Mid-April Miettes

Well, dang. I just hiked down to the market and walked around and there was nothing interesting. The price of asparagus is coming down, but that was about it. Still, it's warm in the sun, the exercise does me good, and any excuse to get out of the house is welcome. As the days get nicer, the excuses get fewer. And it's about time to put down another blog post.

* * *

A while ago, I mentioned the USB keys that the local transport system was selling, with a special introductory offer. Five Euros for ten's worth of credit? Sounded good, plus one could refill the thing on line. This would get me onto the tram and bus system, so I went looking for the details on how to get one. It took a while -- the ads all over the bus stops and tram stations notwithstanding -- but I found out how you do it. All you need is:

* a filled-out application for a subscription to the system

* a photocopy of a piece of identification (passport or identity card)

* an ID photograph

* and a check made out to the local transit authority

which you then mail in to the transit folks and, if you're lucky, get your USB thingy back within seven days. It's called a Clé T@M, and you can read all about it here. And yes, this is a very mild form of the kind of bureaucracy France throws up all the time.

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There's an exhibition of Louis Houdon's sculptures at the Musée Fabre that opened while I was in the States, and it's good enough to warrant an article in the New York Review of Books, but I'm watching the nickles and dimes at the moment (long trips always cause interruptions in the cash-flow, since I'm not working when I'm on them), so I haven't checked it out. Meanwhile, there's a retrospective of twenty years of the holdings of the city's photo collection over in the Pavilion Populaire. I wandered over yesterday, and must admit that, once again, I wasn't exactly blown away. Whoever's curating this collection is big on soppy romanticism, one-liners, and the deadly obvious. The lack of big names is neither surprising nor a detriment: there are a couple of Lee Friedlanders that are pretty good and two rather surprising pictures by James van der Zee, the pioneering portraitist of Harlem, not exactly the first person you'd expect to run into here. I was impressed by a series by Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, whom I'd never heard of, called "Hommage to the Photographer." Taking up an entire room in the show, this portfolio of 27 black-and-white shots is an affectionate and humorous tribute to the street photographer, plying his trade all over the world: Beijing, the Congo, Fez, Moscow, Bangalore, and elsewhere. The rest of the show is hit and miss, but this room made it worth visiting for me. Oh, and so did the image the city's using to advertise it, Michel Maïofiss' "La Joconde: Café Mont Lozère," which is at the link for the show above, and will enlarge when clicked.

20 ans de collection - Fonds photographique de la Ville de Montpellier, Pavillion Populaire, Esplanade Charles-de-Gaulle, open Tue-Sun 10am-6pm. Show runs through April 30.

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With warmer weather comes more street performers, who are of variable quality, mostly dire. The guy who sits on the Comédie shaking one of those eggs filled with sand while blatting away on his digideroo was, I thought, nicely satirized by another guy I saw using a vacuum-cleaner tube for his digideroo, with no noticeable difference in sound. There are a couple of decent gypsy swing bands who mostly play the Saturday market, but who also set up here and there on occasion, a duo playing identical (and expensive-looking) guitars with a narrow oval sound-hole, and Bruno the Bluesman, whose enthusiastic ukulele playing and huge repertoire of songs make him worth checking out if you see him.

But the guys I wonder about are the ones with the pianos. Yes, upright pianos. One of them has an elaborate display of signs and press clippings saying that he's touring the world for peace, and he's a rockabilly fiend, with a large number of Jerry Lee Lewis tunes in his bag. The other one was the one I saw yesterday on my way back from the supermarket, just sort of aimlessly noodling. I wasn't going to stick around, though, because the sky indicated that we were due some rain, which came just as I got into the house. I've always tried to figure out how these guys get their instruments into place, but now I'm wondering how that guy yesterday made out when the heavens opened up.

* * *

Speaking of the supermarket, with the outdoor market being as dull as it's been, one nice development there has been the appearance of Pilsner Urquell. The French don't like beer, that's clear. The vast majority of what's for sale here is extremely sweet, with no noticeable bitterness from hops, and this is because a lot of it has a really, really high alcohol content. There's one you see the street people drinking which advertises in huge type that it's 8.9% alcohol (these beers usually are blamed on Amsterdam or Bavaria, but that's just the brand-name), but the more upmarket ones, too, adhere to this super-powerful formula. Urquell, on the other hand, is only 4.9%, which is more like it, and is nicely hopped. Expensive, though: €1.25 for a 33ml bottle. But unlike the Heinecken and Carlsberg sold here, it hasn't been sweetened for the French market.

