Maury Sunday Evening

It's around 9 PM the first of June and Maury is beautiful.  The town is quiet. Sunday lunch is over and the kids and grandkids have gone home, school is not yet out.

A man walks in the vineyards with his dog, another tends his garden and invites us to come back in August when the tomatoes are ready. Le vrai gout de tomate, not like the commercial stuff.

On the road to Lesquerde the only sound comes from birds. The wind is calm, the wildflowers are everywhere, the air is soft and the fading sun highlights the leaves of the Muscat vines and etches the shape of Queribus from the mountains. 

This is a special place and it's a fine time to be here. We often see it as a sanctuary, an escape from real life but then more and more you hear of people who came here for holidays and loved it so much they said why not all the time.

Certainly it's changing and that will continue. Right now I'm drinking a rosé from a Bordeaux winemaker who saw the commercial possibilities and opened a new winery here. And that will continue; we already have a Michelin blessed restaurant and there will be more. Some locals will profit from selling property at inflated prices, others will lose their livelihood to commercial development. It may be the next Provence or Tuscany, take your pick, but for now it's just a small town, with people of all ages who respond with a smile when a bonjour madame or monsieur is offered. The young people haven't left: the Ecole Publique has enough students and Michel and Angelique are building a new house just up the street.

Walking back into town I see three men sitting on the bench in front of the trompe l'oeil café. They are here so often, there's a painting of them sitting there decorating the Maison de Terroir. There's a crowd in the patio of the Café de la Placette, Auberge de Quèribus is empty, Jean has 3 or 4 couverts.

The rosé is very nice, as is the inexpensive Cotes de Catalane, the higher end wines to be over- blown and over-oaked. I like to think there's a populist spirit at work here.

Vineyards in the Fenouilledes

Fenouilledes Wines Show Their Stuff

The wines of Roussillon continue to impress. When I first wrote about the region in 2003-2004, very few Americans were aware of the wine quality, although Brits like Jancis Robinson and Tim Atkin had been on to it for a while.

It seems that it’s just getting better. I was at a tasting last week organized by vins-fenouilledes.com of wines from the Fenouilledes region of Roussillon, and the quality was amazing, especially the white wines. Winemakers in the region have really tapped into the strengths of the Macabeu, a grape used in Spanish Catalonia for cava production.

Here, there is the occasional varietal bottling, often in a vin doux, but the grape works very well in blending with Grenache Blanc and Grenache Gris. The higher acidity and floral quality of the Macabeu add a brightness to the blend that keeps me reaching for another glass.

The red wines, typically a blend of Grenache, Carignan and Syrah, I had expected to be outstanding, and they were.

I believe the wines of Roussillon are a true expression of origin, that leap from vineyard to bottle to glass that can be called terroir.

There isn’t time here for a complete report on the tasting, which included some 40 producers, each pouring several wines, but names to look for included:

Domaine de l'Ausseil , info@lausseil.com
Domaine Rousselin, domaineroussellin@yahoo.com
La Clos de l’Origine, closdelorigine@gmail.com
Camp Del Rock, phbotet@wanadoo.fr
Terres de Maliyce, corrine.soto@packsurfwifi.com
Mas Mudigliza, masmudigliza@neuf.fr
Domaine des Soulanes, les.soulanes@wanadoo.fr
Les Clos Perdus, hugo@lesclosperdus.com
Domaine de l'Elephant, renaud.chastagnol@wanadoo.fr

For more information on the region check out www.vins-fenouilledes.com

Larry Walker

Double-Yummy Lunch

“It’s all about good cooking.”

That was Ann talking after her second helping of the beef daube I had ordered. She had already pretty much worked over her duck confit.

We were having lunch at Auberge Peyrepertuse in the small village of Rouffiac, a curve on the D410, a very minor road a few kilometers from the Cathar Castle of Peyrepertuse.

She was right, of course,. This was the kind of restaurant where you should always take the waiter’s suggestions. He’s most likely married to the woman we could glimpse in front of the stove in the kitchen.

Peyrepertuse seats maybe 20-35 people with two more two-tops in a small entry bar. The walls are the exposed stone of two or three centuries ago. The tile floor has seen a good bit of traffic. A few high windows give glimpses of an even more ancient stone wall a few meters away.

The waiter brought two kirs which we enjoyed while checking the wine list. Every wane on the list was local, from the Corbieres AOC. It being lunch with a warming sun shining on the terrace (too early in the year for it to be set up) we ordered a rosé from Grand d’Arc, a winery we knew well that is just down the road from Rouffiac.

The food was beyond good. The daube was easily the best I’ve ever tasted. An unexpected treat: a black radish in the daube, gleaming in the sauce. A generous serving of white beans, perfectly seasoned and with enough pork fat to keep them honest, had come with Ann’s duck. Yummy.

