A Cultural Difference Survey

Some months ago, I sent a rather enigmatic email to a number of my American friends. My partner sent a French version of the mail to his French friends. The query read as follows: "Would you please take a moment to make a list of 15 animals, without asking for any explanations at this point and without thinking about your responses. Just make a quick list of the first 15 animals that pop into your mind." We added that an explanation would be sent as soon as all responses had been evaluated.

Whereas Americans responses were immediate, I'm still waiting for responses from the French end of the survey. My guess is that they'll never show up, so I've decided to finally divulge what our little cultural difference survery was all about.

We wanted to see if there would be a difference between what Americans put on a list of the first 15 animals that came to mind and what French people would put on such a list.

Our curiosity was prompted by an agument -- a heated one -- that took place around a dinner table last summer. I was the only foreigner; all the others were French. We had just visited an excellent local aquarium with my partner's small children, so the conversation naturally led to fish and animals. I mentioned that when we talked about animals, we weren't necesarily talking about fish as well, that we could be talking exclusively about mammals. That's not quite how I worded things, but you get the gist.

Apparently it was a huge gaff. I was immediately attacked, no questions asked as to the why of my statement. It was a hot moment -- hot, hot, CHAUD, and not because of the summer temperatures. I had a moment's reflection, then decided not to take the French reaction seriously. After all, they were probably just teasing. On what grounds could they be expressing any real criticism? Sometimes when we say "animals," we mean "mammals." Who doesn't know that? They had consumed too many pastis, too much rosé, or the heat was getting to them. I didn't see anything to get all steamed up over, nor did I feel like explaining myself. If they wanted to be that bornés (obtuse), it was OK by me. The stars were shining, the food was good, the wine chilled. I let it drop.

Erreur! The gauntlet was again thrown down the next day. Someone who had been at dinner told me that I must be absolutely stupid to think that "animal" did not always refer to "fish" as well. The French are big fans of superlatives. Curiously they are also big users of the word peut-être (perhaps).

I couldn't believe the accusation. I replied that in the United States, we sometimes used the term "animal" to refer solely to mammals. I called one of my daughters to ask her what she thought. In short, she had the same reaction as I: "animal" refers to mammals in some settings, to the animal kingdom in others. My Frenchies were not ruffled. They concluded, and not without some very real concern, that we must be victims of a serious family deficit. And they weren't joking. They chalked it up to our Mormon background. Or to the American educational system in general, assuming that American science and textbooks must be "different" due to our puritanical origins.

What???????!

How could these people draw such conclusions? They were intelligent, thinking, educated. I was aghast and spitting mad. Firstly, they knew me and knew that I wasn't an idiot, so why weren't they open to a more reasonable explanation to this "animal" question? Secondly, why would they think that a large portion of the western world would have a completely different scientific and educational take on what "animals" were?

It was obvious to me that there was a linguistic-cultural difference at the heart of the issue. And it turns out that I was right.

I got out two dictionaries: one exclusively French, published in France, one exclusively English, published in the United States. Ah, hah! The stupid American (aka me) read to the closed-minded French that the term "animal" is used in American English to refer to the kingdom of living organisms including fish but not plants AND that it is also used to refer broadly to mammals alone. The French dictionary doesn't show any such difference.

Be that as it may...

My French tablemates insisted that any French person -- that is, all French people everywhere, including little kids -- would automatically include fish on a list of 15 animals. Not one of their colleagues followed through on the survey, though, whereas, as I've already said but want to point out again, the Americans to whom the survey was sent all responded immediately. Most of them did not include fish on their lists. Out of 20 people to whom I sent the survey (one German-French-American, all the rest American), only 3 put "fish" or the name of a fish on their list. 

I think the same would be true of French lists, despite the French dictionary's definition of "animal." The reason has absolutely nothing to do with scientific definitions, either. At least not in my opinion.

The reason is very simple. It spins around usage. We tend to separate fish-animals and mammal-animals into two separate sets in our everyday conversation. Therefore, what we're thinking of USUALLY when we say "animal" is mammal: cat, dog, bear, otter, giraffe, elephant, cow, zebra, etc. If we want to talk about fish-animals, we say "fish."

