Eating cherries in Provence

Marie-Line our landlady pointed out the little orange fruits growing on the big tree at the pool–nèfles, and we are welcome to help ourselves. After breakfast I washed the dishes and hung out laundry with care. My shoulder moves farther and with less pain every day. Keep that cortisone coming!

The mistral was blowing today–not hot, not cold, just strong, and gusting up to 70 kph. Maurice and the painters went to the village of Gordes but his chosen spot was too windy to do much painting.

Gordes

I stayed home and walked into town for the weekly tour of the Ferrande Tower, once again a lot of French talking but I got most of it.

Like so many places in these tiny towns, no spot for a good picture of the Tour Ferrande

Our guide loved her tower! It was built in the 12th century by a religious order as an archives and place for discussion, with shelves and window seats; it was not housing because there are no chimneys for cooking. We could still see the painted design from the late 13th century on the walls of the stairwell: white background, stones outlined in blue with a red flower in the middle–pleasant wallpaper. In a room partway up the tower, designs were more intricate in shades of deep ochre and rust from the Provençal earth. But the real treasures were on the top floor where all four walls contained lively medieval frescoes; they had never been painted over and the tower windows had been sealed from birds and the elements. The only damage was more recent. A baker had set up shop on the ground floor, stored flour against one of the frescoed walls and built a chimney against another. The flour caused deterioration of some of the art, the outlines of which were recently restored by laser, but the heat of the chimney destroyed the frescoes behind it. There were three types of paintings: religious, with a fine St. Christopher at the top of the stairs; legendary, signified by the picture’s background of red flowers; and historical, which was the most interesting. Here was Charles d’Anjou getting the title to Sicily from Pope Clement IV, the first pope from Avignon…

…there he was fighting the Holy Roman Emperor, recognized by the black eagle on his shield (second horse from right). There were so many corpses that the horses in Sicily had big nails sticking out of their shoes to keep them from slipping on the gore (back feet of horse on far right).

Then poor Manfred (dear boy, whoever he was) died and was dragged home.

That evening at Domaine de la Camerette Nancy the vintner told us about her property: the 16th-century house (there and in the trees people used to raise silkworms), the years when there was no water and they could only grow cereals, the arrival of the canal in the 17th century allowing the cultivation of vegetables and fruit. Her grandfather added 42 varieties of grapevines, grafting and selling vines and grapes; her father decided to make wine in 1992; Nancy returned home in 2004 to take over and her sister joined her in 2010. Their fifty hectares are organic, to keep the land in good health, which is pretty easy in the Provence weather. Nancy was knowledgeable about and committed to the wine growing and making process; during harvest season she’s “always thinking about where to move the juice,” since she doesn’t have enough vats. She seals her bottles with corks, the production of which has improved in recent years, but she told us why almost all wine in the Netherlands has screw caps: most of the country’s servers are students and it’s too much trouble to train them all to use a corkscrew.

Nancy serving wine

We tasted Nancy’s wine on a veranda by the vineyard then walked over to a covered patio outside the old house for an excellent and beautifully presented dinner created by Nancy’s husband:

salmon rolls with cream cheese and red pepper sorbet shaped like little vegetables, followed by a lamb and eggplant stack with polenta, and finally a boule de creme filled with red fruit coulis and surrounded with fresh cherries and strawberries. We cruised home happy.