An Autumnal Visit to Château Montus and Château Bouscassé

Friends from Toulouse had recommended a vineyard visit and lunch chez Alain Brumont, the visionary proprietor of both Château Montus and Château Bouscassé. We began at Chateau Montus,le roi de Madiran, whose wines, made from Tannat grapes, have won many prestigious prizes. The distinctive Tannat grape variety now rivals Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in Bordeaux, Pinot in Burgundy and Syrah in the Côtes du Rhône. It produces very dark wines with a subtle, powerful fruitiness and high levels of tannin, which give them an exceptional capacity to age. They are deep and well balanced, the perfect complement to the rich food of the region.

When Alain Brumont bought Château Montus in 1980, on the basis of the terroir's reputation in the eighteenth century, he recognised that he could restore the reputation of the Madiran region and create a world class wine. With its steep slopes and fully south facing, sunny slopes, it was a labour of love. He invested vast sums in both the château and the caves, as well as state of the art technology. The caves, designed by renowned architect Edmond Lay, and including the first underground cellar in the south-west, are a sight to behold. I particularly loved the beautiful mosaic of Bacchus on the floor.

From there, we drove up to the vineyard of La Tyre, the highest point of the appellation. Here the slope is at a gradient of 20%-40% and a cooling breeze blows through the vines, ventilating the grapes when, in summer, most of the leaves are removed. Its terroir consists of large pebbles, one of the last traces of the Pyrénées dating back forty million years, on yellow and red clay subsoil. The La Tyre vineyard produces the finest, and most expensive, wines from the Brumont estate. Made from 100% Tannat grapes, the 2010 vintage is priced at a hefty 150€ a bottle in their shop.

It was a bitterly cold day, so we were grateful for a respite in the tree house at the top of the slope, where Thomas, our guide, produced a 2014 Château Bouscassé white wine, called Les Jardins Philosophiques, made from Petit Courbu and Petit Manseng grapes, which we sampled with delicious morceaux of Noir de Bigorre jambon, the local speciality ham. It's cured from the naturally fed black pigs of the Pyrénées, whose history dates back to Benedictine monks of the XI century. The recent revival by a small group of enthusiasts over the last thirty years has made it a serious rival to the highly prized Spanish Jamón Pata Negra.

We finished at Chateau Bouscassé, the thriving hub of the Brumont enterprise, where we were led into the cosy staff dining room full of long tables bedecked with blue and white checked tablecloths. The wood burner was much appreciated. We were taken to a table at the far end, where our personalised menu awaited us, each dish prepared by their Alsatian chef, Loïc Ripamonti, who each day prepares lunch for thirty to forty people. It was the best meal we've eaten all year, all beautifully prepared from the best local produce and based around Noir de Bigorre and the chateau's own Poule Noire,washed down with a carefully chosen selection of wines from Montus and Bouscassé [list can be provided]. It was the perfect end to a wonderful visit.....and, of course, we left with four cases of wine, including the Château Montus 2016, for our Christmas guests!

When You Have Time On Your Hands

We arrived at Bardies on the Ides of March. All was quiet, not a car on the road, no planes in the sky, not even the ubiquitous Airbus test flight circling overhead. The molecules in the air had changed. None of us knew how the Covid 19 virus circulated. We were afraid of what we didn't understand. The images from northern Italy distressed us all, so much closer to home than faraway China, whose 2014 SARS outbreak had barely touched Europe. Now bodies were being carried out of hospitals in towns close to familiar ski resorts, places we had been to in more carefree days. Tens of thousands of skiers returned home after holidays high in the Alps with no idea they were carrying a deadly new virus. One of them, a close friend, came down with it a week later. She was one of the lucky ones. Her symptoms were mild. 'It's very strange,' she said, 'but I can't smell or taste anything.' We didn't know then that this was a primary symptom.

We hunkered down, glad to be in the depths of La France profonde . The house soon warmed up with the woodburner on the go. The winter is long in Ariège. With no television, we avoided the worst of the TV images, though Radio 4 reports of care home deaths were deeply distressing. We didn't exactly feel safe, because we didn't know much about the transmission of Covid 19, but we didn't feel as exposed as we'd have been in Brighton. French confinement rules limited us to exercise no more than half a kilometre from our house, and we had to carry a written attestation. We were allowed to shop, also with said attestation, but our kind neighbours volunteered to do it for us, which they did for the eight consecutive weeks before quarantine was lifted. Between times, they brought us fresh bread and milk, and eggs from their relations. Never had we appreciated so much the French notion of commune, not so much a geographical area as a state of mind.