This story points to other cultural differences between Americans and French. For instance, in my experiences, the French assume at the get-go that the other person is wrong, especially if the other person is a foreigner, especially if the foreigner is an American, especially if the American is a woman. And this is the house that Jack built.

There's often no entertainment of another perspective. There's seldom any opening to the possibility that the French person may be wrong. This seems to be a European posture in general: your best defense is offense, so attack and don't yield. Like football. Great, I don't get that game either. Football may be an American sport, but try this tactic here and see how far it gets you. A French person is respected for it; a foreigner is criticized, so choose your battles well.

What happens if you persist and don't accept the French person's posture as the one and only one allowed on the field? What happens if you go even further and actually succeed in showing that you are not only correct but that the French person is wrong? You'll probably not get an apology for any insults slung your way during the conversation. In fact, you'll probably not get any acknowledegment of any sort. Instead the topic, now apparently insignificant and unworthy of continued discussion, is changed.

Here's another possible scenario: you recede or concede at the first sign of a confrontation. Americans often do this because arguing with a French person can be a decidedly uphill battle, the source of frustration and even angst. Try one of these tactics and you are often considered as weak, unintelligent, insignificant yourself and therefore not worth talking to. Lose-lose. 

I've seen this happen between French people, too. It's a power game that I find particularly annoying for two reasons: one, I don't see what "power" is at stake and two, I don't like confrontations. Sometimes, though, more often with French women than with French men, you need to play the game and hold your ground, maybe even tread on theirs. Dumb.

Yes, Americans too know that fish are part of the animal kingdom. Our educational system does not teach us otherwise. However our language allows for another spin on the word. Language and culture are inextricably intwined.

Is there a moral here? 

"Walk softly and carry a ...... big dictionary?"

France Reacts to Our President-elect, Barack Obama

To read about France's reaction to our election of Barack Obama, please go to my YourFrenchLife web site. Here's the URL: http://www.yourfrenchlife.synthasite.com/

A new story about village life will be up soon! Promise!

This Old French House

The whole village is gearing up for winter, gleaning vegetables, gathering fruits, winterizing doors and windows, and mostly bragging about not turning the heat on yet. It's a game played all over France: who can go the longest without touching that thermostat? Personally I'd rather be warm. That said, I haven't turned my heat on yet and am typing this wrapped up in two layers of wool sweaters, a down vest, thick wool socks and shearling-lined slippers purchased at a local grocery store for the low price of 9 euros (what you don't spend is also a game here). It's not that it's particularly cold here yet, not outside anyway. Inside these thick walls is a whole other climate...

I don't think that the annual heat/no heat contest is solely connected to the high price of oil, gas, and electricity, at least not in the Cevennes. I think it's deeply embedded in the culture, where suffering is equated, consciously or not, to how good a person you are -- or are not. No suffer, no good, or not good enough. That interpretation may have its roots in a strict Protestantism dating back to the 1500s.

Wikipedia link about Protestantism in the Cevennes: http://enwikipedia.org/wiki/Camisard

I've recently moved to a quirky old house built in the early 1800s, with cold air easily making its way in through a Brazilian weak spots (homage to George oblige). The windows are all single-paned glass and there are three fireplaces, all of whose chimneys were wide open to the skies and none of which was functional. But the house is roomy, bursting with charm and the rent is low because the owners don't want to be bothered with fixing things up to charge more. That's just fine by me. Mr. Bricolage, the handyman's dream store, is just 45 minutes away -- and is now one of my favorite places in France.

The house is located smack in the middle of the village, whereas my former home (which I despised) was just on the outskirts. The distance between the two places is no more than a few hundred meters at most. However, I've experienced a distinct change in how the villagers interact with me now versus then. I am now a neighbor; I was then an outsider. I don't get it, but that's how it is.

To come into my new old house, you first open a hefty double wooden door at street level, then walk up a flight of stairs, open another thick wooden door and walk onto the floor where the kitchen and sitting room are located. Cross this space and open another sturdy wooden door to another flight of stairs that lead up to a landing, two bedrooms, and two fireplaces. Open two more heavy doors, with locks and huge keys (that work), go up three steps and you're in the bathroom. This house is not for the incontinent. I think that the bath used to be an outhouse, attached to the main house at some point in the not so distant past. It's been modernized into a more or less (less) conventional bathroom, depending on what your idea of conventional is, but there's no disguising those heavy, keyed doors that once led to somewhere outside the house.

