pergolas over the terrace and the wrought iron gates. Of course the chapel right across the street from their place is always a photo op.
We then drove to the next village, Ste. Cecile les Vignes, for their market. They had a few unique displays like the guy with 3 miniature animals in a box - a goat, a pig and a Chihuahua. What he was doing with them, I have no idea.
There was also an amazing display of cheese and regional dried sausages. This, from our experience, is one of those stalls that sucks in the tourist every time and sticks it to them, because their product is very expensive – however, also very good.
Peter & Margaret are of course getting to know lots of people, French and English, in the area. So on our wanderings through the market, we ran into numerous acquaintances and then we came upon a table of aging Brits at 11:00 in the morning who were already well into their first bottle of wine. We met them all.
Our next destination was the new cave in Rasteau. More great wines tasted and more great wines purchased. I’m creating quite a cellar! From here we drove across the base of the Dentelles to Beaumes de Venise, a village renowned for their sweet dessert Muscat wines. We were here, however, for the new restaurant located in the Cave de Beaumes de Venise. Although relatively new, it’s already been getting a lot of attention from the likes of Michelin and others.
The decor was quite nouveau for France and we found things like the floors that looked like hardwood, but were actually tile and the variety of serving dishes that were unique in shape and size, including the slate dishes, most appealing. The meal was three courses for 28 Euros and we sampled pretty much everything on the menu. They started us off with amuse bouches that were foie gras lollipops rolled in crushed pumpkin seeds. Appetizers were tomato slices with rockette in balsamic sauce or flowers of zucchini stuffed with a chicken mousse with lemon and ginger. Main courses were dourade (fish) with figs or steak with a vegetable gratin. Dessert, which came with glasses of Muscat de Beaumes de Venise, was fig and pear sorbet or a Beaumes de Venise cold mousse with almond tuilleres. Among the four of us, we ordered every item described above, which was good for comparison purposes. The entire meal was fabulous! Have I mentioned that eating in France is a highlight for us?
On Sunday morning, we woke up to a moderately nicer day than yesterday. Although the Mistral was still at it, the sun was trying to shine and this afforded us a really nice view of Cavillargues, through the pines.
This was the day set for the Vide Grenier in St. Pons la Calm, the village next to us. This is an annual event for villages in France and it translates into a giant garage sale. Literally, it is a “clean out the attic” sale, but in the end it’s the same kind of junk at any Canadian garage sale, except this one’s for the entire town, each resident being allotted a tiny spot in the market square. They added one more people draw to the day, by bringing in a few vintage cars, but most people were here for the junk.
Leaving the Vide Grenier, having made NO purchases, we set out with a detailed local map in hand, to discover the mas’ of the area. Now of course, we are staying in a mas – the Mas de Viales - historic enough to be included on the map, so it was interesting to see how the various mas in the area compared. The historic mas is a Provencal farm-house, usually housing multiple generations of a family and their animals. The ones that make it to the map here are very old – ours dates back 400 years. Most are quite rambling and difficult to photograph in their entirety, but we did find 13 in our area and got a few good images, shown here.
Our search took us through a couple of very old, picturesque villages on the opposite side of the valley from us. In some, the road through the town is barely wide enough for our car, much less trucks, or heaven forbid, oncoming traffic. You learn very quickly in this area to always be aware of pull off spots, or places you can turn into if you meet oncoming traffic. One of prettiest spots we went through today was Fontareche.
For dinner on Sunday evening, we finally made reservations at the restaurant 100 metres down the road from us, Chez Ma Mere. Perched on the side of the hill, it has a difficult access, which apparently doesn’t stop people from going. But in this area, it is the ONLY restaurant and as we discovered today, 100’s of villas and summer homes are tucked away in the hills here, so there is clearly a market for a restaurant.
The menu here was quite imaginative and not nearly as limited as we might have thought in this remote location. For o’er d’oeuvres we chose St. Nicolas salad for Dawn – not really sure what she ate and Bill had a salad with chicken giblets, lardons and foie gras. We ordered the mayor’s white wine and it was very good. For main course Dawn had gambas (shrimp) done in whisky and Bill had frog’s legs – a good dozen of them. Dessert was crème brulee for Bill – bien sur – and pear tarte for Dawn. We were suitably impressed with the cuisine so made reservations for next Friday.
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