from Vacquieres, France: fast running, heavy rains, slow snails and lively rosés

Sunday Morning

La Premiere Foulee des Vendanges! – reads the poster. A race to honor the wine stompers of the past.

I think the local jogging club simply wants to promote their sport, but that’s okay. Jogging is good. Grape stomping is (was) good. I am all for watching and supporting le local sport on a Sunday morning in the neighboring winemaking village of Corconne.

Only you have to feel sorry for the 47 who have chosen to participate in this thirteen kilometer mini-marathon through the vineyards. Sometime at night the rains came and their occasional pause hardly lasts the length of time needed to gulp down a café crème.

Still, it is a happening and so my host at the Chateau Lascaux, Jean-Benoit, takes time off from picking and pressing to drive me to the village where it all begins.

The race starts and ends outside the Wine Cooperative and the band is there to put some oomph into the day.








The runners are off. We follow their progress across rocky soils and paved paths. Volunteers wave road traffic to the side and provide sustenance. Are those real fruit pates I see? That would just throw me off, were I running. I’d get out of the race and concentrate on selecting the cassis over the kiwi, despite the encouraging cries of “courage!, courage!” from the sidelines.





Up village streets (they have run over to our village now!), past painted doors and Jean-Benoit’s caves…








Onto the finish line. I am a poor observer of the human condition when the rains come down. I worry about my camera. I go inside the Cooperative and sample rosés that are freely being poured. I miss who came in first or last. I taste, I purchase.





A farmer of snails has set up his table at the Cooperative as well. He sells escargots in jars or as a snack, roasted on the spot, served in a baguette. I buy those as well. Your guess as to which – the jars to take back, or roasted in a baguette?








Sunday morning in the Languedoc. No one appears to mind the pause in the vandange (grape harvest). They all have read the reports. The sun comes out tomorrow. Today’s wet skies means that you can take time off, guilt free. Sort of like a snow day back in Wisconsin.

from Vacquieres, France: dusting off past harvests

Saturday Evening

Nina, we have visitors from a winery in New Zealand and I’m going to do a tasting for them. Come join us. Jean-Benoit calls up to the office where I am, as usual, frowning over Ocean text and photos.

So this Midwesterner who looks for opportunities to taste good wines and who has, for years, loved to listen to vintners discuss the particularities of terroir is supposed to say no?

A busman’s holiday! The New Zealander tells me. We are visiting wineries and having a good time as well.

Of course, it goes without saying that if you do the first then you will have the second…

Jean-Benoit uncorks a range of wines from his cave at the Chateau de Lascaux. Six bottles – two whites, four reds.





It is a trick to taste the youngest, I think, because you have to predict how it will mature. Many of the vintners I’ve met in France sell you stuff that they want you to keep hidden until the year, say 2012. That’s fine if you have invested in a cave or at the very least, in a storage place that will let the wine relax in wine-spa-like conditions, temperature and humidity-wise. Me, I keep my wines in a dark corner of the loft. It’s the best I can do. Imperfect? Oh yes.

But it is for this reason that Jean-Benoit’s words are music to my ears. I ask him about how his wines will be X years from now.

I sell them if they taste good now. It’s no use selling them for the future. People live in apartments and cannot provide great conditions for wine. It is up to us to do that. You, the customer, buy a wine and you should expect to uncork it and love it.

Jean-Benoit uncorks, we sniff, swish, sniff again, drink.

Or at least I drink. Spitting is quite the acceptable option. But wait. A vintner uncorks his best wines. He shares his knowledge, work, effort with you in that small bit poured into your glass. The aroma and flavors are wonderful. Would your natural inclination then be to spit it out?

I have spat my way up and down wineries where the product was indifferent, or when I was driving, or when I was doing the fast and furious visiting, forgetting that there is always a slow road to take out there. But now, in the caves of Chateau Lascaux, the tastings are gifts from the person who has created the wines. They are to be savored. I savor them.

A neighbor, himself a vintner, is with us, listening attentively. When Jean-Benoit speaks, it is always with something worthwhile to say. He does not indulge in random small stuff. I may have to explain the tone and tenor of Ocean when the time comes.






