Frosty + fog = freezing fog

Life seen through a back window. That's our life right now. Each of us bundles up and goes out every day for a walk with the dog (Tasha) but not for too much else besides groceries. Over the past few weeks, sometimes we see the sun rise, but mostly we don't (despite the fact that I get up at five a.m. every morning. Even when we see the sun rise, often a dense fog forms and blocks it out an hour or two later. Temperatures hover around the freezing point. Sometimes we get freezing fog.

My trip to La Gourmandière was therapeutic. I was worried about black ice (du verglas in French) on the roads, but I didn't notice any. The woman who was on duty at the winery wished me a happy new year and a lot more sunshine this year than we had last year. She said morale is low out here in the countryside because skies are too often gray. I've been known to say that most of the color in our environment at this time of year is in the kitchen. Today I'm making choucroute garnie, sauerkraut with beautiful smoked meats. I'll take pictures.

La Gourmandière, une cave à vins

...près du Château de Chenonceau. That puts it less than 15 miles west of Saint-Aignan. I'm going there this morning, unless I find the roads too icy for me to do the drive safely. I guess I'll wait a little while for the sun to come up and warm up the pavement. La Gourmandière is one of several big wine companies and wine shops (cave à vins) in the eastern part of what used to be the Touraine province in the Loire Valley. It's worth the drive for the variety and quality of the wines it makes and then sells at very reasonable prices La Gourmandière used to be a wine co-op with a membership of several hundred grape-growers, but it was sold to a new owner a few years ago.

La Gourmandière produces and sells "still" (not sparkling) red, rosé, and white wines as well as white and rosé sparkling wines in bottles. It also sells non-sparkling red, white, and rosé wines in bag-in-box containers as well as in bulK (en vrac). In other words, you can bring your own containers to the winery and the staff fill them for you with wine that is stored in huge stainless-steel vats. The wines I'm interested in today are red Côt (a.k.a. Malbec) and Cabernet Franc wines sold in ten-liter bag-in-box containers for two euros per liter. That would be the equivalent of thirteen 75cl bottles for about $22 U.S. Here's a link to the company's web site.

P.S. I just published this post after not being able to do so yesterday. I don't know why. It posted partially, but the result was a post that didn't allow comments and didn't display the blog's sidebar. I hope this one is working today.

Irancy landscapes

These are photos I took in late October, nearly 10 years ago, in Irancy (northern Burgundy). The grapes grown in the village's 600 acre vineyard are almost entirely Pinot Noir. Above, you can see the village's church down in a hollow. And that's Walt taking a photo and being followed around by our dog Callie the border collie.

 

Irancy "occupies an arrestingly sunken site surrounded by vineyards that rise up over its roofs, making the buildings appear as if they are going to disappear forever down some geological plughole." So says Andrew Jefford in his book The New France: A complete guide to contemporary French wine (2002, revised 2006).

Just above, a road snakes through the Irancy vineyard. And on the right is our Peugeot 206 parked in the vineyard. The 206 is 23 years old now and still runs great.

Yesterday I had a new radio installed in the car because the original radio went silent. Then I drove it over to Chenonceaux to buy some wine from a winery near there called La Gourmandière. I paid 66 euros for 30 liters (40 bottles), 10 liters each of red, rosé, and white wines. La Gourmandière used to be a cooperative with local grape-growers as members, but now it has a single owner. Here's a link to earlier posts of mine about it.

Driving like a chauffard *

It's raining again this morning, and it's supposed to rain for another 36 or even 48 hours. On devient des palmipèdes, if you know what I mean — nice weather for ducks, though we see ourselves more as swans. Bon.

It was raining yesterday when we went out for the Peugeot's first blow-out-the-carbon drive. We filled up the tank at the Intermarché gas station after pouring the recommended fuel additive in. We headed toward Montrichard, where we had a couple of errands to run. Along the way, I turned up a side road toward Pontlevoy, which is up a fairly steep hill from the river valley.

Typical winter weather, looking down the hill toward the river valley, past the trees.

that I'm afraid will fall on the electric lines in the next windstorm.

I kept the car in third gear, as Dominique the mechanic had instructed me to do. The compte-tours (tachometer) on the little Peugeot's instrument cluster shot up to 4000 RPMs at some points and stayed steadily at 3000 or even 3500 RPMs for long stretches. When the speed limit dropped from 90 kph to 50, I put the car in second gear and kept the RPMs at what I until recently would have considered totally unreasonable if not dangerous levels. Actually, the red danger zone on the compte-tours starts at 5000 RPMs.

Winter vineyard scene, between rain showers

After stops at the bank and a couple of supermarkets in Montrichard, we headed west toward the villages of Chissay, Chisseaux, and Chenonceaux. Our destination was the wine cooperative called La Gourmandière, in Francueil, across the river from the château de Chenonceau. We were revving all the way. Since it was raining, there wasn't much traffic (though it was hard to find a parking space in Montrichard).