What else? A terrific onion tart lingers on the palate. The glass or three of Maury Rancio wine. The excellent espresso. And rice pudding. A double yummy.,

This is the kind of French down-home cooking that is too often overlooked in the race for the ‘latest.’

Worth a trip. Call ahead for reservations at the weekend: 04 68 45 40 40.

Larry Walker

The Catalan Rabbit

I bought a large rabbit at the traveling market yesterday here in Maury. This marché arrives in a small van with cheeses, chicken, rabbits and eggs. He also has a portable rotisserie spinning whole chickens and pork loins.
My rabbit was complete with head, kidneys and a very large liver. (Fresh rabbit is always sold here with the liver. It is said if the liver looks healthy, the rabbit will be good to eat. The butcher lifted the rabbit and displayed it’s interior for me to approve. ) My first thought was to grill it but when I told my son, Morgan about the rabbit and it’s liver he reminded me about using the liver to make a “picada”, a Catalan “sauce” or, rather, a thickener and flavor enhancer so I proceeded to make the following:


Lapin à la moutarde avec une “picada” de son foie
Rabbit braised in mustard with a “picada” of it’s liver

Preheat oven to 375º

One rabbit, 2.5-3 pounds

Cut off the head and discard. Cut off the hind legs and the fore legs. Season with salt and pepper and set aside. Cut off the long part of the body and debone. Discard the back. Flatten the body and season with salt and pepper, skin side down. Season the two kidneys with salt and pepper and lay them in the center of the body. Sprinkle with a bit of fresh thyme. Roll and tie the body with the kidneys inside. Tie at one inch intervals. Season the outside with salt and pepper.

Heat:
1/4 cup olive oil in a large lidded skillet. When it is hot, but not smoking, cook the rabbit pieces until brown. I always sprinkle more salt and pepper on the rabbit as it cooks. Remove rabbit pieces and set aside.

To make the picada:
Add more oil if necessary to the skillet and cook:

5 large cloves of garlic, whole
Rabbit liver
Two 1/2” slices of French baguette

Cook until the garlic is golden and the liver firm ( do not overcook the liver!)and the toast golden. Put in the food processor and whirl to a paste. Set aside. This technique is wonderful used with chicken, too. And the bread can be replaced or combined with almonds or hazelnuts, if you wish.

Heat two tablespoons of olive oil in the same skillet and cook until golden:

One large onion, sliced

Add and bring to a boil:
3 tablespoons of Dijon mustard
3 cups of rich, homemade chicken stock
One cup of white wine
Three sprigs of fresh thyme

Return the rabbit to the skillet with the onions.

Stir in the liver Picdada. Cover the skillet and bake for 35 minutes in the oven.
Remove the lid and continue to cook for another 35 minutes or until the rabbit is tender and the sauce is reduced.

-Ann Walker

The Road to El Bulli

Roses is a pretty little town. Especially now in April with the spring light clear and lucid on the beach and surrounding mountains. The harbor hangs in a half circle, fronted by a clutter of bars, cafes and small hotels, not yet in high summer dress. The only hint of things to come is the occasional white-shirted, black-aproned waiter on the sidewalk, directing a battalion of mostly empty tables or staring at the sea, as if customers might come walking across the water at any moment.

Roses has been a destination for Costa Brava tourists for several decades but in the past few years, another sort of pilgrim can be seen. These pilgrims barely see the Mediterranean. The guide books they carry have little in them of hidden beaches or best views; rather the panorama of dining room and kitchen. They are bound for El Bulli, or as it is now called elBulli.

It is, most likely, the only three star restaurant on the planet named after a dog. The original founders, Dr. Hans Schilling and his wife named the restaurant, which they opened in 1964, after the French bulldogs they owned. The present owner, Ferran Adrià, came to elbulli in 1984 when the restaurant already had one star. But never mind. If you are a proper pilgrim, you already know all this history.

We had spent the night L’Escala and were thinking of having a look at Cadaces. It turned out that Roses is on the way to Cadaces and the chef, who was driving the car, said, “Let’s have a look at elBulli.”

However, there are no signs (at least that we spotted) anywhere in Roses indicating that El Bulli is nearby. We remembered, however that elBulli wasn’t in Roses, but in Montjol, a small town a few kilometers away, so when we spotted a sign to Montjol, we knew we were on the Road to El Bulli. (Fans of old Hollywood musicals should be warned that neither Bob Hope, nor Bing Crosby nor Hedy Lamar appear in this narrative.)

It turns out that the road to El Bulli is a narrow mountain road with incredible views of the Mediterranean which could distract the most careful driver. Every hundred meters or so, Ann would say: “There has to be another road to El Bulli. Can you imagine driving this after a two hour dinner and a bottle or two of wine.”

No, I can’t, and no, there is not another road to El Bulli. Not quite true. If you are a yachting type, you can arrive by sea, which the old Norse used to call the ‘whale road.’