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Finally, some changes in the blog itself. You may notice an Amazon widget I threw together the other day, which currently features 20 cookbooks I use a lot. All of them are European-market-friendly, meaning I've been able to get nearly all the ingredients I need in Berlin and Montpellier over the years, and all of them are filled with great stuff to cook. And, of course, if you buy any, I get a tiny amount of pocket change from Amazon, which comes in handy.

And at some point, the banner at the top here will change, although I can't make head nor tail of Photoshop, and haven't been able to get into the various layers of the banner Marie kindly helped put together, based on a photo I took last fall. I'll either figure it out or I won't, but I bet I will, and I'll get it up there when I do.

Reality

While I have reason to hope that some of the activities of the past month will bear fruit, they haven't just yet, so instead of hanging around the house waiting for the little chime that announces an incoming e-mail (work? or just another press release about a band I've never heard of?), I decided to take advantage of a warmish early spring day on Easter Monday by taking a walk.

There's one major road out of town (that I know of) that I've never followed, off in a direction I know I've never walked or driven, so that was the obvious route to take. It branches off of the intersection at the start of the Arceaux, the waterway that brings the water to the newly-scrubbed watertower in the Peyroux park, so it was easy enough to find, and off I went. And went. No picturesque houses, just box after box. There was a huge church whose architecture brought Mussolini to mind. I walked on, knowing that at the end of this would be countryside.

But boy, did it take a long time coming. Eventually, though, I saw a big traffic circle and some green. Just my luck: it turns out I have been out this way before. The green was the park surrounding the Chateau d'Ô, which I'd passed in August when my friend Brett was visiting and we were trying hard to leave Montpellier behind so we could drive into the countryside. It's an 18th century mansion set on extensive grounds, which also include an indoor theater and an amphiteater, where musical events happen and there are readings by famous French authors.

It's also closed on Mondays.

And, to twist the knife a little more, as I stood looking at the locked gates, a blue tram swept by, the same tram line that stops virtually in front of my house.

I'd noticed a sign on the way pointing to the city center down another road, so I hiked back to that and was in town almost immediately. The map later confirmed that I'd left at a sharp angle, and there's a much easier way to walk to the Chateau d'Ô if I need to. Of course, I can also take the tram.

Okay, fine, I thought. The next day there'd be a market. I'd gone to restock some stuff on Saturday, battling the pre-Easter crowds, and noticed a basket labelled "wild asparagus," one of my current culinary grails, even if I can't taste anything. But it was empty. Maybe on Tuesday there'd be more, and I could get a reading on the current agricultural bounty.

As if. The same old root vegetables are there, tomatoes are few and of the sort you could play several points of handball with before they smooshed, there were some sequoia-sized green asparagus stalks priced at buy-a-kilo-or-pay-the-rent heights, and nothing much else. I had to remind myself that the flowering fruit trees I'd seen last week as I took the train back here from Paris were only flowering, and that it'd take a while for the fruit to set and ripen. There were some pale strawberries labelled "Garriguette," but I wasn't convinced.

When I was in the States, people kept asking me about life in the "south of France," as my current residence is announced on Fresh Air. (I know Terry can say Montpellier because she said it a couple of times while we talked when I visited Philadelphia). It's worth noting, then, that while I'm still enthusiastic about living here and all, reality dictates that sometimes you can take a walk and not get anywhere, and sometimes you go to the market and it's the same old same old. Tomatoes will come, as will neat places to visit (if you're impatient for some, check out Gerry's blog, because he does it on a bike). As with the work, I just have to be patient.

Food From Afar

Silly of me to think I wouldn't blog anything from my trip to the States and Canada, but, as I've said, I'm trying to keep the focus on France. Still...