I join the family again for supper. I eat all meals with them – it was not in the original plan, but I have fallen into the habit of saying yes when they ask and they always ask. I would be a fool to pass on French country cooking. I don’t know if people here even know how to do it poorly.

from Vacquieres, France: a village coop

Saturday Afternoon

The village is surrounded by vines, forests and hills. I am told it creates a perfect terroir (climate, environment, culture etc etc) for grapes. I know it creates a perfect view from the tower room of the family home.





Not all vines surrounding Vacquieres belong to the Chateau de Lascaux. Indeed, quite a number of fields (including some of Jean-Benoit’s) produce grapes for the cooperative that makes wine from the two neighboring villages (Vacquieres and Corconne), oftentimes under the label of Vin de Pays d’Oc.

I drank that on my Air France flight! -- I tell the men bringing in their grapes here. One by one, they drive up and unload the day’s clusters.





The grape separator (which I am sure has a fancier name than that) is huge. Out go the stems and leaves. At the Chateau de Lascaux, this is done by hand for the reds. You cannot let a leaf remain. The fermentation is too long – there would be taste consequences!





As the winegrowers (why is the English vocabulary so imperfectly suited for wine making terms?) dump their grapes in, information about their lot is put into the computer. It’s all extremely sophisticated. I'm impressed.

These are the wines that stores and restaurants in the States love to sell. At the cooperative, I can pick them up for somewhere between 3 and 5 Euros. Fine wines,well priced here and back home.

Jean-Benoit drives me back to the Chateau. I snap a photo of the road up ahead and the two cyclists approaching our village. Le velo? I ask, showing off my brilliant command of French. I know it is no longer "le bicyclette," like in the olden days. Here, we like to ride what we call "le ve-te-te" ("velo tout terrain"). Okay, I was close.

from Vacquieres, France: the arrival of the wine taster

Saturday Afternoon

The wine expert guy, the oenologist, comes, basket in hand. There are little bottles in it and he takes samples from different bins, marking the progress of each grape as it moves from juice to wine at the Chateau de Lascaux.





I spend so much time in the cave that I feel I need to bring in an outside opinion, just to hear another perspective, Jean-Benoit (vintner and proprietor of the Chateau) tells me.

I follow the three of them – the expert, Jean-Benoit and the apprentice (happy birthday to you, you’re just eighteen years old this week, you would not be working as a winemaker’s apprentice in the U.S., but you could be in the army, happy birthday to you) – and taste from each bin, as they do.





Take a Midwesterner who is in love with the wines and Languedoc and ask her to go easy on the tasting rounds. It’s a challenge.

I listen to the comments -- an intricate analysis of how sweet the grape is, how deep in color, how aromatic it is on this day, how over time it begins to mature into something so complex that it's hard to find words to describe what has just happened, all in the space of a few weeks.

Jean-Benoit is completely focused on his wines. His face lights up at the sight of the dark reds, his eyes smile at the vibrant notes in the roses and he looks relieved and happy with the maturation of the oldest (almost three weeks now!) of the whites.



Jean-Benoit sniffs, the oenologist writes


His apprentice fills our bottles and glasses and talks suggestively – noting things, but not asserting yet. He is there to learn, not to educate.

The wine oenologist is brutal. He scribbles things on the board, talks of temperatures and of fermentation, and appears to want to spare no blows, indifferent to a blogger’s presence.





Except there aren’t really any blows. Jean-Benoit’s wines are performing magnificently. It must be like testing the student who does his homework and is equally creative and brilliant.

Towards the end, I am tempted to lead everyone in song and dance right there in the vineyards. Shouldn’t one celebrate the success of all that fermenting grape juice? In the alternative, a nap sounds deliciously pleasant.

I sit down to review my photos instead. I have a few minutes before Jean-Benoit takes me on the next round of visits. The rain is holding back. Terrific luck. They should hire me as a rain-staller.

from Vacquieres, France: from field to bucket or bin

Saturday Morning

Quickly, before the rain comes. Jean-Benoit has the car waiting. It isn’t exactly dark still, but it feels early.

I have helped myself to a real Languedoc morning coffee – from a large cereal-size bowl, as is the custom, along with a fresh baguette (how could it be otherwise? it is part of the table setting) and I am sitting down to the computer, wondering if I could write about a harvest if I never witness a single grape being picked this entire week-end long.





