Poulet chasseur, or chicken cacciatore

A couple of weeks ago I got it into my head that I wanted to make chicken cacciatore. The French equivalent of that Italian-American dish is called poulet chasseur, which means something like « poulet cuit à la façon du chasseur » — "chicken the way a hunter would cook it." The French word for "to hunt" is « chasser ».

The main ingredient, besides chicken, is mushrooms, it turns out — not tomatoes. Where do you find mushrooms? In the forest, and often French dishes like omelets or pâtés that have mushrooms in them are named « forestière ». It all makes sense, because hunters hunt in forests.

Chicken cacciatore, or poulet chasseur, American-style,
as it came out of the oven

Even in Marcella Hazan's The Classic Italian Cook Book, she give a recipe for a chicken dish that resembles French poulet chasseur more than my memory of cacciatore. She calls it a fricassee of chicken with wild mushrooms, not chicken cacciatore. She puts a little bit of tomato in the sauce, but not much — just as most of the French recipes specify.

One way to do it is to cut the chicken in half...

The French versions and Marcella Hazan's call for adding two to three tablespoons of tomato sauce or paste (concentré in French) to a cooking sauce that's basically a white wine sauce made with a flour roux and mushrooms. It's just enough tomato to improve the sauce's color, really.

...and brown the two halves in the oven
while you make the sauce.

One French cookbook I have, Ginette Mathiot's classic of home cooking called Je Sais Cuisiner, gives a recipe for poulet chasseur with mushrooms but no tomato at all. Mathiot cooks a whole chicken, but a lot of the French recipes I see on the web call for just thighs or leg-thigh sections.

I just looked at the Joy of Cooking (1997 ed.) and saw this in the introduction to the chicken cacciatore recipe: "Italian hunters who cook always seem to have tomatoes and olives handy." It goes on to say the "basic ingredients" of the dish are "chicken... tomatoes, onions, and sometimes mushrooms." The recipe calls for a whole small can of tomatoes.

Pour the sauce over the partially cooked chicken halves
and cook it for an hour, covered.

That's what I remember about American versions of chicken cacciatore — a lot of tomato sauce. And that's what I wanted: a chicken cacciatore that corresponded to my memories from childhood and the rest of my life in America. So I made it that way, using a pint of tomato sauce from the freezer and from our garden tomatoes last summer. Since I didn't have any fresh bell peppers, I added in half a cup of red pepper puree, also from the freezer and last year's vegetable garden.

Serve with pasta

Along with mushrooms and white wine, of course. Onions, garlic, carrots, thyme, and olive oil, but no olives. I used dried shitake mushrooms, which I rehydrated in hot water, and I added the mushroom water to the tomato sauce as well. The chicken was a Label Rouge poulet fermier — a farm-raised, free-range bird, that I got at the supermarket. I thought the whole thing was delicious and satisfying. The leftovers were good too.

Presidential politics and March showers

Yesterday afternoon March finally arrived. I mean the real thing, not that sunny and warm little June-like interlude we had last week. March means giboulées, which are sudden hard downpours of cold rain and even ice pellets. The showers are supposed to continue this morning. March showers will bring April flowers...

Early morning was beautiful for the daily walk. Rain started later.
This is a view out over the river valley, looking north.

Today is the day when the French Constitutional Council in Paris announces the names of the candidates who have qualified for the April presidential election. On Friday, at least 10 candidates claimed to have gathered the required 500 signatures (meaning endorsements or sponsorships) from elected officials around the country.

The rules are more complicated that the « 500 signatures » shortcut might imply. The mayors and other officials who have issued a given candidates endorsements much represent at least 30 French départements (the equivlent of our counties). That eliminates potential candidates who have a really strong local following but no national credentials. And no more than 50 of a candidate's signatures can come from any one department, so fairly widespread support is ensured.

Hyacinths that escaped from somebody's garden

All that means the the Constitutional Council staff has to validate each candidate's petition very carefully and thoroughly, authenticating the signatures and the geographical distribution. And yes, for 10 candidates. Some of the "minor" candidates had no trouble getting the signatures they needed, and some of the candidates considered more prominent and popular failed. For example, the ex-Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin had to call it a day, while a couple of candidates I'd never even heard of will qualify for the ballot.