I started in Austin, of course, to attend SXSW, and naturally found myself headed to Mexican restaurants a lot. No new discoveries this trip, although Sazón, recommended from last year, is no longer recommended: the menu has gone mainstream, the service a bit better than you'd get at a minimum-security prison. The salsa's still good, but the experience isn't worth it. Instead, I had a couple of dinners at Azul Tequila, which has one side of the menu Tex and the other Mex, and a list of tequilas which should send any connoisseur into ecstacy. Me, I'm violently allergic to the stuff. For lunch, La Michoacana Meat Market on E. 7th St. is still the best place in town, and I also ate breakfast tacos there on my last morning in town. The egg-and-broccoli one was a bit disappointing, but egg-and-nopales (cactus pads) was fine. Another evening, I wound up in a weird Jaliscan taqueria during narcocorrido karaoke night. Food wasn't anything to rave about, but the scene was pretty amazing. And, thanks to a Facebook recommendation by Mark Rubin, I had superb fajitas, char-grilled, well-marinated, at Enchiladas y Mas, pretty pure Tex-Mex, but a place I'll return to.

The idea, as always, was to eat stuff I could never get in France, which included not only Mexican food, but Indian (my tastebuds failed me there), Vietnamese (how can I live in a country with so many Vietamese people in it and yet no Vietnamese restaurants -- wouldn't those amazing bánh mi sandwiches go over well here?), and, of course, Southern.

I only had two days in New York, so I didn't get up to much, although in one day I attempted a bagel for breakfast (disappointing, but the place was near my companion's place of business and conversation was the important thing), raw oysters and fried clams at the Grand Central Oyster Bar for lunch, and a bunch of great stuff at Grand Sichuan on lower 7th Avenue with a gaggle of friends ranging in age from 14 to 71 for dinner.

Then it was time for a brief vacation. There are two great scenic train trips that I'll take any time I can. One is between Oslo and Bergen, in Norway, so I don't do that very often, but the other is between New York and Montreal, and seeing as how I know folks up there, that's one I try to take every time I go to New York.

The trip starts with the Hudson River on one side of the train, with its odd islands (one with a "castle," which is really the ruins of a munitions company), lighthouses, and magnificent views of the far shore, which included snowcapped mountains this time, then moves on to Albany (hint to travellers: there's a 15-minute stop here and if you hustle you can buy cheaper and better food than the awful Amtrak fare), after which you get treated to Lake George and Lake Champlain, and the occasional small town. The sights on the way back were even better: the weather was awful, but the warm rain hitting the cold water caused sheets of mist to hover over the scene, making it spookier and more atmospheric, if harder to photograph from a moving train.

Two tips for Montreal: my friends were going to put me up, but had an unexpected guest, so I wound up with three nights at a B&B called L'Imprévu, run by a French Canadian guy and his Dutch wife, whose breakfasts are magnificent. It's not downtown, but it is right by a Metro station that'll get you anywhere you want to go. And one night, we went to this place, whose decor is about as glitzy as its business card:

Atmosphere be damned: if you order correctly, you wind up with scrupulously authentic Szechuan food. The New York restaurant's shredded pumpkin with green chiles wasn't there (that was truly stellar), but this place served the best dry-fried green beans I've ever had, a vegetarian home-style tofu that was also excellent (I'm used to it with sliced pork, but sure didn't miss it), and chili chicken which was, unfortunately, authentic in that the chicken was cut into tiny cubes (good) but without removing the bones or cartilage (bad). We started with something advertised as "pickled vegetable salad," which was Szechuan pickled turnip and turnip green and agar-agar, a pain to chopstick, but really tasty. I'd take Fuchsia Dunlop here in a flash! Next time: one of the soups, which are served in a bowl you could hide a basketball in.

* * *

How, some of you may be asking, could I taste this stuff? The answer is: semi. My sinus polyps continue to ruin my sense of smell, and yet I've discovered that I can taste certain things part-way with just my tongue working. I can taste sour and bitter very well, sweet to some extent, and anything fragrant not at all. This meant, for instance, that doing my annual survey of American IPA beers went pretty well, since the bitter hops tastes were pretty much there. But it also meant that, staying at my friend Mike's place in New York, I was sitting, reading, for a couple of hours one afternoon when I heard the key in the lock. Mike walked in and immediately said "Ack! One of the cats shit somewhere!" And I hadn't a clue.

One thing I did in Austin was to visit an ENT clinic, where a doctor examined my nose, said that I did, indeed, have polyps (the plural was news) and an infection (more news) and said that the drug regimen my doctor here has prescribed was a good treatment, but obviously wasn't working. He recommended endoscopic sinus surgery, which will necessitate a CT scan and sticking a baloon up my nose to get the polyps somehow. Fortunately, I have health insurance, although obviously some money for this is going to be needed up front. I had some very optimistic talks with a couple of agents in New York and of course it's too early for anything to have come of them, but I hope to be able to raise enough to get this done this summer.

