Monsieur le Mayor!

The war memorial in Montaud outside the Mayor's office.

April 16^th, 2009

After waking on the 16^th Rob and I went off to the Brico Marche to get a few things we needed.  For example, we needed a snake for the plumbing as we had developed a stoppage and I couldn’t abide letting it go.   While we were there we picked up several other items, including a couple of young olive trees and two peach trees….I love peaches and the olive trees are everywhere in this area.

After returning we spent an hour or so clearing the blockage which proved to be very prophetic for our planned meeting with the Mayor of Montaud, Monsieur le Mairie Pierre Combet.

That meeting, scheduled for eleven, began right on time.  I met the Mayor and listened while Christian translated Monsieur le Mairie's southern French into Christian's broken English, although never rapidly enough to assuage my growing sense of dis-ease.  I gathered that they spoke of land uses and septic systems and permits and the like, and while that might be the dross of many an existence surely it was the lifeblood of the Mairie of a small commune in France. 

After explaining our business model, that Micro-Leaseholder clients were more like part owners than customers and assuring the mayor that indeed we wanted to abide by all requirements as necessary, did the conversation begin to flow more to my liking.  We were joined by the town's planner and by the brother of the Mayor, Joel Combet who, besides being a former director of the cooperative was also my closest neighbour in the Hameau de Montlaur.

At this point I became effusive and somehow found a well of French in me that I had not suspected.  In passionate fashion, I stood, arms waving and gesticulating at the large aerial photograph of the commune on the wall behind us which included the Chateau grounds and the farm as well as several of the vineyards.  I described a future where together we could create something new, unique and different that would serve the community, the family Montlaur, and my customers.  Something that would be a wellspring of education and a source of jobs and pride in the community, something that took the natural gifts of Montlaur and allowed them to work for us, for all of us.  With their piece of land that almost assuredly holds a stretch of Roman ruins and road and the medieval Chateau I sketched out a possible future including a regional park to aid in the interpretation of the history of the area.  There was a point at which my own enthusiasm became infectious.  I finally sensed that they had become just as excited as I.

Aerial View of the farm compound (lower right)

These are savvy people, country farmers they may be but they have seen a lot of fair and foul weather over the years and they know when the sun is shining just as surely as when it is not.  They made several good points.  Points about their role, and procedure and paths…most specifically that the project was best approached in a unified way along one path…and they were the ones to help make it happen.  I was very glad to hear the news.  We had gone from discussing the prerogatives of bureaucracy and how we might be made to serve it to defining a collective vision and how we might use bureaucracy to make it serve the community.  It was a beautiful thing to witness.  I’ll have to ask Christian what it is I really said during that meeting.

Regardless, one point was made and it was abundantly clear, they admire most those that both say a thing and then do a thing.  That’s our challenge then.

Having had that wonderful meeting we celebrated at the Café in St. Bauzille over lunch.  When we got home Christian and Rob burned some of the brush we had cleared and I installed the new toilet and shower in the new bathroom.  I even had enough time to christen the facility with a first flush and a first shower.  Bravo, everything works and we now have a thoroughly modern bathroom.

That night both Rob and I were still aglow from the great meeting and drank several toasts to the day over leftovers and a couple of fine local wines.  It might be good to be king sometimes but I am a builder and I can say that it's good to be that on some days too.

Chicken Mother for the Soul!

April 15th, 2009

Wednesday began overcast, a sloshy kind of gray sky that just seemed satisfied to churn itself into submission. By 10:00 the sky had cleared enough to proclaim it officially a beautiful day.