The pond out back was pretty yesterday and all last week

Starting tomorrow, the campaign rules change. Every qualified candidate will get equal time on television, for example. I'm not sure how that works with regulating news coverage to ensure equal time for the candidates, but we'll see. Election day is six weeks away, and there will almost surely be a run-off election on May 6 between the top two vote-getters — unless some candidate gets more than 50% of the vote in the first round of balloting, which is unlikely.

Yesterday afternoon

The election is our entertainment right now, along with cooking and eating, since the weather is not conducive to work in the garden. Bertie the black cat is in here this morning, rubbing all over me and the furniture, because he can't get out an hunt rodents and birds — he doesn't like getting wet. He must have liked the sunny warm weather, because we didn't see him much last week, except at feeding time.

Walt was the lucky one who got to walk with Callie in the rain both yesterday afternoon and this morning. As you can see in the pictures here, I had a beautiful stroll yesterday morning. The dog an I went out into the woods up at the top of the vineyard, and that's an area Callie isn't familiar with. She found it very exciting, sniffing all around for traces of deer and rabbit aromas.

Plum progress

I mentioned the other day that our plum trees were starting to flower and posted a picture of some flower buds. Well, the nice weather we had during the week — as warm and sunny as in June — didn't hurt at all. Now look.

These are two trees that I planted from plum pits a few years back. They are wild plums from an ungrafted tree, and I already got a few of the little red plums last year. This year I'm hoping for enough to make confiture. Plum jam, or confiture de prunes, is just about my favorite.

Rototilling

One of the best investments we've made since we moved to Saint-Aignan is the machine in the picture below. Without it, we wouldn't have much of a vegetable garden. The first year, we starting digging up the ground and turning over big clumps of heavy clay soil using a shovel. Then we got a clue.

You fold the front wheel up and out of the way. Then
the blades or tines dig into the ground you want to till.

And a rototiller or motobineuse. It's a rotary hoe with an engine. Here's what the Wikipedia article on cultivators says, in part, about tilling soil with such an engin.

Rototilling is much faster than manual tilling, but [the tilling machine is] notoriously difficult to handle and [tilling the soil with it is] exhausting work, especially in the heavier and higher horsepower models. If the rototiller's blades catch on unseen subsurface objects, such as tree roots and buried garbage, it can cause the rototiller to abruptly and violently move in any direction.

It's a 5.5 HP Staub tiller with a Briggs & Stratton engine.
It has a reverse gear, which makes it easier to maneuver.

To me, tilling with the machine is not nearly as back-breaking as digging in hard soil with a shovel and hoe. Or a pickaxe. With the rotary cultivator, I can work the soil in our medium-size vegetable garden a couple of times in the spring, before we plant, and, if the weather allows, once in the fall, after we've pulled out the plants.

Our vegetable garden covers just over
80 square meters (900 sq. ft.) in all.

Yesterday I did an initial tilling of two of our four main garden plots. I was glad that the tiller's motor started right up when I pulled it out of the garden shed and put some gas in the tank. This is its 8th or 9th year of service, but since I only use it for, say, 10 or 12 hours a year, it seems to be holding up pretty well.

A bird's nest and a daffodil

Day before yesterday I noticed a bird's nest that I hadn't noticed before. I've walked by it, withing 10 feet of it, so many times that I couldn't count them. And then suddenly one day, there it is. Selective vision, I guess.

A nest is a nid [NEE] — un nid d'oiseau — in French.

The nest is sitting on a grape vine trunk up against the vine-workers' shed out on the gravel road. I wonder if the birds that built it, or their offspring, will use it again. I hope they'll have an easier time spotting it than I did. It's not very far off the ground.

The nest is perched on a vine trunk up against a south-facing
wall. It must be warm when the sun is shining.

Daffodils, par contre, are harder to miss. It's their color. They are starting to open up all around the house and out in the back of the yard. The extreme cold we had in February doesn't seem to have hurt them.

A daffodil in French is une jonquille [zhõ-KEE-yuh] — a jonquil.

I've been thinking about all the walking I do with the dog. It's so pleasant when the weather is like this: not too cold, not too hot, not windy, and not rainy. I figure I walk an average of 2.5 kilometers every day. Some days less, but some days a lot more. At that rate, I walk more than 800 kilometers in a year's time, or about 500 miles.

Pot au feu becomes pho

The other day we had pot au feu for lunch. That's boiled beef, and you end up with meat and vegetables but also a lot of broth you can make soup with.

