It's Quiet Here

I came back to Chateau Brandeau as my last farm for my last days in France. Elly isn't here. Neither is Phil or Eddie of Ana, my new friends since I've arrived. In fact, it's a little too quiet, and as always there is lots of time in the vines...which means lots of time for contemplation. But contemplation makes it sound serene, meditative even. Sometimes it's that, but the most honest description would be a daily a panic attack.

I came to France for a lot of reasons, but if I were going to psycho-analyze myself, I'd say the main reason was that I still felt par-baked after my return from Hawaii. Like whatever had been forming there was close to done, but not quite there. I tried to come back to California and put it all together again last winter, but nothing was quite forming up inside of me and I had to admit that it just wasn't time yet. So I came to France for another adventure, thinking that this time I'd be ready to go back when it was all over. Only now I feel even less confident than before....I'm returning with an even skimpier game plan.

I wish that I could wrap it all up in a neat and tidy arc, or end with some witty and clever thought, but I can't. All I know is that today I leave for Paris for three days and then I fly to New York. After that I have no schedule, no job, no house and no fucking clue.

Saint-Emilion

Because we simply had not yet exhausted our thirst for wine yet, Jess, Kate and I decided to do a little more wine adventuring around Bordeaux. On the way to their friends' wedding we took leisurely drive through the country and stopped at a tasting room in Graves on the way. We learned a little bit about the white wines from Aquitane and gawked at the hugest bottle of wine I've ever seen. I have no idea how huge it was, but it must have been at least twice the size of a magnum. I can't believe I haven't seen one in the states--it was totally supersized.

The next day I picked up the girls again after a long night of French-style partying (a five hour dinner followed by dancing til 6 am) and we took an hour's drive to the picturesque town of Saint-Emilion. The city evolved from the lonley hermitage of a monk, to a community of small religious community and lately to one of the most expensive wine regions in France. The grand cru vineyards that surround the stone village are perfectly manicured and pristine. We started with a tour of the old hermitage and moved on to the catacombs and finally the underground cathedral. According to our guide, the massive underground chapel was originally a natural cave, but thanks to the thousands of years of use as a stone quarry for the village, the space eventually became so vast that it was appropriated for religious use. It was might impressive. Especially when you returned above ground to see that sitting right on top of this massive hole in the ground is an equally massive bell tower made from a monolith...that's right, a steeple made from one giant hunk of stone, sitting on top of a huge underground dome. I tried not to think about it too hard, otherwise I might have started hyperventillating about the amount of time I had spent down there.

The town itself is quite charming, but definitely means business. All you can find are high end wine shops and fancy restaurants. So we went with the flow and took a self-guided tour of some extensive wine cellars and ducked into a couple of shops to taste the fancy wine.




For dinner we found a little restaurant overlooking the city and had some delicious tartine (the French version of bruschetta).

The next morning the ladies flew back to NYC and I returned to work in the vines at Brandeau. The countdown for my return to the States has begun...

An Amazing Weekend in Bordeaux

Darling sister and sister-in-law came to France last week for a wedding and stayed for a bit in Bordeaux, which gave me the perfect excuse to spend some time in the beautiful old city. It's truly gorgeous, with little narrow alleyways, a lovely old cathedrals and tons and tons of little squares, each of them with their own unique vibe...a brand new universe every few blocks.

Kate & Jess arrived just in time for the Fete le Vin on the riverfront, a huge celebration of Bordelaise wines. We walked along the water, tasted as much of the many varieties as we could handle in the heat and eventually ended up cooling off a very smart water feature in the Place de la Bourse called the miroir d’eau. It is a black granite pool with about 1/2 inch of water, making it the perfect spot to cool your toes on a hot summer day. When we were just about dying of the heat and red wine, we came upon the square just teeming with kids and parents having the greatest time in the shallowest pool I have ever seen. There were toddlers splashing, little kids chasing each other and one enthusiastic young boy on a scooter cutting a truly narley wake in the pool. Then, all of the sudden, the water drained out and the entire pool turned into a mist machine. Collectively the entire square breathed a little sigh of relief and went quiet, suddenly shrouded, walking slowly and mysteriously across the square.