As veteran California drivers---we commuted for years on routinely spectacular Highway One north of San Francisco---the drive didn’t really present any problems, but the idea that there was a three-star restaurant, often named the Best Restaurant in the World (!) at the end of this road, did leave one thinking ‘location, location, location.’. After all, the small village we had lived in for 20 years in California didn’t have a three star restaurant, hardly even at 60-watt restaurant.

The road didn’t get any better and the only sign we saw of culinary interest was a couple picnicking on a blanket beside their car with the car blocking the view of the sea. There was not even a sheep in sight and if you drive more than a few kilometers in Spain without a sheep sighting you begin to think of famine and maybe missing lunch.

Finally, the road turned toward the sea and in a few minutes we arrived at Montjol and El Bulli. (Their signage does not reflect the new iconography.) There it was, the Mecca of the Foam Brigade, on a hillside with views over the serene Bay of Montjol, surrounded by pine trees and little else. It was closed, but we knew that. It is only open from June until December.

We got out of the car and peered through the trees. “Is that it?” Ann was expecting something a bit more grand, perhaps.

I took a snap of her standing beside the El Bulli sign and we returned to Roses and lunched at a tapas bar well away from the beach on clams, mussels and a decent bottle of rosé.

--Larry Walker

Catalan Rambles: L’Escala

Beach towns in winter can be depressing. There is sometimes an air of abandonment. Did everyone just move out? On the other there are no parking problems and you can get a table at the best restaurant in town without booking ahead.

We had flown San Francisco-Paris-Barcelona and had planned to drive straight through to France and home base at Maison Voltaire in Maury. About 30 minutes up the A7, we realized that we had not slept well on the flight, that we were hungry and, most important, we wanted a good dinner in Spain.

Turning virtually at random off the A7, we head for L’Escala, a town of about 20,000 people (maybe 100,000 in the summer) on the Mediterranean east of Girona. We had never been there before, but someone had told us about Hotel Miryam. It’s at the top of town, a 20 minute walk from the tourist beach tacky. From the outside, it looked a little somber, quietly brooding in a chilly April breeze off the Sea.

Ann checked the menu, which was posted beside the dark entry. “A little pricey, but seafood should be,” she said. We walked about for a few minutes and got a good feeling from the town, so checked into one of the six rooms. (One upside of traveling out of season.) The room was comfortable in a mid-20th century kind of way, don’t look for WiFi or flat screen 800-channel television here.

Dinner service began at 8pm, a little early for Spanish Catalonia, and we were prompt. It was superb. For starters, they brought us a small plate of local anchovies in olive oil and an interesting riff on the traditional Catalan pan con tomate{ round flat bread, split like an English muffin leaving tufty bits that the tomato stuck to. We ordered a plate of Jamon Jabugo from Salamanca, which was properly cut, that is chipped away not sliced slice prosciutto, and meltingly delicious. We also had escalivada: roasted red bell peppers, eggplant, onions and (in this case) slices of potato. It was excellent. When Ann tasted the peppers she actually swooned.

Our main dish was a seafood parrillada, which included hake, monkfish and turbot, all grilled on the plancha, with razor clams, cigales, gambas and squid, served with a side dish of small clams and mussels, steamed. Ann asked for aioli, which was made in house and stiff with garlic.

The wine was Espelt 08 Mareny White, 2008, a blend of Muscat and Sauvignon Blanc. It opened with an inviting floral nose, followed by bright typically Muscat flavors. A fairly simple wine, but it worked well with the fish. Espelt is a largish winery (for the area) with grapes sourced entirely from the local Empordà-Costa Brava wine region.

We finished with a Coca de Pinoñes and the house treated us to a small platter of assorted desserts, including chocolate-coated strawberries. Strawberries have been so delicious in California this year and were in Catalonia, too.

We finished them off in good fashion and were rewarded with a glass of Orujo. The waiter thoughtfully left the bottle on the table. I must admit to a great fondness of Orujo, a liqueur originally from the region of Galicia in northwestern Spain but now found all over northern Spain. This was a particularly good one, honey-colored and rich on the palate. I exercised great self control in not finishing the bottle.

Only Connect:

Hotel Miryam, Tel: 34 372 77 02 87. Low season rate, 70 Euros. Dinner was 120 Euros.

--Larry Walker

Le Petit Gris Too

I love this place and wanted to add a few words and pictures to Larry's essay.

Having been advised by Ann and Larry, I telephoned for a reservation at 1 PM and Natalie immediately told me not to be late. We arrived on time, had a wonderful lunch, a delightful chat with Natalie and Eric who approved of our promptness and have been back many times since. Came for lunch one time with my friend Dan, who asked Natalie for a beer. She smiled while saying no and brought us a lovely bottle of rose. Now they do serve beer at Petit Gris, but I think Natalie felt it was not appropriate for friends of Ann and Larry to be drinking beer with their lunch. Dan recovered and became a fan, going back for another meal and ordering correctly.