But the rain stubbornly refuses to fall.

The clouds, they are like cotton balls, wavy, I have never seen them like that, Isabelle remarks as we stare at the rapidly moving formations. I can see why they’re saying that when the rains come down, they’ll drench Languedoc good and solid. The sky looks like at any minute it will swallow you, your village and your entire field of grapes. Waves of clouds, waves of vines.






Jean-Benoit and I drive out into a field, bordered by trees, where he has tentatively set a picking truck to work. Should I continue? – shouts the driver. Can't blame him. I'd be tempted to run for cover if it were me out there, in the field, truck or no truck. Still, the drops are hanging back...





Go on, go on! Jean-Benoit turns to me and says, I got up early this morning, looked outside and noticed it wasn’t raining yet. Maybe we can get something done. But I told most of the team not to come in.

The driver works his way slowly. The grapes fall in, efficiently, until the bin is full.

A machine does the job well, but only if all the grapes are mature and good and the vines aren’t too old.
And I suppose you don’t get neighbors to come in and stomp with feet to get the juice out anymore?

Jean-Benoit smiles, not knowing that indeed, I have been asked if, when in France, I will stomp up a storm, dirty feet and all. Seems like not something that the European Union would possibly tolerate, but still, we in the States expect a certain degree of quaintness from those European types, no?

These days, no feet touch the grapes, but tomorrow the two villages – ours and Corconne are having a race in the fields. It’s called La Foulée des Vendanges, after the stompers of the past.

We visit a neighbor’s field – he has taken the chance and sent out a handful of pickers. I watch, take photos, answer questions. Though explaining Ocean to pickers whose language is neither English nor French (they are Moroccan) is a challenge.











This particular vineyard is a father and son operation. The son is assisting dad. Soon, the dad will be assisting the son. It’s how it works here, I’m told.






The sky is still holding it in. Jean-Benoit and I drive toward his own fields of aging vines. I have always loved these vieille vignes best. In contrast to the tall vines that climb high and enjoy the air and the sun and the movement of a gentle wind, these older guys are bunched together in communities of clusters, all tightly held against a thick and beautifully twisted trunk.





A vintner knows what to taste for. We’ll be picking these soon.






In another field belonging to the Chateau de Lascaux, the tall Mouverdre grapes are also almost ready.



Jean-Benoit surveys the vines...

Another day and they will be perfect. Their skin holds so much flavor even now!

What a difference a day makes. To a vintner. To me, the taste is fantastic as we speak. I’d have you picking while the going’s good. That’s why I am left to take pictures and not bottle wine. I’d probably bottle it when it is still grape juice.



...he samples, eyes each bunch critically, nods his head.


fall colors are showing up around the edges


My taste buds are about to undergo some training. That’s forthcoming. Come back in a few hours. I need to pause for a dejeuner en famille. Garlic roasted meat with crusty potatoes, salad, cheese and the very excellent red Chateau de Lascaux, Noble Pierre 2002. Oh, and flan, rhubarb compote and almond cakes for dessert.

from Vacquieres, France: the equinox and the harvest

Friday Evening

The drive to the village of my hosts takes me past vineyards and mixed forests. It’s getting dark, but I can’t tell if it’s the clouds or the time of day.





It’s the same each year. On the days surrounding the equinox, the weather becomes strange. Unusual. Forceful. Jean-Benoit speaks from experience.

It did not strike me to avoid the equinox on my trip here. I aimed for the middle of the harvest. But the weather has taken charge. The gendarme warns the vintners that these are not going to be just rains. These are going to be RAINS.

On this evening of my arrival, I sit at the kitchen table with the proprietors of Chateau de Lascaux -- Jean-Benoit, Isabelle and their three teen daughters, eating the fish tarts, braised celery, salad and cheeses. Stewed peaches, vanilla ice cream and almond cookies finish off the meal.





A Chateau de Lascaux white is uncorked. I hear myself trying to explain what tort law is to the French – a challenge, even without the forty-eight hours of no sleep and travel fatigue.

All this talk of personal injury… I’m resisting the impulse to crawl under the table and check on my own foot. I had dropped a suitcase on it while trying to maneuver it down from the rack on the train. I wonder if the shoe will fit around it the next day. I wonder what Jean-Benoit will think if I traipse through the vineyards barefoot in the rain.

