Economie, gastronomie and philosophie--observations in southern France

Chateau Campagnac, near Sarlat, dilapidated and abandoned

While France is certainly more prosperous than its neighbors, Italy and Spain, it has similar signs of economic malaise in its towns with empty shops, abandoned buildings and homes in need of repair. The tourist towns we've visited--Carcassonne, Sarlat and St. Emilion--appear to be thriving.  But, as we drove through Languedoc, Dordogne and Bordeaux, we saw grand old chateaux in various stages of decay and abandonment.  In some, families still lived in part of the manor house while the rest of the building slouches towards ruin.  Other chateaux will take millions of euros in restoration if that ever happens.  It is sad to see these gracious buildings with their vacant windows, shutters askew and doors open to the weather.

Sarlat's main square

Some of the towns we drove through have main streets and central squares devoid of commerce except, perhaps, for a restaurant or cafe.  Others, like St. Emilion, are beautifully kept, full of shopping tourists and surrounded by famous vineyards that sustain both the agricultural and tourist economies.

vineyards around St. Emilion 

Agriculture is king in this part of France.  In addition to the thousands of acres of vineyards and many wineries, farmers grow tobacco, sunflowers, wheat, corn, alfalfa and, in some places, lentils.  There are cattle, dairy cows and sheep, with a few goats, in the fields.  Right now, the grass is thick and green from the recent rains and the wildflowers--poppies, many kinds of daisies, salvia, and so many I don't know--cover the fields and hillsides.  But, farther west, in Bordeaux, the grass has already turned brown, fields of grain are either golden and ready for harvest or already harvested.  Great round bales of hay still dot the meadows of alfalfa, waiting to be picked up and stored for the winter.

roast chicken truck in outdoor market

Every town has its farmers' market a day or more a week.  Here, farmers bring their homemade cheese and ham, fresh meat and vegetables and fruits to sell to residents.  Some roast chickens or pigs in trucks specially designed for the purpose.  Others sell bread, seafood, paella, salads, cassoulets and homemade jams.  Along with their home gardens and animals, these markets provide essential livelihoods for farm families.

chickens roasting in truck

Visitors to France are usually excited about the country's reputation for excellent food.  And, yes, there is a lot of that.  Chefs take pride in making their regional specialties--cassoulet made of duck, several kinds of sausage and white beans in Languedoc, duck confit in Dordogne, anything with a wine sauce in Bordeaux, and chocolate everywhere (which is truly divine).  Not all the cuisine is wonderful, though much of it is.  Just don't expect every restaurant, even if it is well-known and pricey, to have great food.  And the service is very slow everywhere.  Patience is a virtue here!

farmers' produce market

France's unique philosophies and cultures are apparent everywhere.  Often the great grandchild (both great granddaughter or grandson) of the founding great grandparents will guide you through their families' vineyards and wineries telling you so proudly of their traditions of winemaking, their dreams for creating unique and memorable wines and the desire to keep the vineyard (often small) in the family. One owner of a small winery told us that this tradition is being disrupted as more and more vineyards and wineries are being sold to corporate farms, including Chinese companies.  He is very sad about this.

When you stroll about the towns and villages or eat out at restaurants, you see families together, including children even very late at night ((and dogs, too, as they are part of the families).  Having your family with you to visit a winery, a medieval village, a city square, a mountain resort

or just a restaurant is very important.

family at beach

There are countless small shops and businesses in the cities and villages.  We have talked to shop owners, restaurant servers and owners, vintners, guides, hotel staff and many more.  They all seem to work all the time.  But, many have also told us that the French don't like to work and won't give up their 35 hour work week.  That would seem to be for government and corporate employees because we have seen so many people working long hours to sustain their small businesses or make a little extra money.  In St. Emilion, the owner of our B & B also was the chef at his excellent restaurant next door, owned the wine shop below the B & B and had a vineyard where he and his family did most of the work.  It would seem that self-sufficiency and independence is still of great value in France.

Chateau Laffite Rothschild

Bordeaux--the wine region and the city

Chateau Pinchon Longueville

Yesterday, we drove from St. Emilion, on the right bank of the Bordeaux area, home to the St. Emilion and Pomerol wine regions, to the left bank of the Garonne River, north of the city of Bordeaux, encompassing Medoc, St. Estephe, St. Julien, Margaux. Graves and Pauillac.   Don's heart was beating double time as we drove past the most famous of the Bordeaux vineyards, stopping to photograph some of his favorite chateaux--Chateau Laffite Rothschild, Chateau Mouton Rothchild, Chateau Latour, Chateau Lynch-Bages, Chateau Pichon Longueville.