Barbara and I are heading back there next month with mixed emotions, happy that Natalie and Eric and family are free to do whatever they want to do next, sad that our favorite restaurant will be different. It may be fine, the food may continue to shine, but it will be different. Au revoir mes amies et merci beaucoup.

_Ron Scherl

Le Petit Gris

La Petit Gris

It was Sunday lunch. There were only a few tables left when we arrived at Le Petit Gris, a country restaurant just outside Tautavel. Cars were still coming into the small parking lot across the highway, most of them with local plates. Good thing we had come early. There was a buzz in the air, somewhat like the uplifted tension before the first pitch of a crucial late-season baseball game.

It wasn’t noisy. Don’t mean that. Not that pitch of near-hysteria that sometimes happens in a trendy California restaurant. It was a string quartet warming up before a Handel recital. Cole Porter running scales on the piano just before he wrote “Let’s Misbehave.”

It was, in fact, about 60 or 70 French men, women and children anticipating a very good lunch, a wink and a small joke from Nathalie Quilliet, who moves through the front of the house like an impish angel. Eric, her husband, always seems able to spare a minute from the huge grill, fired by vine cuttings that dominates one end of the restaurant, to say hello, maybe take a quick swallow of wine with an old customer who has become a friend.

The restaurant is pleasant and comfortable but no one spent $500,000 designing it. It is country French, bare bones but pleasant and comfortable with good light from windows all around and breath-taking views of the Corbieres range. Here and there tables are pushed together to accommodate a family of six or eight or a group of old friends. A crusty old grandfather who probably doesn’t smile from one Sunday to the next is beaming at his granddaughter, who is chewing on a duck leg. Up front, near the warmth of the grill, an older couple, thick with years and maybe sorrows, smile shyly across the table like teenagers and raise a glass of bright rosé wine to salute decades of love.

And as the food begins to come out, the tingle of anticipation gave way to a quite purr of satisfaction. There is plate after plate of snails a la plancha (petit gris, naturally) each tucked into a shell in a brew of garlic, wine and parsley. washed down with chilled local Muscat. (According to the menu there are 30 snails to a serving and Nathalie asks, deadpan, if you want to count them before you start eating.) There is a steady stream of huge bowls of garigue salad---a confit of duck gizzards and mixed greens topped with foie gras; plate after plate of superb grilled rabbit with aioli. By this time Nathalie has brought you a bottle of red wine, a local Grenache most likely. If you are in luck Eric will have found a local hunter who is willing to sell him a fresh-shot sanglier or wild boar, typically served in a stew of its own blood and red wine. Oh, and the cassoulet, if you are really hungry. Purists will insist that one is outside cassoulet country here. Well, let them insist while you enjoy a superb Catalan version of the Toulouse classic. The crèma catalan is a must at the end of the meal, with a glass or three of the Maury vin doux natural, a sweet red wine that ages beautifully, a cousin to Madeira. Many other dishes---duck, chicken, fish--- come from the grill and the small kitchen behind it. The crowd settles into a contented hum of happy eaters.

Over our years of roaming Catalan Country, we have probably eaten more often at Le Petit Gris than any other restaurant.
Yet, it was hardly love at first sight when Nathalie and Ann met. We were house hunting, driving madly from village to village, from one house to the next, none quite right. It was time for lunch and someone had mentioned Petit Gris. We were running late (of course) and arrived a few minutes past 1:30, which is when Nathalie closes the doors. Not yet being fully aware of the strict dining hours of rural France (being more accustomed to of Spanish Catalonia where the clocks don’t run the same) we didn’t pay much attention to the time.

Ann sent me as an advance scout to check out the menu. When I walked in, Nat pointed to her watch and shook her head. When I reported, Ann was incredulous.

“What does she mean, it’s too late for lunch,” she said, popping out of the car and storming the entrance of Le Petit Gris. I hung back, preferring to admire the view of the mountains.

The encounter between two powerful women was brief and forceful, leading to an armed and watchful truce. Nathalie. putting best foot forward for France for this “crazy California woman” graciously waved us in for a late seating. By the end of lunch, the truce had been extended and turned into a mutual admiration pact.

On a personal level, Eric and Nathalie are intellectually curious and interested in people Both have a playful sense of humor. Over many dinners that went on past midnight, in various combinations of French, English and Spanish, we’ve talked food, politics, art, music, wine, dogs, cats and children, shared fears, hopes and dreams and done our bit to keep the local population of petit gris in check and help maintain the proper balance of supply and demand in the local vineyards.

So it was with mixed feelings that we learned Eric and Nathalie have sold Le Petit Gris and are preparing for the next adventure. Maybe Argentina? Maybe California? Back to Portugal? India calling? They are gypsies at heart, eager for new experience, new friends.