At the co-op, we bought 30 liters of our own preferred carburant or fuel — red wine — for the holidays (Walt's birthday is tomorrow — et que la fête commence). Local Gamay, Côt, and vin de pays rouge either filled our own jugs or came home with us in bag-in-box packaging. We didn't drink any, so I could continue my Formula 1 style of driving on the way back to Saint-Aignan. Sorry, but because of the rain, I didn't take any photos.

At the supermarket in Montrichard, we bought some of the little sausages called

crépinettes for our lunch. That's caul fat (crépine) wrapped around them.

I got the impression that the car really enjoyed the workout. A couple of hours running at 3000 RPMs and up to 4500 RPMs (in bursts) should have had the desired effect. I was a little disppointed that I didn't see any smoke coming out of the tailpipe — as Dominique had led to believe me I would — but of course I was concentrating on the narrow, curvy little roads ahead of me, and not the tailpipe. And don't get me wrong — I didn't speed, I just drove the speed limit in gears lower than I'm used to shifting into.

We cooked the crépinettes for lunch with pasta and some of our own tomato sauce.

Thinking back, I used to drive that way all the time, and especially when we came to France for vacations and rented cars. Downshifting and using the car engine's braking power in curves and when coming to a stop was how we drove back then. I've always driven cars with manual transmissions (90+ per cent of the cars in France have stick shifts, not automatics) and I therefore much preferred renting vehicles in France than wimpy little automatics in the U.S.

Next week, we plan to take the autoroute over to the big town of Vierzon, 35 miles east on the Cher River, to continue the blow-out. I'll drive at the legal speed limit of 130 kph (81 mph) in fourth gear, which should get the RPMs up. I hope the car — and the employees at the contrôle technique shop — will thank me.

* A chauffard is a reckless or aggressive driver — a real menace on the roads.

Into the press

Yesterday we took a little road trip with California friends who are visiting for a few days. It was a southern route and included stops at Montrésor, La Corroirie, Montpoupon, and Chenonceau to see châteaux and other ancient monuments.

A visit to the Touraine area isn't complete without a stop at a winery, and we chose the growers' cooperative called Les Caves de la Gourmandière for ours. It's located in the village of Francueil, just across the road from the Château de Chenonceau.

 Bunches of white wine grapes being conveyed into the press at La Gourmandière

There was a lot of activity at La Gourmandière yesterday afternoon. A truck full of boxes of wine was being unloaded into the sales room by forklift. The wine box (called a "bag-in-box" or a fontaine à vin) is a small cardboard carton with a spigoted plastic bag inside, holding five or ten liters of wine. Nearby, a load of hand-harvested grapes was being put into the press to make juice that will be fermented into white wine.

 A wider view of the unloading of grapes into the press

Another reason for all the activity at La Gourmandière was that the 2012 bernache has just gone on sale. La bernache is the local name for the grape juice that is in the first stages of fermentation at harvest-time, and it's an autumn treat for grape-growers and the general public alike. This was Sauvignon Blanc juice, and it was pleasingly sweet, tart, and only mildly alcoholic (3% to 4% alcohol, the man told me — the finished wine will 12% alcohol).

Bernache is sold in recyled mineral water bottles. In other words, they fill plastic bottles from the fermentation vat and punch a hole in bottle lid so that the gases produced by the ongoing fermentation process won't make the bottle explode. We bought some (two euros for 1.25 liters) and enjoyed a glass or two before dinner back at home. Here's an article about bernache that Bertrand posted on wineterroirs.com.

That Franco-American "affair"

Last night we had the pleasure of being invited to dinner by Dean and Jean, two Americans from Seattle. You might have seen Dean's comments on this blog. He speaks and writes excellent French. The other guests were three of Dean and Jean's friends from Seattle, as well as two French friends of theirs.

For once, I'm posting other people's photos here. I don't think Dean or Jean or the other photographers will mind. Thanks to Dean for sending the photos.

Us waiting for apéritifs to be served in the living room
(there's Walt in the middle of the picture, next to Jean).

The group is spending the weekend in a gîte — a vacation rental — in a village near the town of Montrichard, 12 or 15 miles down the river from Saint-Aignan. The rental house is owned by a couple of Californians who don't live here right now, and it is managed by a French couple named Agnès and Jean-Paul. They live next door.

The apéritif treats that Jean-Paul and Agnès prepared and served

Dean and Jean contracted with the property managers to cater a dinner for nine guests, and they prepared a great meal. There were pre-dinner drinks — apéritifs — with finger foods including a purée of artichoke bottoms and a little glass of three other purées — beet with balsamic vinegar, carrot with lemon juice, and radish with curry powder. There was also a big plate of canapés made with duck rillettes. The bubbly wine was a Touraine fines bulles from the Gourmandière wine co-op near Chenoneau château, and was made into kirs with either black currant or blueberry liqueurs.