Mostly, I listen and eat and take in the huge Languedoc kitchen with the old fireplace, the copper pots, the wooden table.










Chateau de Lascaux is an old winery. Jean-Benoit’s father was a vintner and so was his grandfather. I ask if the daughters are interested in winemaking. Jean-Benoit shrugs and says “we’ll see.” Daughters can be so unpredictable.


The homestead and the caves are right off the main square of Vacquieres – a village of about 300, just north of Montpellier. The house literally touches the church walls. It is an old place, with winding corridors and large rooms, old stone walls and tiled roofs.





The night is perfectly quiet. Normally, white wine harvest begins at 4 am and ends by midmorning. But that’s over and done with. And the predicted rains are putting the remaining harvest on hold. The equinox rains. How will they effect my week-end here? Check in later, I’ll have an update.

from France: a croissant lasts only a minute

…But the anticipation, the image, the memory – a lifetime.

When I dream up these trips to the continent (sorry, I realize North America is also a continent, but no one refers to it as The Continent, do they?) I immediately place myself into images of desired and desirable venues. One of them will be at a wobbly round table with a café crème and a croissant.

And so when the plane approaches the coast of Brittany, I start thinking – where and when can I indulge my image?

Answer, here:



speeding to Montpellier


In travel, nothing happens as it should. I miss one train because I run to get this very croissant, pause to take a photo…



at the airport, a bakery with a reputation

… and then careen madly to the platform, only to watch my train pull away from another platform (the ticket showed voit. 3, I read voie 3, for you French speaking types who can now laugh at my expense).

So now I am speeding in a very roundabout way to Montpellier.

I had planned on spending the day in Paris, on refreshing myself before la grande visite of the week-end, but I could not sit still. For me, here, every minute counts.

Tonight I am to show up at the doorstep of Jean-Benoit and Isabelle, proprietors of the Chateau Lascaux winery. I feel like an inferior version of the journalist (plus photographer) who was invited to spend a few days at the home of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes to write up something clever about their new infant. I am in awe of winemakers and so I consider my “assignment” to be even more significant – it is to tell a story from the insides of a winery at the time of harvest. I mean, come on – Suri against the Chateau Lascaux. Of course the Chateau is much more intimidating.

For now, I am just loving the return: to speeding trains, to croissants in the morning, to my beloved Languedoc.

off to stomp and shoot

I pack my bags, make sure the batteries are charged for the camera(s), finish my classes and head for the airport.

I have been invited to spend the week-end at a vineyard in Languedoc (in southern France). They’re in the middle of the harvest and I want to see what it’s like to snip and mush grapes all day long.

Unfortunately, the weather homme says rain. Do conditions of rain dampen the spirit? Not mine.

I am exceptionally excited. A bientot!

cut and color

So, you’re going to be leaving in a day or two? Jason asks me this eyeing my hair dubiously – as in, you’re going like that?

Jason, my hair cut and color genius doesn’t like it that I do not tend to my hair. I always mean to tend to it, but the minutes pass, the helmet goes on and before you know it I have indifference hanging down to my shoulders.

You know, if it were a touch longer, I would do a razor cut. I know he doesn’t really expect me to grow it out right there on the spot, but still, I feel that in this, too, I have disappointed him.

Okay, I can do something bolder. Let’s bring it way up in the back and push it straight in the front… and he’s off, snipping away for over an hour.

I am transformed.

Initially I think – too much so. Something is not right. I realize that the haircut belongs to someone who tends to her appearance. A Parisian someone perhaps? It does not belong to a woman who chooses to go to the salon in sweat pants and a frayed t-shirt.

At home, I slip into my silk negligee and put on stilettos…

No, I actually do not do any of that. Ocean is an honest blog.

But as I pack for my trip, I put in the good shoes. Because Mary Janes, the comfy alternative, wont cut it on the other side of the ocean.

watch it, or I may change my mind about foie gras

Oh, I’ll eat foie gras. Put it in front of me and I’ll consume just about anything that is fresh and honest. And foie gras people do not lie about what their product is: goose (or duck) liver through and through.