Don outside Chateau Latour

The left and right banks are very different.  The area around St. Emilion is hilly, with medieval villages and generally very small vineyards and wineries.  The chateaux are mostly low key, often in stone buildings hundreds of years old. It is not difficult to arrange a tasting at the many wineries surrounding St. Emilion.   It all seems local, small and manageable.  Towns are really villages, most with medieval centers that are very picturesque and charming.

roses and vines, Chateau Pinchon Longueville

The left bank, however, is flat, with much larger vineyards and some enormous, opulent chateaux housing the wineries.  The towns are mostly newer, more towns than villages, with lots of new homes in addition to a smattering of old stone buildings, though we did have lunch in the tiny, old village of Bages. Some of the most famous wines in the world are made here and sell for very high prices--hence, the gorgeous, if a bit overdone, chateaux that produce them.  Wine tastings at the most prestigious wineries must be reserved well in advance.

Chateau Mouton Rothschild

Driving out of the main wine area, we continued on to the end of the land on the left bank of the river, Pointe de Grave, where a lighthouse marks the meeting of the wide Garonne River and the Atlantic Ocean.  There are a couple of towns along the road that are probably teeming with vacationers in August when France shuts down for its holidays, but right now, the long, white-sand beaches are rather empty.

Muslim mother and child at beach

Atlantic beach at Pointe de Grave

Evening found us in the city of Bordeaux, France's fourth largest city, surrounded by large industrial plants, including a huge Ford factory. The old part of the city is charming, with pretty neoclassical buildings, large squares, a stunning Gothic cathedral that was built over a 400 year period from the 12th to 16th centuries and the nearby 12th century Royal Gate.  Other large squares have their own beautiful churches and gardens.  Along the Garonne River, which provides Bordeaux' port, there is a wonderful boardwalk with an outdoor food market.

Bordeaux cathedral

Bordeaux riverfront

Farther along the river is the new Bordeaux wine museum, the Cite du Vin.  The building is quite remarkable and the museum, itself, is fun and fascinating.  Most of the exhibits are interactive as you learn about not just the very long history of winemaking around the world, but also about the language used in describing wines and what it means.  You can squeeze a rubber bulb, for example, to smell the various scents of wines that depend on the terroir and the talents of the vintner.  Another exhibit lets you pair different foods and wines, with an off-screen expert spitting out the wine in bad pairings (that you've chosen), breaking the wine glass, and declaring how disgusting that pairing is (and why).  A separate exhibit features stories of wineries around the world, told by their current family owners.

Bordeaux wine museum--the Cite du Vin

Jewel of Bordeaux's right bank, St. Emilion

St. Emilion's cathedral tower in the evening light

You can only see the tower of the cathedral when you approach St. Emilion, a UNESCO World Heritage site, as the town itself is mostly in a small valley.  This is another charming medieval town in the midst of some of France's most famous wine chateaux and vineyards, home to about 2000 people.  It, too, is filled with tourists--we eased carefully by them through the tiny, cobblestone streets as we drove to our hotel.

tower of St. Emilion's ancient fortifications

During Roman times, the area was also covered with vineyards, though probably not of the quality you find here today.  Since it's a limestone region, the Romans carved large quarries underneath the surface rock, forming caves that are now used to store wine barrels and bottles.  No doubt, slaves were the laborers for the Roman builders, who chiseled out the blocks of stone on three sides and then soaked wedges of wood with water to split off each block from the mother stone.

wine cave in Roman quarry

We visited one winery, Chateau Cardinal Villemaurine, at the upper end of the town of St. Emilion. The owner provided an excellent tour of his caves along with a fascinating commentary on winemaking in this region. Chateau Cardinal has several vineyards and makes different wines at each location because each area has different soils and growing conditions (terroir).

Don imagining a great bottle of wine

In this winery, they blend cabernet and merlot, but don't actually mix the wines until just before they bottle them. We saw vintages dating back to 1969 resting inside the caves.  They do use sulfides in the winemaking process, but plow between rows with horses and fertilize organically. This particular vineyard is 6 hectares (15 acres) while their largest vineyard is 40 hectares.

vineyards above St. Emilion

We walked through St. Emilion this morning and just kept walking for about 5 miles through the chateaux and vineyards.  The grapes are setting on the vines, so many of the vineyards had people in each row, pruning off the excess fruit in order to improve the quality of the remaining grapes.  This is a big area for bicycle tours.  We stopped for lunch at a small boulangerie for quiche and chocolate--along with cyclists studying their maps as they munched their snacks.