Most important today was the dinner we were having that evening with Christian, Corinne and Francois, from whom I purchased my little CGV. We also had to make sure that all of the invitations we had made up for our upcoming party Saturday, were handed out. That party would be our “coming out”, a presentation to the community of Montlaur and beyond, including the Mayor, the Cooperative and to the region that we were here to become a crucial part of reinvigorating the farm and the Chateau de Montlaur. I personally delivered most of the invitations, getting confronted by the anti-social small black dog, which lives across the square from the farmhouse, in the process. He is a vicious little bugger and courageous far beyond his size. The only thing that stops him short of taking a piece of your leg is to face him straight on and look him in the eye. He won’t attack then but he’ll annoy the crap out of you.

Rob and I had talked over dinner plans the day before and so we were ready to head out for a provisioning run to the local stores. As it happened we picked up a stereo system at the local cash converters (read pawn shop) for 50 euros and then visited three grocery stores to get all of the ingredients we were looking for, including brandy, which was remarkably difficult to find. Apparently the French don’t drink a lot of it and what we found was suitable only for cooking or perhaps for the final stages of sclerosis of the liver.

Armed with the provisions and anxious to get home to get some work done we enjoyed a little jaunt through the French countryside in CGV before arriving back at the “ranch”. While Rob busied himself in the “cuisine” I made ready to grout the new floor. This turned into the floor grouting from hell. It turns out the French don’t use polymerized grout. (I know you guys are all shaking your heads, “How could they not use polymerized grout?”) That’s what I thought. But here it is, they seem to know their way around the various products of masonry and tiling. Still the grout I made up seemed dry to start, prone to drying quickly and when in contact with the old tiles dried immediately to the consistency of hardened wet sand. What I thought would be a couple hours of grouting and washing turned into 6 hours of arm cranking hell. Oh, I adapted. After all I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck but I stubbornly did two thirds of the floor the way a North American would do it before succumbing to the simpler stratagems suggested in the all French instructions. They called for soupier grout, pre-wetting the tile and scraping off excess grout before I washed it out. Still what I would have given for a dozen bags of polymerized grout right then is scary.

Having run my grouting time right up to dinner I barely squeezed in a shower before our guest of honour, Francois had arrived. Francois does developmental work for an aid organization based in France and working with several African countries He is affable, charming and speaks English well if with some hesitation (and he represents yet another single southern French gentleman after Benjamin who would do well to meet a few of my clients!). He has two (I think) very nice sons who live with him and he hopes to send them to the US this year for their vacation.



Rob had prepared a very impressive meal and set a wonderful table. He had also brought over a bottle of his favourite bourbon to share with Christian, something that Christian appreciated very much. We spent an enjoyable evening with the fireplace crackling behind us while wine flowed and food was consumed. Somewhere in all of that Rob earned his nickname. I can’t remember the specifics of the circumstance, perhaps it was his oversight of Corinne and I engaged in a chocolate fondue battle during dessert, or maybe something he said to Christian…anyway Christian, in his idiomatic French, referred to Rob as being a real “chicken mother”. Now I think we all knew he meant “Mother Hen” and he meant it in the most benign of ways but somehow “Chicken Mother” just sounded more epithet-ish.



Whatever, it was the hilarity of the moment transcended all else and we happily bid them adieu that night and made ourselves off to bed.

A guest arrives!

And the photography begins.....

Rob's first lunch at the farm.

April 14th, 2009

Morning came earlier than it seemed and a quick coffee got Christian and I on the road back to Montlaur. Rob was arriving today and I did not want to be late to pick him up. The last time he had arrived I was 45 minutes late and he rented a car and ended up lost for a while before he found Montlaur. Not this time!

I got home, cleaned up a bit and fired up the little Opel Corsa. This would be the farthest trip afield with the car so far and I was a little nervous of a breakdown somewhere on the road with Rob standing at the station looking forlornly up and down the street.

But I had no problems. I arrived 45 minutes early (thus making my average arrival time deviation exactly zero). I lounged, bought an International Herald Tribune, checked the NHL scores and got some money out of the bank.