Right now, though, I'm only a day off the plane and curious to see what tomorrow's market will have in it. The train from Paris yesterday showed a lot of stuff in bloom, but I suspect not much is ready yet. Still: spring is obviously settling in, and it's good to be back.

Going Dark

But not forever. Things have been difficult since Vinisud, the usual waiting-to-get-paid stuff that freelance writers go through, and as of Wednesday I'm off to Texas and, I hope, New York, for the rest of the month of March. Since I've decided that this blog is exclusively about France, I won't be posting anything until I return. Of course, at that point, the market, which has been astonishingly dull of late, should have started getting in the spring's first fresh fruits and vegetables, and, if the new drug regimen I started yesterday works, my sense of smell and taste may have recovered some.

Still, I should leave you with something I shamelessly ripped off my friend Ben's blog.

There you are: a nice waste of time for everyone!

See you in April.

My Vinisud

Day 0:

Christian Dalbavie, a guy I've known since he worked at the French Music Office, who were among the first Europeans to send bands to SXSW, is now a wine-importer based in New York. A couple of months ago, he found me on Facebook and noted with pleasure that he'd soon be visiting Montpellier to attend Vinisud, the huge wine exposition held each February. It is, apparently, a huge deal in the world of wine, and although I missed last year's, I was determined to go this time. I'd pitched the story to several newspapers and magazines, most of whom just ignored me, the others of whom turned me down. Just as well; the latest round of drugs hasn't done a thing to bring back my sense of taste and smell, and I was afraid I'd be utterly useless.

Christian called when he got to town on Sunday, and suggested we meet up for a glass of wine. He also invited his friend Michel Abood, who also imports wine through his company Vinotas in New York. We found ourselves at a place I'd walked past a number of times, Mesdames Messieurs, an all-organic wine bar with a Sunday brunch. I was pessimistic; I'd already blown a breakfast I was looking forward to because I couldn't smell the cornbread I was baking and took it out too early; after some batter gushed from inside when I cut it (yes, I know: next time use a toothpick), I had to put it back in the oven. The two Frenchmen ordered glasses of champagne to sip while they looked at the list (and the menu: some cheese and charcuterie was called for). I passed because even at the best of times I'm not much of a champagne fan. Eventually, after a lengthy discussion with the waiter, a bottle of red was ordered, something the waiter was really excited about called Velvet from a winery with the odd name Zélige-Caravent, over in Pic St. Loup. (Being an utter pro, I forgot to note both the year and the composition, although as the website says, it's mostly Syrah).

It was frustrating. I was allergic to wine for many years, and one of the goals of my moving to France was to learn more about it, to catch up on my education. Now I had two experts, both highly articulate, sitting right across the table from me and I couldn't taste the wine we were discussing. I could, however, detect an undercurrent -- not the whole taste by any means, but enough to see where the name came from. I was particularly peeved when Christian called out "It's changing! There's a...what's that Chinese...5-spice! That's it...or..." Here's where I could have helped out, I was sure. But at least I could detect some of the change myself.

Still, listening to them was educational, especially when the talk turned to what Americans are buying -- the subject of some interest in France after the big Gallo scandal that broke last week. The picture I got was that after some years of stagnation, interest in French wine is starting up again, especially if it can be put on the shelves at an affordable price-point. Much of the price of a bottle of French wine has to do with punitive duties imposed during the Bush administration, and they still stand. But that's where this part of France comes in handy: if you're paying over €10 for a bottle of wine here, it had better be real, real good. And in fact €6 seems to be where the masterpieces start.

At any rate, we sat and ate and drank and talked until it got dark, and then walked down to the Esplanade and split up in different directions. I went home, heated up some minestrone I'd made earlier in the week, couldn't taste that, either, and made sure I had my badge for the show the next day.