The soup I decided to make was Vietnamese pho bo — spicy beef soup with noodles. I had four liters of good beef broth. To it I added a couple pieces of star anise, a cinnamon stick, three dried cayenne peppers, a three-inch chunk of ginger root, and a sliced onion. I let that cook for about two hours on low heat.

A Frenchified version of pho bo (Vietnamese beef noodle soup)

I also added a tablespoon of soy sauce, a tablespoon of dark sweet soy sauce, half a cup of Mirin rice wine (sherry or dry white wine would be good) and two tablespoons of nyoc mam (Vietnamese or Thai fish sauce) during the cooking. While the broth was simmering, I cooked some Asian wheat noodles (almost any noodles, including spaghetti, would be fine) and shredded up the leftover boiled beef. I also cut the leftover carrots into smaller pieces that we could eat with chopsticks.

Make up a bowl and ladle piping hot broth over it.

There you have it. Put the noodles, some bean sprouts, and the beef and carrots in a bowl. If you have some cilantro (coriander) leaves, tant mieux. Pour hot broth over all. Eat it with chopsticks and a soup spoon. Drizzle some sesame oil over the top and add more soy sauce to taste.

Arriving in France with Collette

It was early June in 2003. Walt and I had sold our house in San Francisco in March. We'd had all our belongings — at least the things we wanted to keep — packed into a container for shipping, and then we'd flown off to France with the dog.

The dog’s name was Collette — we called her that because she was a collie of some sort. We had found at the Humane Society animal shelter in Santa Clara, California, in 1992 and adopted her. She had to travel in the cargo hold of the Air France plane, and that made us nervous.

Collette on the sidewalk in Rouen in June 2003

Nobody seemed to know what we had to do to export a dog from the U.S. to France. I had spent nearly six months talking on the phone to people all over the U.S. and even in France who were experienced in exporting dogs and were supposed to know what kinds of shots, blood tests, microchips, and documents needed to be taken care of.

Leaving the dog behind wasn’t an option. If she couldn’t make the move with us, we weren’t going to be able to move.

June 2003 at Etretat on the English Channel

Somehow we had figured out a procedure that made sense and followed it, even though the processes and requirements were not at all clearly spelled out. France had recently been declared rabies-free, so we had to be careful to have all the right shots and blood tests. Everything seemed to be in flux.

The dog didn’t mind.

June 2003 in Saint-Aignan

But one dog-export expert said the French customs authorities would be within their rights to deport a dog that arrived at Roissy without the proper paperwork. Who would be there in the U.S. to pick Collette up if they sent her back? That same expert also said French authorities could also decide to euthanize an animal that arrived in France illegally. So it seemed like a good idea to do things right.

When we arrived at Washington Dulles airport for our one-way flight, the people at the Air France check-in counter were mystified too. “You are traveling with a dog?” they asked. Yes, I said, we have paid for the dog’s passage. She’s here in her kennel.

At home in Saint-Aignan in 2004

“Well, I’m not a veterinarian,” the young Air France agent said. “I don’t know what kind of paperwork we need to see.” Well I do, I told him. It’s all in this folder — rabies vaccination certificates, blood test results, health certificates signed and stamped by the USDA, and all that. “OK, I’ll just make photocopies of all these papers,” the Air France employee said, "and you'll be all set.”

Suddenly another Air France crew member appeared out of nowhere, said it was time for the dog to be put on board, and whisked her away. We were nervous about whether we would ever see Collette alive again. She was 11½ years old, after all, and the trip would be long and cold.

On the beach at San Francisco in the 1990s...

When we arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, I went over to the baggage-claim officer's booth while Walt waited for our suitcases to come out on the conveyor belt. I told somebody we had a dog that was arriving as cargo. “We’ll go get the animal and bring it up on the elevator,” he said. A few minutes later, there was Collette — dazed and stiff, but otherwise fine, it appeared. She seemed sleepy.

And there were our bags too. So we were ready to go.

...and in the Southern California desert

The French customs agents were on strike that day. At the customs desk, I remember, there was one young woman wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, with a DOUANES armband as her only uniform. People were lining up, with all their suitcases and backpacks on the little airport carts, to talk to her and get cleared for entry into France.

We started to get in line behind the 10 or 12 travelers who were already waiting.