Languedoc and Dordogne

Sarlat's cathedral at dusk

While France's Burgundy and Bordeaux are the best-known wine regions, the south of France is lush with vineyards and full of excellent wineries.  We met a close friend of my sister's at l'Hospitalet, a winery and hotel a few miles from the Mediterranean in the limestone highlands of Languedoc, near Narbonne.  She is a marketing and strategic planning consultant with wide knowledge of French wines and superb contacts within the wine industry and she set up a great wine tour for us.

l'Hospitalet winery and vineyard

We had a real education in biodynamic wines, a growing tradition in this part of France.  After a tour of the vineyard, viewed with the Mediterranean as a backdrop from atop a high hill, we tasted 8 wines with full explanations of the growing and winemaking processes behind them.

L'Hospitalet's owner, Gerard Bertrand, has made a big commitment to organic/biodynamic winemaking throughout his 600 hectares of vineyards.  Biodynamic wines go beyond organic in that the grapes are grown according to the rhythms of the moon and sun, winds and weather patterns in addition to using no pesticides, fertilizers or other chemicals.  So, for example, if it rains when the harvest is underway, everyone waits for the winds (which always blow here) to dry out the grapes rather than dusting them with anti-fungal chemicals.  The moon and sun part is a bit more complicated, but essentially the concept is to use the natural environment in all its aspects to enhance the health and quality of your vines and, therefore, your wines.  And, indeed, the wines are excellent.

14th century merchants' houses in Sarlat

France has very strict regulations if you want to qualify for the appellation d'orgine protegee (AOP), the creme de la creme of French winemaking.  Each region has regulations that specify exactly how wines will be made, such as exact percentages of each kind of grape that goes into each blend. Irrigation is also forbidden so vines are at the mercy of the weather.  I'm sure, if a drought actually threatened the vines, owners would water them and give up the AOP for that vintage in order to save their precious vines.

You can, of course, make wine any way you want, but only those wines made according to each region's regulations can get the appellation designation.  Some winemakers are experimenting with different blends of grapes and different percentages of each grape.  Some are even trying out new varietals.  They make top quality wines, just no appellation.

Lantern of the Dead, Sarlat

Next stop was Sarlat-la-Caneda, a pretty medieval town in Dordogne, full of tourists and beautiful, 14th century limestone buildings.  During the incessant Medieval wars, Sarlat remained loyal to the king, who rewarded them with economic bounty.  Prosperous merchants built tall, angular homes throughout the city which, along with its squares, are Sarlat's principle attraction today.

Peche Merle horse (borrowed from their brochure)

Being in limestone country, Sarlat is surrounded by huge caves.  We visited a particularly wonderful one, Grotte Pech Merle, which was occupied (or at least decorated) by Cromagnon people and enormous bears 11 feet tall, who dug holes in the floor of the cave for their winter hybernation.

cave of discs (also borrowed from Pech Merle's brochure)

You can't take photos inside the cave, so I've borrowed from Pech Merle's brochure, but you can see where bears and hyenas scratched on its walls, glistening stalactites and stalagmites, and wonderful animals Cromagnons painted on the walls sometime between 23,000 and 29,000 years ago.  There are mammoths, oryx, horses with tiny heads, buxom, pregnant women and bears.  The best painting is of 2 horses surrounded by 6 hands and filled with dots about 2 inches in diameter.  The artists used graphite to draw the outlines of the animals.
These were drawn on top of even older paintings that are red, presumably from iron oxide.

dog enjoying dinner with its owners

Dogs are everywhere, including inside restaurants.  For us dog lovers, that is rather charming.  For U.S. health inspectors, that would be anathema.  We have seen several very large Bernese Mountain
Dogs, which we love, since our dogs, Kili and Carson, are the 14th and 15th Berners to be part of our family over the last 45 years.

Our second day in Sarlat, we did a hike that ended up being about 10 or 11 miles instead of 7 because we lost our way amidst the narrow back roads and farm tracks.  But, we saw farms, fields, old stone barns and houses and gorgeous gardens--well worth the extra trekking.