Day 1

To show the out-of-towners a good time, the skies got cold and rainy Monday morning. I hiked down to the Ibis hotel to catch the free shuttle out to the exposition center, which turns out to be in the suburb of Pérols, not Montpellier proper. It's actually fairly close to the airport. After getting my badge, my first stop was Domaine O' Vineyards, an operation outside of Carcasonne owned by the O'Connell family from Tampa Bay, Florida, whose son, Ryan, runs an entertaining video blog. Having read so much about it, and being intrigued by their slogan "New World wines from Old World vines," I was anxious to taste some. Ryan greeted me, pulled out a glass, poured something in it, and I told him I was still, I think, having tasting problems. "If you can taste anything, you can taste this," he said. "It's our pepper bomb." But...no luck. I sniffed and I sniffed, but to no avail. I wished Ryan luck, and walked on.

The expo center is huge. Not as big as, say, the Deutz Messe in Cologne, but easily the same size as Berlin's ICC and bigger than the Austin Convention Center where SXSW takes place. Nearly every inch of the place was in use, too. Something like 2500 exhibitors, most with very small stands crammed with bottles, were arranged by geographical area and type of wine. Languedoc and Roussillon predominated, of course, with Spain, Portugal, and Italy having small spaces, as well as Tunisia and Lebanon. Huge banners announced a group of producers from a region.

Everywhere I went, people pushed bottles at me, asking me if I wanted a taste, and I had to keep explaining that I wanted to taste, but I couldn't. I got many looks of pained sympathy.

Eventually, I realized that I had figured out the lay of the expo, and yet nothing would be worth my while if I couldn't taste anything. After 90 minutes, I went home.

Day 2

Right after breakfast, I took a glass and put a half-inch of red wine into it and set it on my desk. From time to time, as I sat reading the news and so on, I'd pick it up, swirl it around and sniff. Nothing. I was ready to jump up and catch a shuttle at the first sign of reawakening taste-buds, since this often happens in the afternoon. Nothing. It got to be 4 o'clock, the hour when the taste-buds start closing up. Nothing. I stayed home all day. Crap.

Day 3

I did, however, want to interview people for this blog, so I caught the 11:30 shuttle, which arrived just as it began to pour. I was its only occupant. With weather like this, no way my taste was going to work, but I had my camera and notebook, so I'd at least get the story.

Since they were right by the front door, I hit O'Vineyards first. Ryan was gone, but his mother Liz and his father Joe were there. Joe reflexively poured a glass and I sniffed. Nothing. He poured it out. I asked him what had gotten him into this weird business, and he said that there had just come a time when he realized he wasn't going to live forever and started thinking about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. (According to an article in Tampa Life magazine, he'd been a successful builder of high-end homes). He'd always loved France, his wife was from Paris, and the food and climate in this part of the country really appealed to him. I asked him how he'd gotten into wine. "Drinking!" was the immediate answer. Well, yeah, but how'd he learn winemaking? "Books. The Internet. There's nothing you can't learn that way." So in 2004 the family relocated and started making wine. And as he was telling me this, I noticed something: I could smell the spit-jar! He pulled out the bottle of Reserve again, and I stuck my nose in the proffered glass. Eureka! This was the first wine I'd smelled since...oh, the end of last summer, at least. I was so overwhelmed, it was so much like the sensation of walking out of a dark room in to bright sunlight, that I can't even begin to describe it, except that it's excellent. Elated that I could taste again, I bid him farewell and wandered into the expo.

The exhibitors, though, were less forthcoming than previously, and I was determined to find one or two winemakers I was curious about while this window was open. Naturally, I got lost. I was trying to find Mas de la Seranne, one of my favorites, not to taste, but to take a picture of the couple who run it, and wound up in a hall I'd missed on Monday, where St. Georges d'Orques was occupying a small corner. It's a suburb of Montpellier, reachable on the bus, and has a couple of my favorites, Domaine de la Prose and Domaine Guizard. I'd even talked to Benoit Guizard, one of the five brothers who've been running their winery to keep it in the family, on the phone. What I didn't expect, though, was for him to see me and cry out "Ed!" as I wandered past his stand. "You have to try this," he said, grabbing a bottle. I told him I hoped I could taste it, and luck was with me. I closed my eyes and saw a gigantic red fruit of a sort which doesn't exist in nature, but one I'd really like to find. What was this? "It's our new wine," he said. "It's a Grès de Montpellier, from some specially selected locations." I could see why he was excited; it's a remarkable wine, huge and filled with fruit, with a very nice smooth finish. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, since they've only been making wine since 1580.