We will miss them in Catalonia but they promise that Le Petit Gris is in good hands. The new owners are training with them now and will take over in May. In the meantime, we plan to spend Easter with Nathalie, Eric and their daughters, Alex and Rosalie.

We will soon file a report on the new owners and their plans for our favorite Catalan country restaurant.

Only Connect:

The snail known as petit gris is Helix aspersa and differs slightly from the Burgundy snail Helix pomatia. Although only another snail can tell the difference at a glance

“Whales do it, snails do it,
Even fluffy little quails do it,
Let’s do it, let’s fall in love.”
(Sorry, Cole.)

Le Petit Gris is just outside the town of Tautavel on the road toward Estagel. Telephone: 04 68 29 42 42.

---Larry Walker

Portrait of Limoux

There is a photograph which frames Limoux for me. A woman wearing a red sweater has posed herself before what must be the door of her wine cellar. It is a door that has seen many seasons, as has the woman.  Her left hand is raised to tidy her hair and she is smiling.

She is timeless, the woman in the picture, like Limoux. I always feel freed of the tyranny of time there.  The clocks have been stopped. We move in pre-history, the cycle of the vine and the field.. Maybe it’s because Limoux is a geographic and geological tangle. It is neither quite Mediterranean or quite Atlantic. It can be chilled one day by winds off the Atlantic and warmed the next day by a Mediterranean breeze. But the map says Limoux is in Languedoc. You can’t argue with that.  Once again, the map has failed the territory.

Back to the woman. I know from the title of the picture that she must be selling wine at the cellar door. Most likely she and her family make Blanquette de Limoux, a sparkling wine that, according to the locals and even some reasonable wine historians, was made here long before they started making bubbly in Champagne. There is even a tale that Dom Pérignon, the monk said to have invented Champagne---you remember him, the guy who said he was drinking stars---learned the art in the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Hilaire in Limoux.

Certainly the woman in the red sweater would believe that. She would also know that the first mention of Blanquette de Limoux is in 1531 in records from the abbey.  (Blanquette means white in the old Occitan tongue.)  This knowledge can be seen in her eyes, the way they looked straight out at the Photographer.  She and her family have been making wine since before the weather-beaten door was hung in place. She knows the thin rocky soils of the Pyrenees foothills, the harsh winter winds and the soft fairy green of spring. She knows that an hour’s drive south is Mount Canigou, the sacred mountain of the Catalans.

Blanquette de Limoux, like sparkling wines wherever they are made, is disgorged from the bottle after secondary fermentation and rebottled with a dosage added.  It is a splendid wine with bright lively flavors and good depth of flavor. It was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson, a man who knew his wine. At his death, Blanquette de Limoux made up 10 per cent of his cellar and was the only sparkling wine in it.

If we are lucky, she will also make a little Blanquette Méthode Ancestrale, just for family and friends. Perhaps she can spare us a bottle or two? Her tentative smile grows wider, pleased that we know of Méthode Ancestrale. It is a wine that has simply stepped aside and let the industrial revolution rush right past, gears grinding. Time out. Tear the hands off the clock, for Méthode Ancestrale keeps time by the moon. The French call it a vin mystérieux.

It is bottled always in March and at its best if bottled under a waning moon. Only natural yeasts are used in fermentation and they are never in a rush, so the wine is only partially fermented when bottled. The alcohol content is only six or seven percent. The wine is often a bit murky, what with all those dead yeast cells hanging about and it will be a little sweet because of the unfermented grape sugar.  There will also be a little lingering fermentation taking place, giving the wine a charming fizziness but making it virtually impossible to ship. You want Blanquette Méthode Ancestrale straight from the cellar door, straight from the woman in the photograph.

There is no denying that the Ancestrale is a moody wine, sometimes mute and sulky. But at its best, an underlying earthiness forms the base for a virtual banquet of aromas dominated by rich apple flavors. There are some wrong-headed writers who dismiss the wine as a mere summer sipper.  The woman in the red sweater would shrug her shoulders and shake her head at such foolish talk.

She knows that Blanquette Méthode Ancestrale is a richly satisfying wine, yielding its charm only to those who pay attention and respect it as a link to an age when time was measured in vintages and the waxing and waning moon was the common calendar.

Limoux is on the N620, about midway between Perpignan and Foix and directly south of Carcassonne.  If you want to taste at the cellar door watch for signs reading vente du vin. You can also check in at the Syndicat des vins AOC de Limoux at 20 Avenue du Pont-de-France in town (04 68 31 12 83) for a list of wineries open to visitors.

Grapes used in Blanquette de Limoux are Mauzac (called Blanquette locally), Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc. Only Mauzac is used in the Méthode Ancestrale.