He arrived at 12:30 and we got out of the station and out of Montpellier very quickly, hitting 120 kph on the highway. I was proud of my little car and after some discussion about her I nicknamed her CGV, Corsa Gran Vitesse after the French TGV trains and of course ennobling her high speed prowess. I did lament the fact that there was no fifth gear, which did not stop me from trying to shift in to it from time to time when the situation seemed warranted.

I had planned a lunch at home but unfortunately I had forgotten to get some fresh baguette. Realizing this as we pulled into the driveway, I turned around and headed for San Drezery and the little convenience store there that, of course, sells a pretty good selection of fresh bread. Unfortunately, this is a land that time forgot and upon our arrival all we were greeted by was a closed door. Everything was closed for the lunch break, which usually lasts about 2 hours.

So I said, “lets go to St. Bauzille de Montmel. There’s a good café there that serves a nice lunch for 11 euros.” Off we went, CGV buzzing merrily along the twisting French roads. Pulling up in front of the café we were greeted by …a closed door. “Ferme lundi et mardi.” Damn! “Well how about we go to Sommieres …there must be something open in Sommieres.”

CGV groaned out of St. Bauzille and headed down the road to Sommieres. Rinnnggg! It was Christian reminding me that I had an appointment at the bank at 3:00, on the other side of Montlaur. It was 2:30 and we were going in the wrong direction! Change of plan. “We’ll get a baguette at Sommieres and I’ll drop you at the farm and then head to the appointment.” Ok. Rob was jet lagged and drooling slightly for lack of food, an easy mark for my subtle manipulations. “Ok” he agreed.

That all accomplished I made the appointment at 3:15 and proceeded to have a pleasant transaction in opening an account at the local bank. Neither of us I’m sure understood a word the other had said but in the end I walked out with my bank account opened and to boot I had won a new account opening prize of 40 euros. “I should do this more often.” I thought.

Rob was pretty well bushed when I got home so we ended up having a quiet dinner, which he prepared and some of Jean Pierre’s great syrah to cap the evening. “And it was only ____euros!” I said. Rob beamed in appreciation of yet another joy of the Land of “Yes”, Languedoc.

Start your engines! (Sorry, rain delay)

Sunset at Montlaur

Benjamin and I 

April 13th, 2009

Today Christian and I are going on a road trip. We’re going to see Benjamin Schmerber’s race training circuit. Benjamin and Christian raced together in “cart” series racing. Hand now Benjamin has found a way to keep his passion for racing alive and trains interested people to drive his Subaru rally racing cars around a one of a kind dirt track. Now I like driving fast, there’s no doubt about that but training? Who needs training…you get that from the school of hard knocks or, as I like to call it, near death experience. But Benjamin makes a persuasive case. Its not about speed, its about control. Why do I feel a tortoise and hare story in the offing.

But first I wanted to get some basic work done to prepare for the arrival of my friend and part time business partner, Rob Davis. I’d missed his birthday party yesterday and I was looking forward to showing him all the improvements at the farm since the last time he was here. Such as toilets, sleeping quarters, actual running water and of course that thoroughly modern convenience, electricity! Wow! Have we made improvements here at Monte Lauro Vineyards in the beautiful “other” south of France.

And of course the well-stocked wine cellar would certainly meet with his approval. So I made like a French maid and cleaned and dusted all morning, set up his sleeping quarters and generally made ready to make him welcome. Before I knew it is was time to leave for St. Gilles, where Benjamin lives towards the eastern edge of Languedoc.

It was a pleasant drive over after the hard rain of the weekend but we were certain that the dirt track would be too wet to drive on. It was a shame since on arriving at the track you pull up a hill and park at the top. From there the view of the “petit Camargue”, an area made up part of the Rhone river delta and filled with canals and rice fields, was stunning. We toured, ie walked, around the track and I managed to edge out both of the experienced drivers at the very end with a burst of speed over the ditch and up the hill, although I’m not sure that they realized that in my mind I had been racing them all the way around. “Hah!” I exclaimed to myself, “Victory! Winner’s circle here I come!”
Afterwards we lounged in Benjamins “Clubhouse” a structure he has set up for race attendee’s to enjoy the races, replete with a bar and first class view of the circuit. From there it was on to visit Jean Piere Martin’s Chateau Aveylan for a wine tasting. Little did I know that the visit would change the course of the trip and the future of our own vineyard…but I’ll get to that.