We chatted for a while about this and that as I savored the pour. He told me he's headed to the U.S. in June because he's a Lafayette-o-phile, and there's a Lafayette society which meets in Virginia each year, so he's off to their meeting. And I asked him what the deal was with old vines making such good wine -- the Grès vines are some 70 years old -- and he said "It's like men! They get better at what they're doing as they get older." Gotta say, I like his attitude. At any rate, I'm eventually going to take the bus out to their sales point and grab some of this unless it shows up at one of their wine shops, one of which is in the mall down the street from me. Before I left, I snapped his picture. He doesn't really look much like this, in fact, since he does tend to smile, but it's him.

By now it was just after noon, and the Mas de la Seranne folks were deep in negotiation with some buyers, so I noted that the sun was beaming down and maybe it was time to taste some lunch. There were a bunch of little booths outside selling various sandwiches, and I rightly figured that at a fair like this they'd be pretty good. When I found one that was not selling just baguettes, I got a ham and cheese sandwich. I like baguettes as much as the next guy, but I keep seeing other kinds of bread around, and I'm curious about them. This was a square sandwich, with three crusts and one open side. The crust was really thick, and the whole thing was amazingly chewy. The cheese was sharp, the ham as bland as French ham usually is (I do not get this French approach to ham, although I'm trying), and the whole thing was immensely satisfying. The memory of the wine I'd just had, too, was still with me. And the sun felt really good.

Back inside, the Mas de la Seranne booth wasn't busy, so I asked if I could take a picture. I'd talked with Isabelle and Jean-Pierre Venture on Monday, telling them that theirs was (as it is) my favorite wine from this part of the world. During the week I'd been able to taste this past summer, I'd tried their rosé, which just confirmed their reputation. It's amazing stuff. Isabelle wasn't up for a photo, though, so I just snapped Jean-Pierre.

I'm happy to report that he really does look like this. And I'm also happy to discover that the piece of the world where this winery exists is called, as you can see Terrasses du Larzac, which gives me yet another clue of what to look for in a wine shop.

I had one more place to hit. Domaine Treloar is way south of me, not far from Perpignan, which is one of my must-see destinations in the near future as soon as the finances are available. Until then, though, the idea that I would visit Jonathan Hesford and Rachel Treloar, the British-Kiwi couple who run the place, isn't going to become reality, but now I had a chance to taste their wines, which, I'm told, are different from what's grown around here. I'll have to take their word for it; Rachel was at the stand, concluding a deal with a big Canadian importer, and by the time she was free, the window had closed. Once again, their story is one of mid-life change: Jonathan was a banker, working for Merrill-Lynch, and they were living a block away from the World Trade Center in New York when it was destroyed. This wound up shaking up their world more than they'd anticipated, and eventually Jonathan was, in that lovely British phrase, "made redundant." One thing led to another and he found himself in New Zealand, studying winemaking at Lincoln University, as well as teaching chemistry there. He might have wound up staying to make wine down there, but for family pleas to move a bit closer, so they found their current acreage, and at the start of 2006, moved in and started growing. Another inspiring part of their story is that, like me, Jonathan had sinus polyps, and has been cured of them by surgery. I hope it doesn't go that far with me, but I no longer feel like I've been singled out for this curse.

I spent the next couple of hours wandering the Côtes du Rhône area near the Rousillon area, then over to the Chateauneuf du Papes exhibit, here and there checking out wine gear (pourers are made from paper-thin circles of mylar, which you roll up and stick in the neck of an open bottle, and the advertising potential of that was on full display, as well as some really lovely corkscrews and knives), a small exhibit of Languedoc food (for export, obviously), and the astonishing Salle Mediterranean, where the pros were tasting, tasting, tasting.

This scene was so huge, I only managed to get a little bit into the frame, but if you click to enlarge it you'll begin to understand the dimensions of this, which was only the largest of the tasting halls. When I say there was literally enough wine at this event to float a battleship, I'm not exaggerating.

My feet were beginning to hurt, there was little I hadn't seen, and I wasn't going to be tasting again, apparently, so it was time to go home. I wanted to take a picture of the O'Connell family, but they were busy, and I doubt I'd do better than the picture on their website, so I went outside to catch the shuttle. Somehow I'd gotten the time wrong, or they'd decided not to adhere to the schedule or something, so I hung out in the sun, watching some flying ants appear out of nowhere and hang out at the base of a plant, and eventually fell into conversation with an American guy named Terence Shiple, who has another import business in Virginia and gave me a great hotel tip for visitors coming here.