Larry Walker

 

Tasting the Baby Wines

“I won’t work a vineyard if I can’t hear the terroir speak to me.” Those were almost the first words Manuel Jorel said to me. I was tasting barrel samples with him in his garage-winery in the village of St. Paul de Fenouilledes, a small town about 45 minutes west of Perpignan on the D117,

Mid-February is a good time to take a peek inside the barrels and tanks to sample last fall’s vintage. The wine is still a baby, of course, but it is starting to come together. With a little practice it is possible to get some clues about where it is going.

Jorel has made wine in various parts of southern France for more than 20 years, but when he opened his own winery in 2000 he came home to the Fenouilledes and Roussillon. His winery is a two car garage, crammed with small tanks and other winemaking gear. There is a tiny cellar below, reached only by a steep ladder, where a few dozen barrels take up almost all available space. In the event that you are over six feet tall, you will won’t be able to stand up straight.

The tiny cellar was once part of a series of tunnels carved from almost solid rock under the old town in the 10th and 11th centuries. The region has been fought over since Roman times and when the next army passed through, the inhabitants would hide out in the tunnels. All in all, it seems put to better use now.

Jorel makes about 20,000 bottles of wine a year in the space that is smaller than the tasting rooms of most California wineries. Of course, there is no tasting room at Domaine Jorel. Jorel has put together a patchwork of small vineyards around St. Paul, all organically farmed and mostly Grenache, both red and white, and a bit of Carignan. He has been steadily adding vineyards since he started the Domaine, and now has about eight hectares. But not just any vines will do for Jorel.

“I’m looking for old vine Grenache, primarily. I would be interested in vines between 60 and 100 years old. I don’t think Grenache really opens up until it has had some time. Wine from 20-year-old vines is just not the same. The vines are too young. Grenache reflects the soil, the terroir more than any other varietal,” he said. “The roots of the old vines go very deep. They can find water in dry years and they also add to the minerality of the finished wines

Jorel is passionate about the vineyards and the wine. It may sound foolish to the ears of the world’s money grubbers, but he is not in the game for the money. Sure, he has to make a living. He does not have an independent income, but the truth is he would probably make more money and work less if he left the land and moved to the city.

He is part of a new wave of growers and winemakers who are re-discovering the tremendous potential of Languedoc-Roussillon. Many, like Jorel, are locals. Others are coming from Burgundy, Bordeaux, England, Australia and California. Like Jorel, they are discovering the pure pleasure of old vine Grenache.

At the time of our tasting, Jorel was making wine from 12 different vineyards, producing up to eight different bottlings a year. That’s a lot of wine for a one man operation, plus he takes care of the vineyards as well. At harvest, the entire extended family joins in to pick the grapes. The vineyards are at different altitudes and exposures, so he can spread out the harvest over several weeks.

The barrel samples were incredible. The wines, each from a single vineyard, were, in general, rich and intense with each cuvee showing individual character. I made a few comments and Jorel said. “You can go for either high yield and inexpensive wines, or you can look for something special. I prefer something special.”

Only Connect

Domaine Jorel, 28 Rue Arago, 66220 St.-Paul de Fenouillet; domainejorel@orange.fr. www.fenouilledes-selection.com.

Larry Walker

Photos from the Truffle Festival at Lesquerde

The scene at the Coop: A woman selling chèvre in front of the tanks of new wine.

The music

Ann Walker: It's not about how they look.

The basket maker

A basket of truffles

The February Truffle

The February Truffle

The wind they call the tramontane was gusting off the Corbieres mountains, blowing high white clouds down the Agly River Valley toward the Mediterranean. In the summer the tramontane (literally ‘from beyond or the other side of the mountain’) can bring cool air. In the winter and spring it brings rain. It was the first Sunday in February and we were on our way to the truffle festival in Lesquerde. The road between Maury and Lesquerde, the D19, crosses the Maury River and climbs steeply up the mountain.


We spotted several stands of wild boar hunters, their neon-orange vests brazen in the trees and bushes. The hunters had set up their stands in the steep, wooded gully beside the road. It was prime wild boar country and not the kind that ever sniffed out a truffle. These tough, ugly and smart little piggies were true sons and daughters of Bacchus. There are grape growers who regularly lose twenty to thirty percent of their crop each year to wild boar. You can bet that a good many of the hunters had a personal score to settle

We arrived too late for rock star parking but found a spot beside the highway about a quarter mile away, and with several dozen other people, walked into Lesquerde. The fair is pitched at the wine cooperative, taking up perhaps two short blocks altogether. The street was lined with vendors on either side selling honey, cheese, sausages, herbs, flowers and local crafts. Neither the truffle hall, nor the wine coop tasting room, had opened yet. There was a feeling of expectation, of subdued excitement. Like being at a Rolling Stones concert waiting for the opening bands to finish up and clear off.