Driving up to Chateau Aveylan I was struck by the same feeling I am almost always struck by when I visit a French winery, that is that the French don’t place much emphasis on marketing. We drove in past what appeared as a fairly industrial installation, old equipment adorning the foreyard, random bits of twitch grass growing from isolated crevices between concrete and pavement, adjoining walls and an array of boxes with dating indicating they were for a 2005 vintage.

Benjamin preceded us and while I was looking around, Jean Pierre arrived to greet us. He and Benjamin were personal friends and I had heard already a few good stories of the master of Chateau Aveylans. My first impression was that he was a right fine specimen of an English country gentleman, older and lanky in the way of squire who has lived the majority of his life out of doors. Of course I could not say this to him because ..well you don’t know how offended a Frenchman might be if he were told that he looked English, even though I thought of the resemblance in the best possible of ways. In any event I was afraid a scene from Monty Python was at risk of unfolding if I did say that so I muttered a greeting in my pathetic French.

After some niceties, and feeling rather parched from my victory lap at the track, I suggested that we proceed directly to the wine tasting. However, pleasantly, a tour of the whole facility and a discussion of capacity, hectares, investment and the like preceded our entry into the small salon where wine bottles stood here and there around the room and an array of literature, including Parkers impressively high ratings of Jean Pierre’s wines, layered the central table. After some effort to find four identical glasses, Jean Pierre suggested that we first try something straight from the cuivre. Excellent idea, I thought, as we made our way out to a set of outside tanks that reminded me of grain silos on the prairies. We made our way to a tank of some 25000 liters, whch was destined to be shipped in “flexi-tanks” to Vancouver the following week. Hah! I thought, I’ll be the first Canadian to try this one.

From a small tap inconspicuously located on the side of the tank he poured off our four glasses, a dark velvety purple liquid the very colour of which spelled promise. “100 per cent syrah!” he announced and the youngest in his brood of wines. I conspicuously grasped my glass by the base, swirled the contents and took the nose. I think you could have seen my eyebrows shoot up back at home had you been looking in my direction. If a butterfly’s wing flap in Asia could start at tornado in Kansas then my eyebrows might well be responsible for the late winter storm that hit Canada later that week.

“My God!” I said aloud, although not being a religious type what I really meant was Holy cow! If the taste that followed the nose was any indication, this was going to be good. It was! I judge a wine not by how good it tastes but by how bad it doesn’t. Many wines start out well, peak too early and then dive at the end. A few take the low road and come back at the end finishing strongly, although that’s a harder trick. But a wine that is fit to thoroughly enjoy (as opposed to just drink) crosses the palate with enough flavour to leave strong and positive sensory impressions and then, through the swallow and afterwards, those positive impressions linger. The best wine I have ever had echoed with positive sensory impressions for almost ten minutes…but that was $150 a bottle. This young little syrah was good for several minutes before I was compelled to taste again.

And that was the first wine. We returned to the small office and Jean Pierre selected several more wines of increasing complexity, largely syrah based but also a few syrah-grenache blends. I can only say that each one was a joy and the increasing complexity made the exercise both one of enjoyment and enthusiastic anticipation for the next. I bought a case of wine right there and paid my money…I’m not going to say how much because that I want you all to experience for yourself but let’s just say that my mother, who doesn’t drink, would consider it a good deal.

