Le château de Culan

Culan is a funny name in French. Cul means "bottom" (or "derriere" in good English) in the anatomical sense of the term. In English, we use it in the expression "cul de sac" but we don't pronounce it the same way. I'm not sure the name Culan has anything to do with all that.

Le château de Culan

The Michelin green guide says Culan's name in Roman times was Cusulincum, meaning "the village on the river." By the 1300s, that had become Cuslencum, and later it further deteriorated into Culanum. Finally, the unstressed Latin ending -um was dropped and we ended up with Culan.

Culan was carefully restored between 1950 and 1980.
This is one of the towers and a close-up of the stonework.

Such is the history of the French language: the words get shorter and shorter. It's phonetic erosion. Rotomagus (4 syllables) becomes Rouen (1 syllable, or maybe 2 for some people). Lugdunum becomes Lyon. Aquae Sextiae evolves into Aix. French words used to get shorter, I should say. Now that everybody knows how to read and write, that evolution has slowed.

Two views from the courtyard at Culan

The castle in Culan is a feudal fortress built in the 1100s or before. It was captured by King Philippe Auguste of France, the rival and good friend of King Richard the Lion-Hearted of England, in 1188. The owner of Culan was lucky enough to have a visit by, who else, Joan of Arc in 1429, shortly before she was burned at the stake by the English (or was it the Burgundians?) in Rouen.

An 18th-century Aubusson tapestry at Culan

Culan castle sits high on a rock above the little river called the Arnon, which is spanned by a Roman-style bridge just below the castle. Seen in the distance, the massive towers of the castle stick up above lush vegetation. When you come upon it from the east, as Walt and I did for the first time in 2007, it's pretty surprising — especially if you aren't even aware of its existence.

Culan sits high above the Arnon river

Culan is located about 130 km/80 mi. southeast of Saint-Aignan. That puts it about an hour's drive south of the city of Bourges, and just a few miles off the A71 autoroute.

A charcuterie in the Berry

I'm really tempted to drive back down to Neuvy, the town with the imitation Holy Sepulchre, just to try some Berrichon specialties from the charcuterie across the street from the church. A charcuterie, as you probably know, is the French equivalent of a delicatessen. Maybe I should try some more things from the nice Hentry charcuterie over in Noyers-sur-Cher before I drive that far south.

A charcutier is a pork butcher, at least originally. In his shop, you can buy both cuts of fresh pork and all kinds of cured pork products: hams (jambons), bacon (lard), sausages (saucisses), salamis (saucissons), and pâtés. In addition, a charcutier sells all kinds of salads (grated carrots, celery root rémoulade, red beets in vinaigrette are some of the classics) and even plats cuisinés — carry-out main courses you can just reheat at home for lunch or dinner.

Specialty pork products of the Berry region.
(Do you see the spelling mistake?)

This particular charcuterie is run by a man named Christian Sabarly. He is also a traiteur — a caterer who will prepare all the food for a customer's party or other event. He specializes in preparations, foods, and meats typical of the Berry region. Besides potato puff pastries (galettes de pommes de terre) and something called pâté de Pâques (Easter pâté, which is meat pâté and hard-boiled egges cooked in a rolled pastry), I'm not really familiar with Berry specialities. I'd like to know more.

Monsieur Sabarly's pork butchery and catering shop

I may well end up having to drive back down to Neuvy soon to buy some things in Sabarly's shop. It's at least an hour south of Saint-Aignan, on the other side of the big Berry town called Châteauroux. Walt hasn't been down there yet, so maybe he'll want to go. Nearby there's a wine village called Châteaumeillant, a big château in the little town of Culan, and a very picturesque village called Sainte-Sévère-sur-Indre where I wouldn't mind spending some time taking pictures. Jacques Tati's classic film called Jour de Fête was made there in the late 1940s.

Artisanal Berry pork products in Neuvy-St-Sépulchre

Our little town, now known as Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher, was until relatively recent times called Saint-Aignan-en-Berry. We are located at the extreme northwest corner of the old Berry province. I think the change in our town's name probably happened around the time of the French Revolution (1789), when the current system of départements was put into place, relegating the old provinces called Berry, Touraine, and so on, to purely historical significance.

The other side of that sign

Saint Aignan is also on the extreme eastern edge of the Touraine, and the wines made around here are A.O.C. Touraine. They are part of the same region as Vouvray, Chinon, and Bourgueil, which are the Touraine wines with the best reputations. Just a few miles east of us are the Valençay, Quincy, and Reuilly wine production areas. They are all clearly in the Berry region.

Another charcuterie in Neuvy is run by
Eric Puybertier, who is also a butcher

Across the river from us used to be the old province called the Orléanais, which includes the Sologne region. The wines made over there include Touraines but also Cheverny and Romorantin wines. Saint-Aignan is at the crossroads of all these regions and wine areas.