I bought a small plastic glass of Muscat for one euro—the same stand was selling instant coffee at the same price. I also bought a small desk calendar, the kind that stands up like a photo frame. It has a picture of Maury on the front, then every month inside has another picture of our home village of Maury. There must have had at least three dozen calendars of villages in the area. It is a swell calendar, even if there isn’t a picture of our house. Maybe next year.

After my second Muscat, I found the churro cart. (There are always churro carts at Catalan festivals, thank goodness. Churros, sometimes called Spanish doughnuts, are long pieces of extruded dough, deep fried crisp and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. I bought dozen in a paper cone and shared them with friends while we watched the musicians. There were only two: a tall man with a white beard playing a battered horn, perhaps it was a French horn. The other, a shorter, wiry fellow with a sly look, who played a nickelodeon which seemed to operate from printed sheets, like a player piano. They would play a song, then stop to have long chats with other vendors and friends who stopped by. Maybe they were waiting for the Rolling Stones as well. I wanted to give them some coins but they never put out a plate or a hat.

A gypsy dressed all in black and wearing a black hat stood beside the churro cart. He seemed to be always rolling a cigarette. . There was an empty space all around him as he watched the crowd.

The churros were good. (Maybe not as good as that little place just off the Plaza Mayor in Madrid where they serve fresh churros with cups of chocolate so thick you can cut it with a knife. But that’s a different story.)

Finally, the main event. The truffle hall opened precisely at 10:30, as advertised. Inside, there was an overwhelming smell of truffles, dark and pungent. Around three sides of the room---it was perhaps 30 feet wide, 40 feet long—the truffle sellers were standing behind small tables. On each table was a bowl or box of truffles and a small scale of the kind drug dealers use. Although the room was filled with people and a fair number of dogs and children, it was very serious. In theory, the price of the truffles had been set before the fete, but it seemed there were still some interesting negotiations going on.

The faces of the truffle sellers were tense and the buyers and potential buyers were focused, intent on the truffles. This was business, not a party. Selling for about a euro a gram, the price we eventually paid as a winemaker-friend bargained for us, the sellers stood to make a fair bit of extra change at the fete. One older fellow with a younger woman bought a large plastic bag—maybe 25-30 truffles, which are slightly smaller and more irregularly shaped that your standard horse turd. They must have spent well over 1000 euros. They were both smiling.

After we bought our two token truffles I went back out into the sunshine and listened to the music again. The whole affair was very orderly. There were occasional outbursts of kissing on both cheeks. A very French fete. I would have liked to stay for another snack of churros and Muscat, but my friends were chilled by the tramontane, so we left.

As I walked past the churro stand, the gypsy was rolling a cigarette. Our eyes met briefly as he struck a match.

Only Connect

The truffle fete in the village of Lesquerde is held the second Sunday in February, which fell on the 8th this year.

At the Rabbit King

A cold late January rain was passing down when we pulled into the parking lot of Casa del Conill (house of the rabbit in Catalan) just over an hour’s drive from Barcelona. Our mind was on rabbit. We were anticipating rabbit. We were thinking of rich and warming red wine from the Priorat which we would like to introduce to the rabbit. We were thinking of how many ways rabbit can be prepared, which is why we were at the restaurant which is known locally as Conill Rei or Rabbit King because of the kitchen’s many ways with rabbit.

Although we were only a few miles from the ramblas in Barcelona, surely one of the most esoteric if not downright weird cityscapes anywhere in the world, at the Casa Conill we were deep in the Catalan countryside. This was where the mystic Catalan spirit and the very practical Catalan ego hang out together. (See almost anything by Gaudi.) The nearest town of any size is Vilafranca del Penedes, the most important winegrowing center in Catalonia. Think of Napa without the tees, cute little B&Bs, and pricy shops. Just miles and miles of vineyards and working bodegas. And a sprinkling of restaurants that will keep you eating until way past midnight.

The back story: anywhere you go in Spain, you will find people eating rabbit. The very name of the country is all tangled up in rabbits. Carthaginians, who were in Spain before the Romans, were so impressed by the local rabbit population that they called the country Ispania, or land of the rabbits, from their word for rabbit, span. When the Romans arrived beginning in the third century AD they kept the name, calling the peninsula Hispania, although they booted out the Carthaginians.

We can let Virginia Woolf, not noted as a Spanish scholar but rather good at language, have the last word. In her book Flush, a biography of the poet Elizabeth Barret Browning’s cocker spaniel, Woolf wrote: “Many million years ago the country which is now called Spain seethed uneasily in the ferment of creation. Ages passed; vegetation appeared; where there is vegetation the law of Nature has decreed that there shall be rabbits; where there are rabbits, Providence has ordained there shall be dogs.” And if the dogs chase rabbits, they would be called, of course, spaniels. And the oh so common domestic cocker spaniel is of Spanish origin and somewhere in that muddled floppy eared gene pool spaniels are still chasing rabbits.