Benjamin suggested that Jean Pierre might be interested in finding an importer for his products and that he might be interested in coming to Montlaur to take a look at Monte Lauro Vineyards. We knew we needed to have some work done so I humbly asked if he might come and give us an opinion. He was effusive I think in his agreement and we set Friday as the day he would visit. I was very excited that we might possibly get the benefit of his experience and expertise for our stripling little vineyard and, perhaps flushed from the tasting, I spoke confidently in French that “I would be happy to receive him on Friday at Montlaur”. I’m not at all certain that that is what I said as he momentarily seemed confused but Benjamin smoothed everything over nicely and we left in very good spirits.

It was early evening and we made out way to Belle Garde to see the medieval tower there. Apparently they host concerts at the tower. It is a square-ish structure with three sides, the fourth obliterated in some long ago and forgotten battle. Simple really when compared to the ruin at Montlaur which is far more dramatic and encompasses much greater space and variety of buildings. His point was really, if they could hold a damn concert there then we could certainly hold one at the much better venue of the Chateau Montlaur. Of course we can, I thought, the wine still pulsing through my veins. We can do anything!

Then back to Benjamin’s place in St. Gilles for dinner. Benjamin hails from Alsace Lorraine, that great storehouse of culinary art and tradition. If you’ve not tried the Alsatian charcroute with a good Riesling, you’ve not truly lived. But he is a bachelor, not confirmed, but in his mid-fifties and deeply immersed in the world of auto racing. I daresay the right girl will have to foreswear being cooked for or, perhaps better, come to the table with her own restaurant.
I poke a little fun, the food Benjamin had procured from the Chinese restaurant down the street was excellent and certainly we had several bottles of good wine to mellow out the evening. We argued about politics and the economy and in the end I adjourned to bed leaving them to discuss the vicissitudes of racing. It was a remarkable day.

Stoned again!

Some shots of the "New" bathroom before (lower) and during (above) renovation...some later shots this trip to show the finished product!

April 12th 2009

I spent most of Easter Sunday on my knees, which in at least one sense would make my mom happy, however rather than venerating the almighty, an act of faith in the unknown, I placed my faith in 400 year-old tiles coupled with modern adhesion technology. Yes I spent Sunday preparing to tile the “new” bathroom, tiling the “new” bathroom, and admiring my tiling of the “new” bathroom. I say new because I began to muse on old and new when I found one old tile with the paw prints of a dog set clearly on it (I did us it in the floor).

I got me to thinking about how old the tile was, which I knew to be in the range of three to four hundred years old. Do you know what that is in dog years? Two to three millennia! Anyway, that lead me to thinking about the bathroom which is in the farmhouse which again is bout 650 years old…650 years old! It was here before my ancestors left France for Canada, before there was even a thought of a “New” world, indeed even before Columbus drifted off course and bumped into the Americas.

I know I’m not alone in my sense of wonder at the age of things but there are times when even I am drawn up short thinking of the spans of human time that are represented in the farmhouse. It goes back further I know…there used to be a Roman settlement very close by and its certainly safe to assume villas and buildings throughout the area. By all reckoning the peak population of free and slave of this area in Roman times probably approached about 30-40 percent of modern levels, that would mean about 1200 souls in this little valley, most clustered around this hill called Monte Lauro. They would have built fine sturdy houses in stone, their quarrying marks like signatures on masterpieces.

You can scan a wall today, knowing that the stones are probably in their third or fourth use, and pick out the ones most likely quarried by the Romans. They are everywhere. To me it is a comfort, that even in their jumbled reutilization, that they remain as they were originally made, by hands long set in rest and by minds that saw the world in way so different than we can now see.