Still, in the same way that a review of the habits and mores of the meat industry has lead me to not order a hamburger for years and years, so too, I have not gone out of my way to order foie gras in recent times. Typically, there are many other items on the menu that will do equally well.

But today, I reconsidered. Not because I was frantically trying to secure a reservation at any number of eateries in Paris that love to serve foie gras (no luck so far – the entire nation seems to be eating out at my top choices on Tuesday, September 26th). Rather, I have had it with the geese who like to come down for a spa-like visit to Madison on their way north.

Who would not like a respite in this lovely, forward-looking town? We accept all. Including these Canadian birds, who love to leave us numerous mementos of their sojourn. But today they overwhelmed the loft’s driveway. By afternoon, their poop piles almost reached my third floor windows. Almost.

Give it a break, birds. Eat a different diet. Do something to raise your levels of hygiene. I'm fussy, I know, but you guys make it so difficult to keep the soles clean.

where a brand new camera part falls in the lake and a daring rescue effort proves futile…

Splash…it is gone.

It’s been a busy time. In two days, I’m flying off to France. There’s work to be done there, but I also have a few days off in between. But now, on this side of the ocean, I am at a crunch. I have been teaching overtime to make up some class hours and I have been trying to frontload all committee work so that I do not fall behind.

So little time to blog!

This evening, I realize that I hadn’t even taken out my camera, let alone given much thought to a post for the day. And so I go out for a brief stroll by the lake – some two blocks away from where I live.

There is always something great to take photos of out by the lake. In the winter, I have been mesmerized by the ice fishermen. In times of bad weather, watching the clouds move through is as dramatic as anything on TV. And on this early fall day, I am happy as anything just to watch the fisher-people do their thing. This guy hadn’t caught anything all day. Two minutes of me watching and he lands a blue gill.






I am about to go home, but the sky is especially dramatic and so I decide to step out on the little wharf that juts out into lake Monona. I am just messing around, wondering how wide the lens span is and so I snap this…





…and I think how funny it would be if my new equipment somehow slipped from my hand and fell into the water.

No sooner do I consider how funny it would be, when the lens cap wiggles out of my fingers and plunks right into the lake.

Damn.

I call Ed who never thinks anything is a problem.
I dropped my lens cap in the lake – I tell him. I called everywhere and a replacement is not to be had!
Why would you spend money on a replacement cap if the old one is just in the lake? Did you go in and try to fish it out?
I was on the little wharf jutting out into the lake! It’s deep there!
Can’t be more than a couple of feet…
I am not going to go jump in the lake after a lens cap!
Why not? It’s probably there on the bottom, where you dropped it.
The current moved it miles away, I’m sure!
There is no current there.
There’s duck poop in the lake! It’s slimy around the shore!
You said you were on the wharf jutting into the lake…
It’s freezing in the water!
How would you know without testing it? I’ll go jump in the lake for you if you want.
I couldn’t ask you to do that… Maybe I could… Could you do that maybe?




Our best efforts… okay, Ed’s best efforts prove futile.

I knew I should have come with my underwater visor...

I assure him that I do not mind purchasing a generic replacement cap. That I’ll attend to my cameras in the future. That it was an unfortunate accident that is unlikely to happen again.

I’m a lawyer, after all. I can convince anyone of anything.

ah, madison…(and beyond)

Walk to market, note the dominance of the fall colors… take in the cultural heritage of this city (it is vast!)… Hmong farmers are an important presence… A Chinese cultural celebration occupies a corner of the Square… a Mexican-American parade of cars leads up to the Capitol…

The annual Food for Thought Festival, just down the block from the market, celebrates south-central Wisconsin’s commitment to sustainable agriculture. Regional, preferably organic…

Okay, so you need a breath of fresh air after all this – head for the countryside, it’s only a few minutes away…

And then come back to the pleasure of bistro food at Le Chardonnay, where a bottle of chardonnay will chill you out after the "stress" of a warm September Saturday in this town.

Told in photos, below.



putting out the onions



farmer's daughter




bag for the green peppers



September berries




a celebration of Chinese culture




boy dances





Mexican pride: a parade of cars




and flags





Food for Thought Festival: fried cheese



and mango lemon ice





corn field, birds and old wind pumps




hazy blue and shades of green




yes, the middle of September




chardonnay at le Chardonnay