(And no, this is not the time to ask about Alice and the White Rabbit. That’s a different trip altogether.)

Casa del Conill is a large mas on the C-244, the road between Vilafranca and Sitges, in the small village of Sant Miguel d’ Olérdola. There is a sprawl of rooms, ranging from small to grand---the restaurant seats up to 350 people. There is also a huge cellar, much of it given over to aged rancio, the common name in Catalonia for vin doux naturel that have been deliberately maderized. The best rancios have a powerful flavor, reminiscent of overripe fruit, nuts and almost rancid fat. Right. They are an acquired taste but once you acquire it you will make long pilgrimages to satisfy it. (See future rancio posting.) The interior of the rabbit king is fairly plain, although the owners couldn’t resist sprinkling a few old time vineyard tools here and there. Who could? It’s built for eating, not for flash.

Back to the rabbit, a very Catalan rabbit. Two Catalan rabbits, as it turned out.

Ann ordered the rabbit cooked in snails and I ordered the rabbit with turnips and pears. Solid winter comfort dishes, but what makes them Catalan? Let’s start with the snails. Sure, snails are eaten outside of Catalonia but rarely with the gusto that you find there. Catalans do take their snails seriously. Every spring in Lleida in western Catalonia, there is a snail festival which attracts hungry snail snackers from all over Spain. (See Snails posting coming soon.)

My rabbit with turnips and pears is clearly a very old recipe. Turnips were the most popular root vegetable all over Europe before the introduction of the potato from the Americas. What makes it Catalan is the combination of fruit with meat, especially game. Such combinations are sometimes found elsewhere in Europe, usually in recipes going back to the middle ages, but are still rather common in Catalonia.

Salud!



Rabbit with Snails
(conill amb cargols)
Serves four to six

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 rabbit, cut into six pieces
salt and freshly ground black pepper
24-30 snails, fresh or canned; if fresh leave in shells
6 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
3/4 pound onions, peeled and minced
2 small red bell peppers, stemmed, seeded and chopped
1 pound tomatoes, peeled, seeded and pureed
2 sprigs fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 cup chicken stock

Preheat oven to 350F
Heat oil in a skillet, add the rabbit and cook until golden, lightly sprinkling with salt and pepper as it cooks.
If using canned shells, refresh under cold running water. Set aside. Remove the rabbit from the skillet and set aside.

Add garlic tot he skillet and cook over moderate heat until browned. Add the onions and cook until soft. Stir n the peppers and cook 1 minute. Add tomatoes and cook to a paste. Add thyme and stock and cook until the liquid is reduced to 1/2 cup. Mix with the rabbit in an ovenproof casserole. Add snails. Bake for 30 minutes. Serve direct from the oven in the casserole.

Rabbit with Turnips and Pears
(conill amb naps i peres)
Serves six

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 2 1/2 pound rabbit, cut into six serving pieces
1 medium onion, peeled and minced
2 leeks, cleaned and finely chopped, white part only
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
1 tomato, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 bay leaf
Sprig each of thyme, marjoram and oregano
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 small pears, peeled and cored
2 cups chickens tock
1 cup dry white wine
2 pounds turnips, peeled and cut into strips

Heat the oil in a large skillet and sauté the rabbit until golden. Remove the rabbit. Add more oil if necessary and sauté the onion, leeks, garlic and carrot until soft. Add the tomatoes, herbs, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper; cook over high heat until reduced to a paste.

Return the rabbit to the sauce and arrange the pears around the rabbit. Pour one cup of the stock and the wine over all and cook, covered, over medium-low heat until the rabbit feels tender when pierced with a fork, about 30-45 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring the remaining cup of stock to a boil in a saucepan and add the turnips. Cook, covered until tender. Drain, reserving the stock and setting aside the turnips on a heated platter.

Remove the rabbit and pears from the skillet to the heated platter of turnips and keep warm. Purée the stock in a blender, pour it through a fine sieve into the skillet and add the reserved turnip stock. Cook over high heat to reduce and thicken. Taste for seasoning. Pour the sauce over the dish and serve immediately.



Only Connect

Casa del Conill, Sant Miguel d’Olérdola.
93-890 20 01
www.casadelconill.com
info@casadelconill.com

The recipes above and many others will be available in the upcoming book Catalan Hours by Ron Scherl, Ann Walker and Larry Walker.

Catalonia is a state of mind as well as a physical space. On our newly drawn map, it stretches roughly from the delta of the Ebro River south of Barcelona to the Mediterranean marshes and the Cevennes mountains north of Perpignan in France. It's Catalonia on both sides of the border, wherever the inhabitants think of themselves as Catalan. It is not so much a political statement, although there is some of that, but an emotional response: a matter of the heart, not the brain.