Other than the wine festival, there was a lot of good food to be had. Jess and I went a little nutty in a chocolate shop and ordered every flavor of macaroon our hearts desired...rose, lavender, noisette, pistachio. The pastries reminded me of miniature candy hamburgers, but much more delicious. Kate promptly squished them to smithereens in her bag, but the crumbs were still delicate and delicious.

I also got to try my first plate of escargot. The little buggers really appealed to my well-known obsession with circles. They were served in a round ceramic dish with six tiny circular indents that perfectly fit the shells. The special utensil for grabbing the little buggers was a circular tong to hold the shell while digging out the delectible morsel inside. Mine were steamed and then topped with butter and pesto...similar in texture to a perfectly cooked mussel; I can see why they're such a delicacy here. I don't think I will ever be able to look at those garden pests again without briefly entertaining culinary daydreams. Just as we were finishing our dinner that evening, we heard some commotion on the street and knew that the fireworks were beginning for the festival. As were wandered down the plaza, we could hear the big, full orchestra music and see the pink flashes in the sky.

The next day all three of us were feeling wilted from the heat and decided to take a little road trip to the Atlantic coast to cool off. We'd heard tales of La Dune du Pila, a huge sand dune a hour away, the largest in France. Supposedly the thing just kept growing and growing over the years, swallowing trees even hotels. Finally someone put a stop to the horror movie madness and they planted a whole forest of pine trees to tame the monstrous sand dune. Now its a tourist attraction with a HUGE set of stairs to the top...you know, accessible. So we climbed and climbed to the top and when we finally arrived we saw that the dune just kept going and going off into the distance. It was like being on the set of Laurence of Arabia. And the view of the calm little harbour below was fantastic and extremely enticing.



After stumbling to the bottom for a quick swim and then heroically climbing back up to the top in the mid-day heat, we were ready to reward ourselves with some sea-side snacking. For a while we drove around the tiny villages, looking in vain for a simple meal of ocean critters, and we finally happened upon the haven that is Papa's Restaurant. In the town of Arcachon was a Basque bistro serving up both fresh oysters and plates of moule-frites. We gladly partook of both and had the pleasure of being served by the fat, red-cheeked Papa himself. In between singing, shouting at his equally jolly wife and entertaining his five-year-old grandson with the radio on his Gold Wing, Papa kept us happy with bubbly drinks and plates of tasty mollusks. We arrived back in Bordeaux that evening in time for an ice cream cone and another round of festival fireworks.

P.S. This has absolutely nothing to do with the narrative, but I loved this photo and had to share it. Kate bought yogurt for a car snack, but there were no spoons in sight. So we improvised and made our own go-gurts. Totally clever until she started slurping the last dregs...and then giggling...and then almost choking and wrecking the car. Brilliant.

Leaving Bordeaux

Last week we left Chateau Brandeau...so sad! In looking through my previous blog posts of the place, I realized that I had mentioned very little about the actual work and learning that happened there. I suppose I was simply too tired to post after a day in fields. Here, I will make up for that omission and tell you a bit about what we were doing during the day. We came to the vineyard during the time when the grapes were just beginning to fruit and set on the vines. This is the time to trim and tie the vines and get rid of the weeds of the excess weeds. At non-organic vineyards weed control is pretty easy--you just spray the base of the vines with Round-Up and call it a day. At organic vineyards, you have to get old-school about it. What this means is a process called décavaillonage: basically this means plowing in between the vines and then hoeing what is missed by the plow. It takes a really long time.

Ana is the hero of this story. God bless her, she just got her drivers' license two months ago, but she manned that tractor for a solid two weeks and took to it like a duck to water. I started calling her the Flash since she would speed through the vineyard in 6th gear. Actually, that's a bit of misnomer...6th gear is still only like 15 miles/hour. I just wanted to give a cool nickname. She was a good sport about it. She did really own that rusting beast of a tractor though.