There are two more doors near the bath, one leading back down a tiny staircase that eventually takes you back to my front door, the other leading up a narrow and somewhat frightening stairwell to the terrace on the roof. From there you can see the beautiful mountains surrounding the village, but no one can see you. In this tiny village, where everyone knows and sees everything you do, a private terrace is truly a piece of heaven.

Back to the cave, which, despite its name, is on street level: I always imagine them as below street level, underneath the house. In fact, this street level cave is indeed below the house, just not underground, so I suppose all is well in my world of images. At any rate, take two steps down from the street entrance into the cave and you're in a space that smells exactly like your grandmother's or great-grandmother's coal basement. Everyone who's come by to visit has made that comment. Everyone -- this house is instant nostalgia. Hidden back in a corner (of the cave) is a deep cupboard with some very old, very large bottles containing who knows what inside. I think it's some kind of Cevenol moonshine, stashed away to age at least a century ago -- something to check out one of these chilly winter nights if ever the courage comes to us. Perhaps some things are better left untapped?

The oil tank and controls for the old but central heating system are located in the cave, next to the mysterious bottles. The system seems to work, although it gives off quite a bit of heat even when set for hot water only. There's apparently no repairing that flaw, so we decided to focus on preventing the heat from escaping into the street through the huge gaps in the wood-planking of the door, as well as all around the door. Our hope was to force the heat upwards into the house. 

And so, as of last Sunday, the door is no longer functional. The gaps are all blocked up thanks to high-pressure foam in a can from Mr. Bricolage. The stuff is not easy to manage, but it's cheap and efficient. More importantly, it's fun, like trying to smoosh melted marshmallows into cracks and crevasses. Admittedly, that may not be everyone's idea of fun, but when you live in a teeny, tiny village with a bike as your primary mode of transit, you modify your standards -- actually, they just gradually change all by themselves.

French Grrrrrrrrrrrammmar!

OK, sure it's been months since my last entry. My excuses? Don't need 'em, but raising them gives me a chance to vaunt the arrival of an exquisite new family member, the lovely, chatty, and absolutely perfect Nora. And preparation for a gin rummy fest in Paris with my sister. I haven't played in so long that I had to read up on all the rules to be the worthy opponent one should be if participating in a gin rummy fest. Goes without saying. And a zillion (I counted them) ongoing projects essential to daily life, that keep my mind too occupied for anything creative.

As for the title of this entry: no, the "r" on my keyboard doesn't stick, although given the humidity of the climate around here, I'm expecting keys to start sticking any day now.

The title's tongue-in-cheek angst comes from a recent experience that started out as a calm evening reading Fred Vargas, a French author of very intelligent detective novels. She's been translated into English, so check her out in either language. My partner and I read together most evenings (in French) and a couple of nights ago, we came across a passage in which the very common word gens was treated several times as feminine. We looked at each other, both wondering the same thing: Mais attends là, gens est bien masculin, non? = “Hey, wait a minute, isn’t gens masculine?” Side note: our lives are really less boring than that makes it sound.

We could have, should have let it drop, in the interest of continuing what was a very good story, but instead, our reading came to a screeching halt and out came the dictionary. Neither of us could conjure up a viable explanation for this gender switch on our own, although both of us had some faint recollection of a strange grammar rule governing gens. As far as we could remember, gens was masculine: Les gens du nord, ils ont un accent plus pointu que les gens du sud.

Jean-Paul was as perplexed as I. Neither of us had ever noticed gens in the feminine. We’d surely come across it, but it hadn’t registered with us. Lately these little oddities of the French language spring out to grab us by the throat, ever since we discovered an interesting, not-so-little book by Jacqueline de Romilly, of The Académie française. It traces the evolution of the French language. Yup, winter nights are long here in this village... Some of Romilly’s chapters are very recherchés, but others are truly stimulating – short reads, too, at just two pages each, since they originally appeared as articles in a fairly ordinary French magazine whose readers aren’t particularly interested in intellectual mumbo-jumbo. You can probably find a copy of the book on Amazon, but be forewarned that it’s in French. Here’s the info: Dans le jardin des mots, published in 2007 by De Fallois Editions, prefaced by philosopher and journalist André Giovanni. The preface is great, by the way.