All in all, I think I learned a bit, and am beginning to get a bit clearer on the wines produced here. I have a doctor's appointment Monday to deal with the taste problem again, and maybe now there'll be some progress. The weather's clearing up, and with any luck at all, the education will continue and I can report on it here. I'll be looking for signs of spring at the market on Saturday, at any rate.

February Miettes

Today was the first really nice day in some time, so naturally, after trying to work a bit on my book, the call of the great outdoors was just too much, and I put on my coat and headed outdoors, where it was warmish and the sun was beating down hard. Naturally, I had a destination in mind: a dark room.

The Médiathèque Émile Zola is making up for its disappointing seminary-library show of some months back with its current exhibit of sacred Hebraic writings. It's kind of a strange show on some levels, in that it doesn't have a whole lot to do with Montpellier, although among the organizers are the city archives, the Maimondes Euro-Mediterranean University Institute, and the city's cultural and historical directors. This is due to the star of the show, a rather plain-looking, hand-written book called the Montpellier Mahzor, a collection of ritual and liturgical texts (prayers and ritual responses, as at the seder), which was used by the cantor at the synagogue, and is the key to understanding how Montpellier's extensive medieval Jewish community worshipped. Its unique liturgical cycle was spread after the city kicked its Jews out in 1394, whereupon they scattered to Avignon and Venice. During the centuries they were here, documented as far back as 1165, when a famed rabbi passed through, their medical schools were an important adjunct to the University, and they enjoyed the protection of the local rulers. The Mahzor, which was compiled shortly after the expulsion, is currently visiting from its usual home at Paris' Museum of the Art and History of Judaism.

The rest of the show is a mixed bag. I'm not sure what Jacob Soffer (1857-1930) has to do with all of this, but the numerous examples of his calligraphy and particularly his microscopic writing, found on hand-written texts to be included in mezuzahs and as portraits of famous Jews made out of tiny letters is amazing. There are other decorations, several text-based amulets, and other books which I guess are either from the city archives or the local libraries, and explanations of Jewish numerology and its connection to mysticism.

I didn't stay long, because the exhibition isn't very large and it was, after all, a nice day out there, but my guess is we'll get more rain between now and Mar. 19, when this closes, so if your interest in the local Jewish heritage goes beyond the texts posted in the windows of the building on rue Barralerie where they found a mikvah in the basement, wander down to the Zola and check this out.

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I'm afraid I've fed my readers a bit of misinformation, but in so doing, I seem to have opened a window on a scrap of the past that's almost disappeared. Some time ago, I mentioned that there were people with big wooden boxes on wheels selling kittens and puppies on the streets. As it turns out, the truth is something else: they might or might not be willing to part with one of the critters they use, but what these people are selling is candy. I was at the market on Tuesday, in a light rain (there was almost nothing worth buying), and they were there. A woman walked up to me and thrust an open box of little pastilles my way, and I was so surprised that I turned her down. The design on the boxes is quite archaic -- 1920s, I'd say -- and the baby animals (I snapped to the fact that they weren't for sale when I saw a pygmy goat on one of the carts) are just bait to get your kids to drag you over to where they'll try to sell you the pastilles. If anyone has any further details about what this is and who these people are, please let me know.

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According to an article in the Independent newspaper in Britain, this past Monday Montpellier started selling thumb drives for €5 which can be used for a number of things, including tram and bus fares. Sounds good, but I have yet to see anything on this except the newspaper article. Anyone out there know where you can get these?

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I've been wanting to get a real nice sunset shot of the Place de la Comédie to stick at the top of this blog for over a year, and I keep forgetting to go out there and wait for the sunset and shoot it. Now I'll have to wait a bit longer: the city has sealed off a huge hunk of the square to replace the polished limestone which covers it, which means that the folks who like to hang out in the sun in front of the cafes there are getting a nice view of white-painted plywood and the sounds of construction equipment. The reconstruction is supposed to last three months, and it's a good thing it's as noisy as it is because otherwise you'd hear the sound of the cafe owners grinding their teeth in frustration.

