love to read and snooze by the pool. We've been full-on with guests, leaving no time for blogging, so I'm playing catch-up.

Our main news is that we've decided to move our wine-making mini-operation to Le Couvent, so we've been clearing out the cave and buying new tanks in preparation. It'll mean that we can keep a closer watch on our wines, and guests will be able to learn a bit about the process, and to taste the wine in all its stages.

Last year's wine is just about ready for bottling and we're hoping to get that completed in the next three weeks before this year's harvest. If you're coming to stay at Le Couvent towards the end of August, or the beginning of September, it's highly likely that you'll be able to witness the harvest and wine-making first-hand. Unless we have another hail storm, that is.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, guests continue to arrive from all of Europe, the Americas and Australia, except England. We have far fewer guests from England this year. We still have lots of Irish and Scottish. So what is it about the financial crisis that it appears to have affected Les Anglais more than anywhere else in the world? I don't suppose the media could have fuelled it at all - could they? Very bizarre. But for us it is all the more rewarding to have a house full of different nationalities. This morning we have Swiss, Irish, American, Scottish, Colombian - and English - around the breakfast table. It inspires wonderful conversation.

Having said that, the weather appears to have taken a turn for the worse in the UK if the flurry of late booking enquiries is anything to go by. And receiving an e-mail asking for four rooms for next week does sometimes drive me to mentally conjure a response slightly less polite than the reply that I actually send. Ho hum.

The weather's been hot and gorgeous, so the ice-cream machine's been put to good use. It's hard not to when the hens are producing such luscious eggs at the moment, thanks to leftover croissants, pains au chocolat and fruit.

This week saw the Roujan fete, with four nights of music, food, wine and dancing and a carnival procession through the streets of the village. I'll leave you with some photos of the jolly events of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This last photo's here because I love the small dog, eager for the chap in the yellow jacket to move so he can see the action. 

You're right, I've neglected the blogging. But in my defence we've been looking after lots of Belgians, Germans, Swiss, Americans, English, Irish and Scottish people over the past couple of weeks. People have arrived by car, by scooter and on foot. It is extraordinary that little old Roujan should find itself with all these amazing people passing through.

We've also managed to sneak away for one 60th birthday party, one early aperitif and one lunch. The latter was a rare treat - a trip to O Bontemps in Magalas. This is a restaurant that's notoriously difficult to get into, so when our pal Erzsi invited us to fill two seats unexpectedly available we were quick to agree. The food is delicious and the serving is pure theatre. The meat arrives on a two metre plank held aloft by two chefs who then place it across a couple of carefully placed tables, then they set to with flashing blades and speedy dexterity, delivering it in a pretty pile onto each plate. There are courses between courses and a very good wine list. It's well worth a visit, but you need to book months in advance to get an evening table.

 

 

O Bontemps, Place de l’Eglise, Magalas 34480 Tel: 04 67 36 20 82