We were strangely content. The weather was glorious; time took on a whole new meaning. When you have time on your hands, your head clears and you live in the present. It was a new experience for both of us. The first thing we did was to turn the salon into an office for Peter. If he was to be working from home, he needed his own space, something it was impossible to have in our spatially challenged Brighton flat, where we all fought for space on the kitchen table. I emptied all the ancient china from the built in armoires on either side of the fireplace and Peter arranged our CD and vinyl collection into genres, in alphabetical order. Stuck indoors, we needed music to lift our spirits. His guitars could finally be stored in one room, where there was also an electric piano. He would work all morning, then spend his afternoons, if he wasn't still working, playing the piano or guitar, or gardening. As the descendant of a Flemish gardyner, he was in his natural habitat.

We evolved a routine that worked for us, a rhythm of life that suited both of us. I would do an hour's yoga first thing to keep my aging muscles from deteriorating further, then do some research or write. Between times I set myself the task of learning to play the Bach C Major partita, the first and easiest piece from 'The Well Tempered Clavier'. Pretentious, moi? My aplologies for sounding smug when many were numb. For me, it was therapeutic. I loved the progressions, which were like practising scales, only more tuneful. I loved the rhythm of the piece. I loved having a project that totally focussed my cluttered brain. It was a time of gifts, to quote the title of Patrick Leigh Fermor's book, especially as I hadn't played the piano since my son was tiny. When I found my old practice pieces under the lid of the piano stool, I took to playing nursery rhymes as a respite from concentrating. It was fun and brought back memories of being a new mother. He's thirty now, so I don't suppose I'll be playing them for him again.

I made soup for lunch every day, something I wouldn't have done in Brighton. 'For better, for worse, but not for lunch' had been my mantra throughout our married life. Now, I had all the time in the world. A weekly shop makes for a very inventive cook, especially towards the end of the week. No running to the Co-op for missing ingredients. I'd make new dishes, and dishes I hadn't made for years, scouring cookery books for inspiration. When you live somewhere with proximity to good, seasonal produce, what you eat is part of the rhythm of life. I discovered that the essence of being a good cook is time. So often we rush. We skip essential stages or take shortcuts, or, worst of all, misread the recipe because we're hurried. When time isn't your enemy, cooking is a joy, something to be savoured as much as the end result.

We ate asparagus until it came out of our proverbial ears; steamed asparagus with homemade Hollandaise sauce, creamy, eggy tarts topped with Parmesan, the perfect spring lunch fayre for a lazy Saturday afternoon, as well as omelettes, risottos, soups and salads. Before I moved here, I never understood why the French preferred the white variety over the more earthy green asparagus. I've become a convert. I love the subtle flavour of white asparagus. Now I enjoy nothing more than it simply steamed, with a glug of good olive oil, salt and freshly ground black pepper. Bliss. Then, as quickly as it came, the season ended and asparagus was no more. It's a salutory lesson for a pandemic. Nothing lasts forever.

Back at Bardies, permanently

Blog at Bardies is back! I decided to stop writing my blog in July 2014 because I thought people were bored with the prevalence of blog posts about life in France. Then last Sunday I woke up thinking of the numerous things that have changed for us in the last nine years; how our journey may be of interest to others in a similar situation, or to those catapulted through circumsatnce into rethinking their post-Brexit lives. [There, I've said it! I've got the 'B' word out after just three sentences.] I cannot think of another event in my life that has so changed all our hopes, dreams and plans.

Like many people, I thought that David Cameron was playing to his own gallery when he called for a referendum on our membership of the European Union. How wrong I was. In the face of heated debates about sovereignity, immigration and the accession of Turkey, facts and figures became irrelevant. It was impossible to argue with raw emotion. And the rest, as they say, is history. Having had a house in France for over twenty years, it felt as though a limb was being amputated.

