Wine Tour

The new guests arrived on Tuesday evening - two couples from the UK travelling together. We settled them in with some canapes and a glass or two of wine and then sent them off for some dinner at Cote Ferme, the restaurant of the delicatessen, La Ferme. The feedback was good which is always a relief.

The next morning I had to get myself back into breakfast mode again, not having put a client breakfast tray together for nearly two months.

The guests are a booking through Wendy Gedney, who organises wine tours in the Languedoc. Several clients went on her tours during the year and they all had a great time, so we decided to go out with her and the clients yesterday to experience one of her tours for ourselves.

We started off at Domaine de Cabezan, just outside Villegailhenc in the Cabardes region. This is a very new operation. Clement Mongus and his family moved here from the Alsace and have set out to create a lifestyle business for themselves with the vineyard and four gites and his wife's teaching job - any one element on it's own would not be enough to support them.

We tasted a rosé and four reds - two vin de pays and two AOC wines. They were good to varying degrees but not good enough for us to be tempted to buy any.

From there we headed to Lastours for lunch at Puits des Tresors, which frankly was a bit disappointing. The restaurant has a Michelin star although I was told that service can be very slow (even by French standards). We ate in the newish cafe and partook of the €18 fixed menu - the food quality and the service was rubbish.

Our next stop was at a truffle farm and olive oil producer, Le Mazet de la Clamoux. On the slopes opposite the entrance to the Gouffre de Cabrespine sits a small unpretentious little house surrounded by olive and oak trees. It is here that Sandra and Olivier Galibert run their little operation. I say little - apart from the 11 hectares on this site he also has 30 hectares of vines in the Minervois which keep him busy and she has a special needs teaching job. It seems that everyone does more than one thing round here to make a living.

The real star of the truffling though was the dog - who gave us a demonstration of her unique skills by locating four truffles in next to no time as we wandered up the slopes amongst the oaks.

Afterwards we tasted truffle butter and olives and wine and then Olivier produced his homemade Carthagene, the local aperitif, and his Walnut wine , also fortified - both excellent, both dangerous. We bought some of his wonderful cold pressed olive oil.

The last stop, by now after dark and under the light of a near full moon, was at Chateau de Rieux in Rieux-Minervois where Emmanuel de Soos was waiting to show us around his cellar and his wines. We tasted a delicious Viognier (and bought a case) as well as his two top of the range reds (both excellent). I will be visiting him again during the year to take some of his wine boxes which will be just perfect for use at 42rvh.

It was well past seven when we got back - a very full and interesting day out and justified my faith in Wendy and her tours.

What time

You would never have believed from the weather on Sunday that there could have been so much devastation the day before - but the trees lying in the canal and alongside and across the roads told a very different story.

I think the decision from on high to order all businesses to close in order to keep people off the streets was probably a very sensible one. A consequence was that the supermarkets were allowed to open on Sunday morning until midday - which won't have pleased the Catholic church, who have a hard enough job getting people in through the doors these days.

I popped down to Monoprix because I was short of milk and was astounded by the number of people - the queue from the tills went nearly to the back of the shop. I've never seen so many people in Monoprix. I've never seen so many people on a Sunday - not in a shop anyway. I decided to go elsewhere for the milk.

My new guests arrival time kept changing by the hour as the train system gradually came back up to normal-ish service. They eventually pitched up at about 4.15pm, feeling weary, of course. I cooked dinner for them all last night which went on a bit, had 5 hours sleep after the clearing up and before breakfasts and prepping a picnic lunch for the late arrival guests to take to a friend who lives near Limoux.

Their catalogue of misfortune and error continued when they couldn't get hold of their friend, decided not to both go to Limoux only then to find that she was expecting them but her phone line was down so couldn't call. So they had separate lunches, one saw the friend but the other didn't and their picnic lunch was re-packed yet again and taken with them on the train to Bordeaux this evening. Quite remarkably for this day and age neither of them was carrying a mobile phone which didn't exactly help their communication.

At least their late Sunday afternoon arrival allowed me to take my other guests out to the truffle fair at Moussellens. Last year I bought a truffle and I noticed that the price had come down this year by 20% - even so, I kept my cash in my pocket - actually, I didn't have any cash in my pocket.

Beyond the donkey rides and the wine tasting, beyond the fallen trees and the clearing up operation, the snow-capped Pyrenees glistened in the sunlight and floated above the hazy skyline - magnificent in their glorious grandeur. Breathtaking.

Madness over for another weekend.