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And in the impeccable timing department, a huge wine scandal erupted today when it was revealed that Gallo got sold 3.57 million gallons -- enough to fill 460 oil tankers -- of counterfeit Pinot Noir, which it marketed under the name Red Bicyclette, by a canny quartet of Languedoc winesellers. The sheer volume of the wine involved makes this one of the largest wine-crimes of recent memory. And I say impeccable timing because on Monday, Vinisud, the huge gathering of Mediterranean wine, happens out at the Parc des Expositions here. Languedoc wine has long had an undeserved bad reputation as sub-standard (as apparently the plonk sold to Gallo was), and this won't help. I'll be at Vinisud, thanks to the good folks at Cathar Sun (whose wine I haven't tried, but whose Brian Bolger came to my talk the other night), so watch for a blog-post about all of this next week when my head clears. Let's just hope my nose stays clear so I can taste something!

Talk Is Cheap, But I Got Paid

A big thanks to the 80-plus people who turned out for my talk last night. We had to switch to a much bigger room due to the turnout, and everything went pretty well for a first time. As noted in the comments to the last post, I'm thinking of taking this talk and another one and talking to a speaker's agent who could organize a tour of colleges once or twice a year in the U.S., maybe working up a couple of other talks if that works. I'm certainly not making money writing anymore, and this may be one of the secrets to survival in the decades looming ahead.

But the reason for this post is what happened afterwards. My sponsor, Prof. Claude Chastagner, took me to dinner at the Trinque Fougasse, a restaurant I've been curious about since I got here, as a way of compensating for the fact that there was no payment for the talk. It compensated, all right.

I'd been getting weekly announcements of the lunch menu at this place from the local Slow Food chapter for some time, but this turned out to have set up wrong expectations. The chef who does lunch isn't on for dinner, and the restaurant falls back on a set seasonal menu. This has its good points and its not-so-good (although not bad) points. Whereas the lunch menu is an exploration of local ingredients, with a single chef as architect, the dinner menu is actually lighter and more aimed at pairing with wine. I tend to eat my heaviest meal last in the day, as I suspect most Americans do, and so I had a bit of trouble choosing something from the menu. The two "la planche" combos included dessert, which I don't eat, and the "Automnale" included goat-cheese as well, to which I'm rather violently allergic most of the time.

I went with "Les 3 Jambons," tastings of three different kinds of Spanish ham, including the rare Pata Negra. What you get is just that: ham and bread. We also ordered fries (unexceptional, but at least they didn't seem frozen) and salad (which was, um, salad), and Claude had the seafood combo, which looked good enough, but, again, light.

When you sit down, there's a paperweight-like thing with your table number on it, and you're invited to go over to the wine-bar area and taste some wines. This led to the discovery that the restaurant is also a retail store: along the wall was a very, very impressive selection of local wines, including every one of my greatest hits and many more I'd heard of but not tried. None of them were involved with the tasting, which features six or so bottles of a range of stuff, from simple to very complex. Each bottle in the wall display has three prices: a bottle to go, a bottle to consume with your meal, and a per-glass price, all of which were very reasonable. Unfortunately, as I discovered when the guy poured a taste of a Pic St. Loup I'd never heard of, my nose had gone to sleep, as usual for the evening, so I could only very barely taste what was there. This didn't mean that Claude, who admitted that he wasn't as familiar with the local wines as I was, had to suffer, though, so I picked out a Clos des Immortelles from Mas de la Seranne, which is right up there with my favorites, easily the best wine I've discovered here so far. He was impressed, as people tend to be.

I was able to tell a bit about the hams, with the Pata Negra having a granular consistency and a higher degree of salt than the other two. In fact the jambon de la vallée des Aldudes had hardly any salt at all, but was clearly well-cured, from its dark color. The intensity made for leisurely eating, although I did wish for a bit more stuff to fill me up; I'd had to walk to the University for lack of tram fare in a driving cold wind (although apparently most of France got slammed with snow last night and only this tiny pocket was spared, so that's something) and, on my current economically determined one-meal-per-day regime, I could have used more calories.

Since we were in a car, I'm not 100% sure where this place was and how one gets there via public transportation, but I'm quite interested in going back when the weather warms up and the outdoor section is viable, both because that's nice and because it might be further away from the live music, which I certainly don't need with my food. The setup is nice: wandering to the bar, the informal vibe, the possibility of taking a bottle of something you liked home with you. So thanks for the dinner and the chance to do a try-out of the talk, Claude!