“These are all Americans,” I said to Walt. “They are standing in line because they think they are supposed to. I don’t think we need to wait here.” I suggested that we just slowly push the cart with our suitcases on it and the cart with the kennel and Collette on it right past the customs line and out the door into the airport lobby.

Headed out for a walk in the vineyard in January 2006

So that’s what we did. We walked very slowly in case anybody from customs might want to stop us and ask questions. I was prepared to counter any challenges with claims of innocence: “Oh, we didn’t realize we needed to show any papers...” But nobody challenged us. There we were, out of customs now, and actually in France.

P.S. Collette died six years ago today at the age of 14. She was a city dog who got to spend three years enjoying life in the country — the yard, the fresh air, French food, and vineyard walks with no leash.

Spring, and some politcal news

Spring has arrived a week ahead of schedule. It was so warm yesterday that we put the table and chairs back out on the terrace. Walt spent part of the afternoon sitting out in the sun in the back yard, throwing the ball for Callie to chase and retrieve. Temperatures this week are supposed to approach 20ºC/68ºF.

Skies are clear and there's almost no wind. The sun is bright. What more can you ask for? I noticed a couple of days ago that the neighbors' plum tree actually has blossoms on it. I checked my tree, which I planted a couple of years ago, and it has blossoms too. I'm looking forward to those little plums, which usually ripen in June.

Blossoms on the little plum tree I planted a couple of years ago

Walt has continued cutting big limbs out of a couple of our apple trees. I think the trees will end up healthier for it, especially as it means there'll be less mistletoe in them sapping their energy. I'm waiting for some signs that the little fruit trees I have in pots might start budding out. Or maybe the extreme cold of a month ago killed them. I don't know yet.

A few days ago a weather front moved through from
the west, but we didn't get any rain.

This is the week when the presidential candidates in France must file with the authorities and show that they have the endorsement of at least 500 local elected officials in order to qualify. Bulletin: the extreme right candidate, Marine Le Pen, announced this morning that she actually has the 500 "signatures" she needed to get her name on the ballot. Several other candidates have now qualified, including a centrist and three far left hopefuls.

A red Peugeot parked by a red fire plug on our street

President Sarkozy is moving up in the polls. That was inevitable. He now stands a chance of getting more votes — 28.5% — in the first round of balloting on April 22. Socialist François Hollande comes in at 27%. In the hypothetical run-off between Hollande and Sarkozy on May 6, Hollande still holds a 54-46% lead. I wonder if French voters are ready for a change. The voters in other European countries — Greece, Spain, Italy — have been on a throw-the-bums-out kick recently.

The pond and our house

This election has made me realize that I really ought to apply for French citizenship so that I can vote. I'm in the process of getting my parents' birth certificates and a new copy of my own, because those documents are required for the citizenship application. There are other requirements too, including a report from the FBI showing that I don't have a criminal record in the U.S. I have to figure out how to get that, and find out what else I need.

The vineyard is getting ready to go green.

Immigration is a big campaign issue here, and it's feeling less comfortable just being a resident and not a citizen in France these days. I'd like to have that famous carte d'identité nationale, whether or not I ever actually get a French passport. Having dual citizenship would be a good thing.

Pot au feu — boiled beef dinner

The other day I cooked a pot au feu — a boiled beef dinner. It was so good that now I wonder why I don't do it more often. It has all the advantages you could ask for: inexpensive beef that comes out tender and succulent; healthy, flavorful vegetables; and a hot, clear, nourishing broth.

Pot au feu is a very old French classic dish. The expression of course means "a pot on the fire" and must date back to the days of old when every household kept a pot of broth bubbling on the fire that people cooked on back before they had stoves, cooktops, burners, ovens, microwaves — or electricity or gas, for that matter. You could keep the stockpot going for weeks, adding and cooking more liquid, vegetables, or meat as the days passed.

Beef shank cooked in broth with onions and carrots

You can make a pot-au-feu using whatever meat you want. Usually it's beef. Old recipes include adding some chicken necks, gizzards, or hearts to the pot; if you use some chicken broth in the cooking liquid you've accomplished pretty much the same thing. But you can also make pot au feu with chicken, duck, or even lean pork.

Broth with aromatics, boiling

Actually, the chicken version of pot au feu is called poule au pot. However you do it, and whatever meat you use, you end up with several nice servings of meat and vegetables, as well as a clear broth you can have as soup, with the addition of vermicelli, other pasta, rice, and/or diced vegetables.