Eddie and Phil manned the plows, which take a whole lot of caressing and cajoling so that the vines aren't either a) missed by a mile, which means lots of back-breaking hoeing, or b) run over and pulled clean out of the ground. Its intensive, but Eddie, of course, managed to make it chic.

Below is a little video of the plow at work. It gives you an idea of exactly how low tech the operation is.

Elly and I were super enthused, as usual, to be working the plow. Mostly we were just ecstatic to have a break from hoeing and pruning. When we weren't doing the décavaillonage, we were doing épamprage. Here, the French word makes it sound far more glamorous than it actually was. Epamprage is pruning away all of the new shoots from the vine. This allows the vine to give all of its energy to the main, fruit producing branches. Basically, this involves bending over for seven hours a day, while moving very slowly down the row. But, let me tell you, the backs of my thighs are rock solid these days. No pain, no gain.

I also gotta give some serious props to our hosts, Fearn and Andrea. They consistently provided the most wonderful, huge meals for us while we were there. Delicious soups, cheeses, bread (always) wine, fresh fruit and yummy salads every day for lunch and dinner. I didn't think I could eat that much on a daily basis, but I did and was grateful for the abundance. When it wasn't raining buckets, we sat outside and looked at the sheep and pretty fields of vines.

Here is one of the few photos I have of myself (thank you Anna), just because I so rarely include them here.

On a minor foodie side-note, Elly and Ana got totally into cake baking while we were there. It all started with a totally posh cake book from the grocery store and evolved into two masterpieces. I gotta share them here since they were so spectacular. The one above is a lemon cake with candied rose petals and the one below is a ridiculously rich chocolate cake with hand-made truffles. I don't know how either of them had the energy to bake for three hours after spending all that time in the vines, but they did and we were all blown away.

Our last night at Chateau Brandeau was a regular fest, Phil made a traditional English roast with hand-made gravy and yummy roasted vegetables and Fearn broke out some great bottles from his cellar so we could taste the differences that come out in the aging process. And we finished it all with the rose petal cake. A beautiful vineyard, beautiful new friends and a beautiful farewell.

L'Omlette Geante (a.k.a. the giant omlette)

There are certain experiences that you cannot have without the following combination: lots of time, little inhibition and loads of wine. Case in point, yesterday my fellow WWOOFers and I went in search of a giant omelette in Libourne. We saw a sign a couple weeks back promising an omelette with 3011 eggs. This simple quest blossomed into a grand adventure. Let's start at the beginning.

Any great day must begin with a great outfit. Eddy led the way with his fabulous red feathered cap and Elly joined in with an amazing fur one that necessitated a photo shoot for posterity. Somehow she managed look like an old Russian woman, a feat that I'm still not sure how she pulled off. It really did set the tone for the day.

Our first stop was the beautiful, beautiful town of Saint Emilion. I'd heard a lot about how perfect and lovely it was, but it didn't really register until we arrived. It has lovely cobbled streets, a great view of the surrounding valley and lots of charming shops. It also happens to be in a grand cru appellation, which means that the wine from there is extraordinarily expensive ($500 a bottle and up), so the townsfolk have got some bucks to beautify the place. We stopped in to take a peek and have a coffee on our way to the omelette geante.

We drove on to Libourne and tried to find the omelette, which turned out to be much more challenging than we had thought. We assumed that such an amazing culinary feat would be prominently displayed in the center of town, the pride of Libourne. Not so. First we were guided to a dog show in a park, then to a track meet/swap meet in the stadium, finally to a botanical garden, all to no avail. No one seemed to know where the omelette was located. Eventually we followed the trail of some small, out of date signs found ourselves at what was basically the coolest block party ever. Situated in a courtyard for some low-income apartment buildings was the promised omlette. There was an emcee doing karaoke, a huge rummage sale, cheap booze, face painting and lots of colorful area residents. My favorite was a couple of French greasers in leather jackets; I'd swear that the fella was Hugh Jackman's twin. Clearly, we were the only folks in attendance who did not live in that neighborhood.