Here are the 9 of us at the table — Dean and I are at the far end.

Dinner started with a crispy pastry stuffed with goat cheese served on a bed of salad with a nasturtium flower for decoration (and the flower is edible). The main course was half a coquelet per person, roasted to perfection and served with a pureed potato and cheese specialty from the Auvergne called aligot. A coquelet is literally a "small rooster" but I think in fact it's what we call a Cornish game hen in the U.S. (and that is neither especially Cornish, it's not necessarily a hen, and it's not game but tame).

The wines were a Saumur-Champigny, a Bourgueil, and a Cheverney, all local reds and all delicious.

Here we are again, in the living room enjoying a glass
of sparkling wine and some cocktail foods.

Okay, those are the technical details. The party was lively with a lot of good conversation in French and in English. We talked about how Dean and Jean met their two French friends, one of whom lives in Paris and the other, by a complete coincidence, in Saint-Aignan. We talked about life in the the Loire Valley — the food, the sights, the climate, the people... We talked about Seattle.

I can't do it all justice here. It was extremely convivial, as they say in French. The evening was a reminder of the power of blogs. It was yet another great experience for us with people who feel like new friends — people we would never have met if it hadn't been for the Internet and blogs.

Wines and food over Bastille Day weekend

Today is Bastille Day, which is « le 14 juillet » in French. Last night we went to see the fireworks display down by the Cher River in our village. Our friends from Normandy went with us, and after the display we ran into our neighbor the mayor, and her husband. It was nice to get to introduce everybody.

You heat the puff-pastry square up in a warm oven and then
cut it into bite-size pieces to eat with your apéritif wine.

Before going out to see the fireworks, we had our Bastille Day dinner at the house. It wasn't anything extraordinary, but it was all pretty good (if I do say so myself). As an apéritif, we opened a bottle of sparkling Touraine wine with some galettes de pommes de terre, a local specialty. The galettes are a puff-pastry square made with wheat flour, butter, and pureed potatoes, and they are often served with before-dinner drinks here in Saint-Aignan.

The wine co-op in Saint-Romain-sur-Cher

For dinner, we had a tomato, basil, and mozzarella salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. These were the first ripe tomatoes from this year's garden, and the basil plants are ones Walt grew from seed. As a main course, we had a steak with a shallot and white wine sauce (very light), some green beans from the freezer (last year's crop), and some French fries. We had a cheese board and then a dessert of plum tart.

With all that, we've been drinking wines from two local « caves coopératives » — wine co-ops — over this long weekend. One co-op is the one I really like up in Saint-Romain-sur-Cher, just about 5 miles north of Saint-Aignan on the road to Blois. The name of the co-op is Les Vignerons des Coteaux Romanais.

Here's the 2007 Côt and a close-up of the label.

The wine that was the biggest hit was a 2007 Côt. Côt is a local red-wine grape. It's the same grape used to make the dark wines of Cahors in southwestern France, but down there the grape is called L'Auxerrois. The same grape is called Malbec is many parts of the world. A lot of Malbec wines are made in Argentina.

Two cases of the 2007 Côt ready for the trip back to Normandy

Our friends from Normandy were so impressed with the 2007 Côt wine that we all drove up to Saint-Romain yesterday morning. Each of them bought a case of the wine to take back home (Normandy is not a wine-producing area). The case price is 12 x 3.60 euros, or 43.20€. Not bad for a nice red that will keep for several years in the cellar.

While we were at the Saint-Romain co-op, I had my two 10-liter jugs filled with the local white Chardonnay. I bottle it myself. Twenty liters costs 26 euros, and that's the equivalent of 26 bottles. I prefer that Chardonnay to the local Sauvignon Blanc wines.

These are the other two Saint-Romain red wines
that we sampled over the weekend.

I also bought two other bottles for dinner last night. One was a 2006 Saint-Roman Cabernet Franc — Cuvée des Côtes — and the other was what the co-op calls its Cuvée Romaine — the traditional blend here in the Touraine wine-production area. That wine, a 2007, is made with a combination of Gamay, Cabernet Franc, and Côt grapes. Both the Cab. Franc and the Tradition were good, but not as good as the 2007 Côt, in our humble opinion.

Before dinner, we had a taste of a Touraine sparkling wine from the co-op over near Chenonceaux that's called La Gourmandière. I posted about that place, here, recently.

A 2006 Touraine Brut sparkling wine from La Gourmandière

I like the co-ops because they have regular business hours and you can drop in at your convenience. The Touraine wines are good and prices are reasonable. When you buy from small individual producers in Touraine, you often have to call ahead and make an appointment. It's a little more complicated, though it can be very interesting to see the old wine caves and cellars they operate out of.