Start the cooking by putting a big pot of liquid — water, chicken or vegetable broth, or a combination — on to boil. You need enough liquid so that any meat you add is completely submerged. Add a peeled onion or two, or shallots; three or four garlic cloves; some celery stalks or leaves; a few allspice berries and black peppercorns; some leek leaves; salt of course; and a few bay leaves. This part is free-form; flavor the liquid to your own taste, with what you have on hand.

Here's the beef I got: shank with the bone removed,
from an old milk cow, according to the label.

When the liquid in the pot starts to boil, put in the meat. Don't use expensive meat, and stick to fairly large pieces. Short ribs, beef shank — that kind of thing —cuts of beef that need long, slow cooking. What I had was a boned, rolled and tied piece of jarret de bœuf, which is shank, and it weighed about two pounds (900 grams). It was sold with the bone included, because you want a marrow bone in the pot for flavor.

Beef shank, boned, rolled and tied, sold with the marrow bone

Cook the meat in the flavored broth for two hours at a slow boil or simmer. At that point, add a couple of big carrots, peeled and cut into two-inch pieces. They'll cook in the broth for two hours as well. If you want to add other vegetables — turnips, rutabega, cabbage, celery root, parsnips — add them to the pot about an hour from the end of the total cooking time, which is 4 to 4½ hours.

Cook potatoes in the broth, or serve the meat and
vegetables with a gratin dauphinois.

Serve the cooked meat and vegetables with a little of the broth. Put some butter on the vegetables if you want, or olive oil. In France, we eat the meat with Dijon mustard, or with cornichons, which are little sour gherkins. Also with some fleur de sel — coarse, crunchy sea salt. And good bread.

You can serve a bowl of the consommé (clear broth) as a starter course for the meal. And you'll have plenty left to make soup with. I think I'm going to make soupe à l'oignon gratinée this week. Another possibility is the Vietnamese soup called pho.

Getting the gui out

Yesterday Walt took advantage of the decent weather to tackle the apple tree job. The goal was to get the gui out — gui, pronounced [GHEE], is mistletoe. Climbing up a ladder and using a long pole with a saw on the end, he cut off the branches that had the largest balls of mistletoe growing on them.

Mistletoe is a parasite. Usually it doesn't kill its host, but this apple tree is getting pretty old. Mistletoe loves apple trees. We figure this big old tree doesn't have too many more good years left — but there are three others. And besides, this one tree produces far more apples than we can ever use.

Walt cut out what must have been half a dozen big branches. They'll make good firewood, and we'll burn the mistletoe clumps the next time we have a bonfire outdoors. The hardest part of the job was getting the cut-off branches out of the top of the tree once they were sawed through. He said that nearly every branch in the tree has a clump or two of mistletoe growing on it, but mostly they are small.

New Touraine AOC wine districts

Starting this spring, with the release of the 2011 vintage, the Loire Valley will have two new AOC designations — Touraine-Chenonceaux and Touraine-Oisly. The Touraine is an extensive area of vineyards with prestigious AOCs including Bourgueil, Chinon, Vouvray, and Montlouis as well as different Touraine sub-appellations.

Touraine-Chenonceaux has been defined as the grape-growing areas that lie on both sides of the Cher River from Bléré on the west to the villages just east Saint-Aignan upriver. It includes the villages and towns of Chenonceaux, Francueil, Montrichard, Angé, Pouillé, Thésée, Mareuil-sur-Cher, Noyers-sur-Cher, Couffy, and Meusnes. In all, about 30 communes ("municipalities") are part of the new district.

A map showing the approximate areas covered by the
Touraine-Chenonceaux and Touraine-Oisly AOCs

Touraine-Oisly is an area north of Saint-Aignan and south of Blois, centered on the village of Oisly (pronounced [wah-LEE], near the larger town of Contres. It includes Saint-Romain-sur-Cher, where the wine co-op is one of our favorite places for wine, with good value for the money you pay. Touraine-Oisly covers an area of 10 communes.

The other Touraine sub-appellations are Azay-le-Rideau and Noble-Joué, both on the west side of Tours, and Amboise and Mesland, along the Loire River between Tours and Blois. Our area along the Cher River will probably come to be called the pays de Chenonceaux over time, and that will give it some extra recognition.