We did our part to fit in and contribute to the local economy by purchasing bottle after bottle of the 2 euro wine, pilfering through the rummage sale and buying some real gems (a gold sequin purse, a spindle, leather pants, a killer nautical sweater, etc.), and dancing with some men in berets. All in all, I think we blended seamlessly into the crowd.


Let me tell you about the star attraction: 3011 eggs, five men stirring, countless old ladies dicing, slicing and serving, and hundreds of full, happy people. It was an overwhelmingly successful production. The emcee serenaded the men circling the omelette pan, an old dude stoked the fire with old grape vines. It was magic.






Here I will introduce you to Ana. She's a fellow WWOOFer from Chateau Brandeau and seriously might be one of the more amusingly photogenic people I've ever known. Let's just scroll through this little collection for a moment...




And that pictorially sums up how the omelette festival progressed.

And this was the result...we went to Bordeaux, rode a carousel, danced in the street at a cafe, and I fell asleep on the sidewalk from too much wine.

And apparently this is the face that I make after too much wine...

Fromagerie Tours

I may not have made this particularly clear until now, but the entire point of my travels in France is to learn the art of cheese making. While I was in Hawaii I fell in love with goats. There was a herd at my farm on the Big Island and my host taught me how to make basic fresh milk cheeses from the excess of our milkings each day. Perhaps it is my Aries nature, perhaps it's just their charming personalities, I'm not sure, but there is definitely something about goats that appeals to me. After Elly giggled through watching me milk one morning, we began to hatch a plan: go to the land of good cheese, stay on some farms and learn the art of making delicious French cheeses.

So now here I am in France for the summer. Our first farm happened to be on a winery (mostly because it came so highly recommended), but Elly and I told our hosts at Chateau Brandeau about our intentions for the trip, and they kindly set up some tours of local fromageries for us during our stay in Bordeaux. Last Sunday we went to the farm of their friend Regine. She has a small herd (70 goats) and handmakes her own cheese each day, mainly a fresh milk cheese in the Saint Marcellin style. Each day she and her husband milk the animals in the morning and then take them out to pasture for a few hours in the afternoon. Goats are very smart and easily trainable, so much so that they will stay within calling distance of their herder, not straying off and needing a fence or herding dogs to keep them close. Regine was trodging through the rain, leading her herd back into the barn when we arrived, and keeping dry under the most enormous umbrella I've ever seen. She said that she had sat under that huge umbrella the past few hours, calling to the goats every now and again to stay close, and reading a book in the soggy pasture.

Regine was also kind enough to show us her fromagerie (cheese making room) right off the kitchen in her chateau. We donned little disposable booties over our shoes, and, in half-French/half-English, she explained how she saves a little bit of the milk from the day before to start her culture, then forms the solidified curds into molds for the cheese. Most of her product is sold fresh the next day, but some she leaves to age in the cooler, maturing into a nutty, slightly firm disc of deliciousness after a month or so. In her cozy kitchen she let us sample different varieties, encouraging us to eat it with honey, sugar or jam. Some she had just made the day before and it was wonderfully creamy, with a little herby-freshness at the end.

The second fromagerie we visited was a less down-home and more modern. Fromagerie Van der Horst is a family operation which specializes in gouda. The patriarch is a Dutch immigrant who came to France in 1951 and started the business. He has passed down his recipes to his sons, who took over the operation in 1975. Unlike Regine, it is a cow's milk fromagerie and the Jersey girls were housed in a barn right next door to the tasting room.

Elly and showed up in the morning for our tour and were greeted by a very nice lady with absolutely no English. We know enough to get by in most situations, but this lady had us stumped. I thought that she was asking us "Ou est-que vous livre?" which in my head sounded something like "Where is your book?" This did not strike me as a question at all relevant to the situation, and Elly decided to reply that we were from Chateau Brandeau. This did the trick and we were introduced to a lady whose name sounds a whole lot like "livre." (Upon returning to Chateau Brandeau we asked Fearn and Andrea how to say this lady's name, but, though they both had met her several times, neither of them could pronounce it either; this made me feel like slightly less of an idiot.)