The fortified (and touristed) city of Carcassonne

Carcassonne--La Cite

Despite being packed with tourists, we think Carcassonne is well worth a visit.  The fortified upper town, called La Cite, suffered from sieges and the defeat of its counts during the Middle Ages, was redesigned in part to house the conquerors and eventually crumbled until the 19th century, when the architect and historian, Viollet-le-Duc, oversaw its resurrection and reconstruction.

the "chateau comtel" inside the walls

La Cite was a monumental fortress protecting a large town area inside its massive walls.  The main structure was both a citadel and the elaborate home of the counts, known for their elegance.  All sorts of platforms and devices protected the royal family and, presumably, the townspeople.  At various times, the inner walls were built followed by outer walls and a moat, all of which surround the hilltop town today. It's barely inhabited, though, as, I was told, only about 10 families live inside the walls today.

the basilica

We're staying in a hotel inside the walls of the fortress, which I recommend.  When the daytime tourists leave, the town is relatively peaceful, though its bars and restaurants are still busy and, last night, since France was playing Portugal in the European soccer finals, cheers and groans resounded until the French team lost in overtime.

The fortress is quite fascinating.  You can take an audio tour, which we enjoyed, to learn about its history, construction and reconstruction, and walk around the old walls to look into the gardens and restaurants inside the fortress as well as to view the newer city below and the Pyrenees in the distance.

Basilica's stained glass windows

Carcassonne's basilica was once a cathedral, but was demoted when a new cathedral was built in the "new" city.  It has some of the most intricate and beautiful stained glass windows I've ever seen. This, too, was one of Viollet's reconstructions. While the guidebooks say that all the rebuilding may have more Viollet to it than actual history, he maintained that he was painstaking in trying to determine the original architecture before designing the reconstruction.

old house near Basilica

If you're staying in the new city, the Cite Basse, or have a couple of hours to wander around, the Cite Basse is well worth a visit.  It has a charming main square surrounded by neo-classical buildings, another old square about 3 blocks away with lots of cafes, and some very nice shops.  Remnants of the old city walls still exist near the cathedral.  From the fortress, La Cite, you can walk down the hill, cross the old bridge, now a pedestrian bridge, and enter the newer part of the city.

Carcassonne's walls at night

The Southwest of France--starting with Toulouse

Toulouse's Pont Neuf

Founded in  400 BC, the charming city of Toulouse, on the Garonne River in the Midi-Pyrenees region of France, was an important city in the days of the Roman Empire.  Today it is France's fourth largest city with an international airport and excellent restaurants.

Norman nave of the Basilica

The Basilica of St. Sernin in the most interesting of Toulouse's monuments.  It is the largest Romanesque church in the world, built in the 11th century, with a mix of Romanesque and Gothic architecture.  We wanted to visit the Convent des Jacobins to see its palm-tree vault based on only one column, but it was closed.  Next time.

St. Sernin's unusual tower

The Garonne River has a long shady promenade, past the beautiful Pont Neuf and next to 19th century villas and homes with pretty gardens. This is a university city which has been an intellectual and artistic center for over 1000 years.  You can see that tradition today in its lively squares and cafes where the people strolling through the streets and enjoying the outside restaurants are as diverse as any city I've visited.  Lots of gay and multi-racial couples, Muslim women in chador or head scarves, Africans in traditional dress, Arabs in long white robes, businesspeople heading to work in suits, heavily tattooed students with dreadlocks and book bags and, of course, tourists drinking wine or coffee as they watched the parade of passersby.

half-timbered house in Toulouse's old city

Toulouse also has a tree-lined canal filled with houseboats and narrow barges.  Every square seems to have its own market where nearby farmers bring their homemade hams and cheeses, meat, breads and fresh produce.  Apricots, peaches and plums are in season right now, so the markets had mounds of ripe fruit.  Other squares housed large flea and antique markets.

array of cheese in a market

view of the Pyrenees from our hike

From Toulouse, we headed south to the Pyrenees for a hike off the highest pass in this part of the mountains.  The valleys are extremely steep, with narrow, one-lane roads where passing cars stop, pull over as far as they dare, particularly on the valley side of the road, and inch past each other.  The hairpin turns are so tight that we saw one camper get part way through the turn, then back up, and continue forward in order to get around the hairpin.  At the top of the pass, a herd of Clydesdale horses roams freely, though they seem to prefer standing in the road while admiring tourists drive through a parking area to get around them.

Clydesdales on the road

Wild azaleas covered the mountains.  The peaks, though only a little over 6000 feet in this part of the Pyrenees, still had some snow.  The roadside snow markers showed that this area can get lots of snow in the winter.  We hiked through the azaleas to a pass where we had a gorgeous view of valleys, lakes and peaks.