Sweet Vouvray wines

I drove some friends over to Vouvray yesterday to buy wine at the Aubert winery. H. is a friend from my grad school days in Illinois. She lived in France in the '70s when I did, and now has long lived in California. H. will be hosting a wine tasting for her school district, where she's a principal, when she gets back in September.

She wanted to get a bottle or two of a nice dessert wine to add to the drier reds and whites she'll be offering for the tasting, which is a fund-raising event. Vouvray is the right place to find such wines. The Auberts (like all of the Vouvray producers) make white wines exclusively from Chenin Blanc grapes, and they run the gamut from dry, to semi-dry, to sweet, to syrupy.

Late July skies at sunrise in the Loire Valley

In French that's sec, demi-sec, moelleux, and liquoreux. I think the word moelleux in French gave us the term "mellow" in English. Liquoreux means "like a liqueur" — sweet and syrupy. I believe moelleux might be a term applied specifically for Loire Valley wines, because the Robert dictionary gives this example of its use as a noun: « le moelleux des vins de Touraine » — the mellow character of the wines of Touraine.

Morning clouds over the vineyards

Dry and semi-dry Vouvray wines are made every year. Moelleux wines can be made only in years where the autumn weather cooperates and allows growers to leave the grapes on the vine into mid-October or later. In those years, the grapes reach a high degree of ripeness. Only in very hot, dry years — 2003, the year of the Great Heat Wave, la canicule, for example, and 2005 — do Vouvray wines reach the stage you might call liquoreux.

Big wide paths through the Touraine vineyards
make them a good place to walk with a dog.

In English, we use the term "sweet" to describe dessert wines. In French, the most obvious equivalent term is « sucré » — but it is misleading when applied to these wines, because it can give the impression that you think sugar is added in the wine-making process. It is not. The grapes are allowed to ripen to such a degree that they start to look like raisins. The natural sugar in the grapes becomes highly concentrated as their water evaporates. Better terms to describe such wines are doux (tender) and of course moelleux.

Seen from this angle, it looks like the vines are
swallowing up the houses at La Renaudière.

If the weather turns rainy and chilly in October, the late harvest grapes are ruined. In 2007, we had a very rainy summer. But then the weather turned dry and sunny in September and October, allowing for a fine late harvest and some good mellow white wines. The 2008 demi-sec wine made by the Auberts is also delicious.

Une fleur

By the way, we learned that the current operator of the Aubert winery, whose father is now semi-retired, is the 6th generation of his family to run the place. The caves where the wines are made and aged were created in the Renaissance when big blocks of limestone was carved out of the cliffsides for chateau-building.

I'm not sure that it's easy to find excellent Vouvray wines in the U.S. Maybe they don't travel well. Maybe only the lower-quality ones are exported. The fact is, French wines and foods always taste much better when you have them in France. It's the air, the light, the beauty of the place. It's tasting and buying them right at the winery. Who knows why it's like that.

Sloes, quinces, figs, and yellow plums

I'm a person who doesn't believe in throwing food out. It just pains me to waste anything. This summer season is killing me. So much fruit is going to waste. It's not even being picked. It's too much for even the birds and deer to eat.

I've been watching a bunch of blackthorn bushes — small trees, really — ever since spring. Now they are full of fruit. They produce little dark-purple berries called sloes in English and prunelles (little plums) in French. I've read about sloes on line and I've seen pictures that seem to confirm that these really are sloes.

Ripening sloes (with my finger for scale)

I want to pick some but they are still as hard as a rock. There's a site devoted to them called sloebiz.com — it's mostly about making sloe gin, which doesn't tempt me. There and on other web pages I've read things like this about sloes:

In August, the fruits are well formed but partially hidden by the dense leaves all around. Note the characteristic 'bloom' on the sloes. Avoid the temptation to pick in August as these notoriously bitter little berries need as much time as possible to fully ripen (hence the folklore about picking 'after the first frosts').

I've found several references to making jelly out of sloes, but I need to wait until October or even November to pick some. That's all I need... more jelly.

Fat yellow plums in the neighbors' yard

Meanwhile, there is crop after crop of bigger plums. I just looked to see why it is we call them "plums" rather than "prunes" as in French. Well, plum comes from old English plumus, which in turn derives from the Latin prunus. So it's the same word. It's just another example of linguistic corruption and confusion.

Branches bend under the weight of little yellow plums.

Our neighbors have four plum trees right next to each other on their property. One has green plums, one red, one purple, and one yellow. And then in a vacant lot just down the road there is a tree that is now covered with more little yellow plums than you could imagine. The branches are so weighed down that they are touching the ground. They aren't quite ripe yet.

Ripe green figs

Meanwhile, our neighbors — we're watching their yard while they are away for a week — also have a huge fig tree that has hundreds of ripe figs on it.

Fuzzy quinces

And our other neighbors have a quince tree that blew over in a wind storm a couple of years ago. It hasn't died; it's just lying on its side. This morning I noticed that it is not only covered in healthy-looking green leaves, but also in quinces. They're like pears but have a kind of peach fuzz on them. They make great jelly. But then so will all these millions of apples we have in the back yard...