AOCs — appellations d'origine contrôlées ("controlled designations of origin")— define areas where specific agricultural products are produced and allow producers to label products with that specific geographical name. It's an official stamp of approval, and is designed to be a guarantee of quality for consumers — or, at least, authenticity.

The eastern part of the Touraine wine region

Unlike the situation with a product like, for example, Cheddar cheese, which can be made anywhere in the world and still be called cheddar, in France AOC product names are tightly regulated. To give another example, you can't call a sparkling wine champagne unless it comes from the Champagne region and is made from the juice of specific grape varieties, by approved methods.

In France, the AOCs are set up by a government committee called the Institut National de l'Origine et de la Qualité. Getting an AOC designation for a wine, cheese, or other product produced in a specific region by strictly-defined methods and practices is both an honor and a responsibility for people who work in the food and wine business.

Moonset, sunrise

When I came downstairs this morning at about 6:30 a.m., I looked out the back window and saw a huge moon setting out over the vineyard. I picked up my camera and tried to capture it, despite the darkness. Here's the result.

Moonset over the Renaudière vineyard
Friday 09 March 2012 6:45 a.m.

The pictures are grainy, but that's because of the severe low-light conditions at such an early hour. By the way, it's already starting to get light at 6:30 now. Just a few weeks ago, we didn't see daylight until nearly two hours later than that.

A few minutes after the first photo above, the light had brightened slightly and I took the next two, zooming in progressively. All these moon photos have been processed with Photoshop to soften some of the graininess. The camera also has a hard time focusing with so little light.

Sunrise Friday 09 March 2012 at La Rendaudière

A few minutes later, I noticed light on the other side of the house and realized the sun was rising. So I snapped a picture of that too. One nice thing about our house is that we can see both the sunrise and the sunset (or moonset) out our windows.

Re-licensed

My new French driver's license arrive yesterday. Literally — it arrived by car from the mairie (village hall), delivered by the mayor herself. Madame le maire lives almost next door, so she dropped off the new license on her way home for lunch.

I had requested a new license because the one I had dated from 1981 and had a picture of me on it that was fairly unrecognizable. It also gave my address as a street in Paris where I lived in the late 1970s and early '80s. I wanted a license with a current photo and my current address on it. French driver's licenses are good for life and never have to be renewed, by the way.

The new French driver's license is labeled as such in
many languages, including (British) English.

When I took the old license, the completed form, and new photos to the mairie three weeks ago, the clerk told me she thought the only valid reasons for requesting a new, updated driver's license were loss of the original or damage to it — accidentally running it through the washing machine, for example. My old license was in pristine condition. "They'll probably refuse your request," the clerk said.

Never mind that on the official form that a different clerk at the mairie had given me a few weeks earlier, there were three checkboxes under the category Reasons for Requesting a Replacement License: (1) lost original, (2) damaged original, and (3) change of name or address. The clerk went ahead and sent in the form, just shrugging her shoulders when I insisted and persisted.

So now I have it. In France, it doesn't matter, but in the U.S. I'll feel better having a license with a picture that looks like me (even if it also looks like a mug shot) and that carries my current address. The next time we go, I'll be renting a car. Walt and I both have French "driving licences" and neither of us has an unexpired U.S. license any more.

I've erased a lot of the personal information on my new license,
but you can see what a French permis de conduire looks like.

The news yesterday, coincidentally, reported that 25% fewer people died in traffic accidents in February 2012 compared to February 2011. I'm sure that's because of the two week spell of snowy, frigid weather we had starting February 1. It discouraged people from driving, and encouraged drivers not to speed.

Along with that good news about highway fatalities, the news also reports that fully three-quarters of the people killed in car accidents are men, and that 90% of the penalty points given to drivers for rules infractions go to men. Women, it turns out, are much more careful drivers than men — despite, the news reader on TéléMatin said a moment ago, all the old stereotypes. Too many men on the roads of France are daredevils.

Reds of winter

As I've mentioned, a lot of the plants around here have been burned by frost and hard freezes. Many have a rusty orange tinge, but others are purply red. Here are a few pictures.

This one was a little blurry, so I Photoshopped it.

Our bay laurel hedged wasn't damaged by the cold like some
down on lower ground, but a lot of the leaves were reddened.

This isn't a bottle like the one Walt saw out at the end of our road.
Was somebody out in the vineyard trying to keep warm?