A cherry cordial and some hummus

When Susan and Simon came to visit last Tuesday, they brought us several nice presents: a little cherry cake, some plants, some saffron (crocus) bulbs, and a little bottle of home-made cherry "cordial."

We enjoyed some of the cherry cordial in white or rosé wine this weekend to make a non-traditional Kir (pronounced [keer]), that ubiquitous French apéritif drink. Kirs are usually made with white wine and black-currant liqueur (crème de cassis), but can also be made with other wines (red or rosé, still or sparkling) and with other liqueurs (peach, raspberry, and so on).

Cherry cordial made with home-grown cherries from Preuilly

One thing we don't know is how Susan and Simon made the cherry cordial. I've looked through their blog and see it mentioned, but without a description of the process. Of course, cherry season is nearly over, but the cordial is something we might want to make next year or even this year with other fruit. I'm thinking we are going to have a big crop of plums...

Cherry Kirs made with white wine from La Gourmandière
near the Château de Chenonceau

That's the drink part. The food part is hummus. One of the ingredients in a traditional couscous is chickpeas, and I cooked a whole kilo of them last week because we had a kilo bag of dried chickpeas in the cellar. We have enjoyed them with the couscous, and as an ingredient in what I call "couscous soup" made from the leftovers.

Making tahini and hummus

But there were a lot of chickpeas (a.k.a. garbanzo beans) left at the end of the week. Walt decided to make hummus out of them. Hummus is a Middle-Eastern dip or spread made from pureed chickpeas with herbs, spices, and some tahini paste.

Hummus

The first thing Walt had to do was make the tahini, which is toasted sesame seeds pureed in a little oil and water. That makes a kind of nut butter. You add the tahini paste to the pureed chickpeas to make hummus. Recipes and proportions are all over the map; you just need to search for hummus on the Internet to get a lot of ideas.

How our garden grows! Great year so far, with hot weather
predicted for the rest of this week. Many tomatoes on the way.

The other good ingredient we had for hummus was a nice bunch of fresh basil that J-L and S. gave us. Garlic, green onions, a little hazelnut oil, a pinch of cayenne — hummus is a nice spread to put on toasted slices of country-style bread (pain de campagne) and enjoy with those glasses of cherry Kir on a hot afternoon.

Wines, pavés, and tiles

One of the side benefits of my trip to Chenonceau with CHM on Saturday was the chance to get to know a new place to buy wine. It's called La Gourmandière, and it's a cooperative located between Chenonceaux and Montrichard.

I'd driven by it many times over the past six years but I'd never stopped in. Now I'll go back regularly because I know they not only sell wine in bottles, but also wine in boxes (called "bag-in-boxes" or BIBs) and in bulk. In bulk means you take your own containers to the cave and they fill them for you from big vats with a nozzle that looks kind of like the one you use at a gas pump to fill up your car.

Cave in French means "wine cellar" and this one, near
the Château de Chenonceau, is called La Gourmandière.

In bulk is the least expensive way to buy wine, of course, because you don't have to pay for the BIB or for bottles, labels, capsules, and corks. You pay for the wine, and that's all. And it's basically the same wine they put in BIBs and bottles. It is often A.O.C. wine, which is the highest standard for a given region. You can bottle it yourself if you have the bottles and stoppers. We have a corking machine (manually operated) and buy corks at the local wine supply store.

La Gourmandière

The other thing that was nice about the Gourmandière wine coop was that on a Saturday morning there was a man there selling local honey and cheeses. CHM bought a little goat cheese called a pavé, a paving stone, that was made in the town of Betz-le-Château, which is near Preuilly-sur-Claise. That's where Susan and Simon live.

The pavé de Betz-le-Château was excellent, as are all the goat cheeses here in the Loire Valley. They are white, tasty, and not too strong. This particular one was pretty dry — in other words, well aged. Delicious.

Going into the cave to inspect the wines

By the way, I was so busy with preparing and serving the food and drink for our outdoor couscous feast yesterday that I didn't take any pictures. You don't have to take my word for it when I say that the weather was beautiful, the crowd was friendly, and the wine flowed liberally — just take a look at Walt's blog topic today. I hope Susan and Simon weren't too shocked. It was a long lunch that was bien arrosé — well "watered" or irrigated with the local wines.

The old tile will need a good cleaning now that
new tile has been laid down next to it.

And a second "by the way" is that our deck is getting retiled to eliminate a low spot in front of the French doors where we would get a big puddle of water every time it rained. Jacques, who was one of the people at our couscous lunch yesterday, is upstairs doing the grouting now. It's going to be great not to have that puddle to sweep off the deck, especially in wintertime.