Even further back, one wall of the farm has in it a very peculiar stone, a stone unlike any other in the wall. My eyes were drawn to it like a magnet when I first saw it in full light. I can imagine the masons, hundreds of years ago working on that wall, laughing under the hot Mediterranean sun, toiling on makeshift scaffolding and coming upon this stone. I can see them hefting it with one hand, tossing it, as masons do, to see its best fit in the puzzle of the whole wall. I can imagine their surprise when the stone stared back at them, through eyes long turned to stone themselves. They then set it in the wall looking over the stable, as if like some guardian set to watch over the flock for as long as the wall stood. They would not have known then anything about fossils or about human history. They would have believed themselves descended from Adam and Eve, cast out of the garden into a long and toilsome stint in purgatory. They would not have thought these eyes the eyes of man but of some beast. But perhaps what they cradled in their hands was their own kin, some million years old and turned to stone with the passage of time. It closely resembles skulls of homo erectus. And perhaps it watched another dawn in its own day in this very same part of the world. Who knows…but it begs thinking, and pondering and wondering.

That is another reason why I like it here. It seems that the mind is unshackled from the rut of everyday existence and is free to travel the pathways of conjecture and to arrive at some very different places than one might otherwise venture to.

I don’t think I’ll ever think of stones the same way again but unlike that old dog who walked across some tiles freshly made I have the hope that my marks will be seen in a few hundred years by someone who thinks about what came before them.

How about them apples!

April 11th, 2009

Today it rained. I mean it poured. The skies opened up and rain came down like a million garden hoses had been turned on. If the weather had held back up to now it was suddenly in full release and water filled up every gutter and ditch, depression and field. Thunder rolled across the region and lightning flashed repeatedly throughout the day. It seemed one system would just finish up and the next would roll in to take its place.

I was happily ensconced in my farmhouse, working away at the plumbing for the new bathroom, a task at which I easily whiled away the better part of the day. Except for one adventure to Leroy Merlin for materials since they were to be closed for the Easter Weekend.

I went for dinner at Corinne and Christians with our friend Benjamin also in attendance. We had hamburgers done French style. I must say I have had my share of hamburgers and make my own vey well. These were delicious, well made and quite delightful. But the dessert was what was even more amazing, something so simple and tasty I could hardly believe that I hadn’t seen it before….basically it was battered and fried apple slices dusted with crystalline brown sugar.

Here’s the recipe for two apples;

1 cup of flour
1 ½ cup of milk
4 egg yolks
2 apples peeled, cored and sliced about 1/8 inch thick
crystalline brown suger (cassonade in France)

Mix the flour, egg yolks and milk and layer over the slices of apple.

Heat a frying pan with vegetable oil so that its hot (like for pancakes) and lay in the slices of apple, enough to cover the cooking surface but keeping the pieces separate. Cook for two minutes on each side. Remove and sprinkle with the brown suger.

Serve hot. They taste like little mini apple fritters which I guess is what they are.

Bureaucracy reigns supreme....

April 10th, 2009

Today it finally rained, alight misty sort of rain that refused to really fall straight down by floated in somewhat sideways to dampen everything. Today I spent four hours standing in line at the Prefecture de Montpellier learning what it is like to operate within the bureaucracy of France. It is essentially a glorified DMV but I have never seen line ups like this. We drew number 659 when we entered. The number being served was 523 and then there were numbers and lines for other things like licenses, registrations, foreign persons registrations, and of course an information line up to get information on which line you should be standing in. Thankfully I had Christian with me. He knows his way around French bureaucracy, although the simple challenge of registering the car in my name had proved a challenge which had used up the entire six months of validity of our “Controle Technic”, that form that says the used car meets road safety standards. This was the last day of its validity. We stood in line with our fingers crossed.

But no worries! Once we had waited our allotted time (hatching plans to come in and take numbers and then sell them to later arrives), we whisked through the registration simply relieved to be done and out of there.

I spent Friday afternoon picking up materials and preparing the upstairs bathroom for the final installations of shower, sink and flooring. It will be a comfortable place when I am finished I think.

I made a great dinner of pork chops cooked with some flowers of rosemary that I picked out side the farmhouse in the Place du Vieux Chateau, fresh mushrooms and cream and poured myself a glass of wine before settling down to read Travels with Charlie and get an early start on sleep for the night.