At first, numb with shock, we struggled with definitions: hard/ soft Brexit, Withdrawal Agreement, Article 50, customs union, single market, Northern Ireland protocol, free trade agreement, passporting, to name a few. More significantly, we needed to understand the implications of the 'Third Country Status' 90/ 180 rule. Who knew about or understood these terms? As the possessor of a red passport with 'European Union' boldly embossed on its front cover, I never questioned my status as a European. Now, in the final week of June 2016, I decided to apply for an Irish passport, not realising until then that, because I had an Irish mother born on the island of Ireland, I was already an Irish citizen by birth. Not so, my children, for whom I needed to register their foreign births in the UK with Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs, before being able to apply for theirs. Sadly, my husband, as a Brit, did not have the luxury of either option.

We waited, and waited, because the Irish Embassy was inundated with millions of applications. Inevitably, I failed to accrue all the necessary certificates, which caused months of additional delay. I then spent months chasing elusive birth, marriage and death certificates. Because my father died when I was seven and my mother married again, her Irish birth certificate bore no relation to my birth name, nor to the name on her death certificate. In all, I needed my mother's birth, marriage and death certificates, my father's birth, marriage and death certificates, my stepfather's marriage and death certificates, as well as my birth and marriage certificates and my children's birth certificates. All these original and certified copies had to be sent to Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs before I could register my children as Irish by foreign birth.

Meanwhile, we continued with life in the UK, glued to rolling news and Parliament Live. We scoured the newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph, always a good source of Tory Party thinking. We went on marches. We retweeted posts from people like us, to no avail. The dastardly deal was done, destined, however flawed, to be written into law. All around us people seemed increasingly agitated. Our lovely Italian waitress in the coffee shop at the bottom of our road was verbally abused on a bus. A German acquaintance, a professor at a London university, was tiraded on Twitter for being a foreigner. At a drinks party, when I mentioned the fact that I was lucky to be an Irish citizen, I was told to 'fuck off back to Ireland then' by a man, a Brexiter, who should have known better. I was deeply shocked at the hostlity to anyone who claimed a part European heritage. I didn't recognise what was happening to the country I had lived in all my life.

The reverse was true in France. All our French friends were incredibly supportive, sad that the UK had opted to leave the European Union. Not a single one passed a negative comment. 'Move here, permanently,' they said. 'You'll be welcomed with open arms.' At the occasional lunch party with Brits, I was surprised to meet home owners, some with businesses, who eulogised about the benefits of Brexit. For the life of me, I couldn't understand how leaving the EU could be anything but negative for them, until it gradually dawned on me that they viewed themselves as untouchable. Somewhere, etched deeply below three layers of thick skin, they saw themselves as superior, part of a select tribe of 'ex-pats' whose position anywhere in the world was unassailable. The DNA of all those doughty army officers and their memsahibs carries on, despite the collapse of Empire and the nation's lost industrial preeminence.

'Get Brexit Done' provided the death knoll for us pro-Europeans. We were adrift, let down by the Liberal Democrats, lost in an anti-Bremoaner culture war. The new Tory cabinet, led by a man with the moral integrity of a tomcat, was stuffed full of braying Brexiters. If you weren't one of them, you were the target of abuse and vitriole. Dominic Grieve, Ken Clarke and nineteen fellow Tories had the whip withdrawn from the party they had served all their lives for daring to oppose the potential catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit. A truncated Labour Party was cut off at the knees. There would be no attempt to reconcile, to find a way through the complexities of over forty years of integration with Europe. You were either with them, or against them. There was no middle ground. Never, since the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, had the country been so divided.

Still, we may not have packed a pile of stuff into our old Volvo Estate and hightailed it to Bardies if it wasn't for the pandemic. We were due to go to Austria for a week in the mountains when the email telling us the country was going into lockdown arrived. That was on Thursday 12th March 2020. By lunchtime on Saturday 14th, we were through the Channel Tunnel. That night, at our stopover hotel, the proprietor informed us that the hotel was closing at midnight and that all shops, hotels, bars, restaurants and retail outlets were to be closed forthwith. France was officially in lockdown. There was some doubt as to whether we'd get breakfast, which we fortunately did, which was just as well because everything was closed en route. Fortunately, I'd packed the remnants of our fridge to take with us so we could cook ourselves dinner on arrival. We lit the woodburner and opened a bottle of Madiran.

'So what do we do now?' I asked.