So "Livre" gave us some sanitary white clogs and took us into the big, state-of-the-art cheese making room to show us the ropes. She had taken milk from that morning (700 litres!), put it into a huge stainless steel vat and added a culture that made the milk separate into curds and whey. After a whole lot of mixing, the curds started to form up and she carefully and slowly drained and separated the solids from the vat. The next step was to transfer the curds into molds and press even more liquid out with a giant lever. Then the wheels were dipped into a brine bath to form the rind and allowed to age.

The cheese cave was a sight to behold: rows and rows of gouda wheels drying and aging to perfection. They were all sitting there, molding on the outside, but turning delicious and creamy on the inside. It was all dark and cool and peaceful and smelled heavenly. It was like a cheese sanctuary with mediating gouda wheels. Most of the cheese is sold after 3 weeks, but there are some varieties that are allowed to age for 3 or 6 months. The six month cheese was pure nirvana, nutty and full.

Elly and I bought a sampler platter of our favorites to take back to lunch at Chateau Brandeau and gave ourselves a self-guided tour of the barn. The baby cow were so friendly; one kept trying to lick my face like a puppy. Another took a shine to Elly and was licking and sniffing her jeans. A third was mysteriously attracted to my leather handbag and would have eaten it if I hadn't ran away. This gave me a little pang of guilt...like somehow my fashion choice was encouraging cannibalism. Poor little fella didn't know that the attraction was simply a misplaced camaraderie.

Chateau Brandeau

Elly and I arrived to our first farm last week. Chateau Brandeau came on recommendation from a friend as a stellar WWOOFing spot. We packed up our things and boarded an eight hour train across the soggy, green countryside. Surprisingly, there were no (major) hiccups in the journey and we arrived right on time and completely in tact. We did have an amusing moment when we realized that we'd forgotten our wine opener and Elly had to open the cork with a pair of small scissors and a knitting needle. How, you may ask? Sheer, willful persistence (and a tolerance for cork in your glass).

I was starting to think that traveling with Elly necessitated some sort of catastrophe, or at least a delay, but I'm crossing my fingers that the curse is now broken and it's all smooth sailing from here on out. Here's a recap of all the many travel disasters which Elly has been associated with in the past year.

1. Ticket counter riot in at the San Francisco airport on her way out to Hawaii last fall
2. Three days of waiting around the Paris airport last winter due to a snowstorm
3. Cancelled trip to Argentina due to an earthquake (Elly's boyfriend)
4. Week delay to France because of an Icelandic volcano (me)

All of these interrupted journeys either were Elly herself traveling, or someone going to or coming from visiting Elly. After the first couple catastrophies, it began to seem less and less like a series of coincidences and more and more like voodoo. So either the hex is lifted or it doesn't apply to rail transit, because we arrived in a little town just outside of Bordeaux at about 8PM, greeted by a disheveled and friendly British farmer named Fearn. He drove us back to his vineyard, sat us down by a cozy fire and served a wonderfully toasty and generous dinner.

Fearn and Andrea took over the Chateau from Fearn's mother about 25 years ago and are pros at making tasty and traditional Bordeaux wine. It's a small, organic operation and Fearn and Andrea do everything on the farm themselves, with a little help from volunteer works when needed. The patches of vines stretch out in all directions surrounding the chateau, dotted here and there with sheep pastures, a chicken coop, a garden.

There are three other WWOOFers here, all of whom are pretty great. But let me tell your first about the most colorful: Eddy. When we arrived the first evening, there was he was in his white angora sweater and faux fur coat, handing me a glass of wine and offering me a seat by the fire. That about sums up this wonderful man: flaming, hospitable, fabulous. He's a Maori fella from New Zealand and Australia who came here to learn all about viticulture and winemaking so that he can have his own little vineyard here in France one day. He told me his dream the first night: that one day Beyonce and Jay Z will happen upon his gorgeous French tasting room, fall in love with it and finance his own personal paradise. I encouraged him to write them a letter and promised to help direct the accompanying music video to help woo them to the project.

More about Anna, the tractor-driving blonde Spaniard and Phil the tender-hearted bloke from Liverpool to follow...with pictures!