Retournons à nos moutons, “let’s return to our sheep” = let’s get back to the point: the bi-gendered gens. The explanation we found is reason enough to drop to your knees in gratitude for our neutered English. Apparently even the French, including some celebrated authors, make mistakes when it comes to gens.

That gens is both a masculine and feminine noun is not hard to swallow. There are other everyday nouns that take both genders. Change the gender, change the meaning: la manche = the sleeve; le manche = the handle / la poêle = the frying pan; le poêle = the stove / le livre = the book; la livre = the pound. The list goes on, but it’s not especially long and is really just a matter of vocabulary. The story’s more complicated for gens.

Here are the Rules:
Gens is masculine, unless preceded by a plural adjective. In that case it’s feminine, as is the adjective modifying it. Remember that list of BAGS adjectives from French class? The ones used to describe, in general, Beauty, Age, Goodness (or lack of it), and Size: beau, belle, joli, jeune, vieux, vieille, bon, mauvais, grand, petit, etc. Those types of adjectives are generally placed before the noun they modify, whereas most others follow. Example: C’est un vieux monsieur. But: C’est un monsieur respectable.

According to the Rules, when one of those adjectives precedes gens, gens and the preceding adjective take the feminine form: Ce sont de vieilles gens. = “They’re old folks,” using the feminine form of the adjective vieux. But, ce sont des gens français, with “français” in the masculine. If we continue to talk about these old folks, using a pronoun, we need to use elles: Mes voisins sont de vieilles gens, elles sont françaises. Note bene: “voisins” is masculine, “vielles gens” is feminine, “elles” and “françaises” are feminine. Grrrrrrrrrr…

You may want to pour yourself a glass of wine before continuing down the not-so-logical road of this French grammar rule.

Next scenario to consider: gens preceded by two adjectives, the second of which ends – in the masculine and the feminine – in a mute “e.” Re-read that a couple of times. What we’re talking about here are BAGS adjectives like brave, whose masculine and feminine forms both end in a mute “e,” that is, BAGS adjectives whose masculine and feminine forms are identical.

In this seemingly, but only seemingly complicated and limited case, you use the masculine form for the first adjective. Who cares about the gender of the second adjective since you can’t tell if it’s masculine or feminine anyway – the forms are identical. JP and I felt victorious just for having grasped the scenario; understanding the Rule and its application was icing on the cake. Here are two examples to help clarify: Ce sont de vrais braves gens, les étudiants de français ! / Ces prétendus honnêtes gens nous ont trompés. You see, brave and honnête are absolutely the same, whether they be masculine or feminine. The adjectival form that matters is that of the first adjective in the pair modifying gens. And as you see, in these two examples anyway, there’s no difference there either when it comes to pronunciation. The only difference between the masculine and feminine forms of vrais-vraies and prétendus-prétendues lies in their spelling. With BAGS adjectives like “petit-petite,” you hear a difference, so if you make a mistake, everyone in the room knows it -- a (perhaps) gross exaggeration, but let's note anyway that those who bring the error to your attention are not worth talking to. Chances are, you’ll quite naturally use the masculine (correct) form of the first adjective anyway. Here’s why: trying saying, ces petiT(es) braves gens. It doesn’t exactly flow off the tongue. Now try, ces peti(ts) braves gens. It’s easier to articulate and therefore what you would naturally tend towards saying. I'm not a linguist, but that makes sense to me.

That said, on to the next gens Rule: when gens is qualified by the adjective tout, to designate specific people, you use the masculine plural form tous: tous ces gens, tous les gens sensés. On the other hand – there’s almost always an “on the other hand” in French grammar – you use the feminine plural form toutes IF gens and toutes are separated by an adjective whose masculine form differs from the feminine form by the absence of a mute “e” (e.g. bon-bonne): J’aimerais remercier toutes les bonnes gens qui nous ont aidés. Notice that the past participle agrees with gens… in the masculine plural, despite the feminine form of bon. Chorus: Grrrrrrrrrr…

Perhaps you’re beginning to see, though, that the whole thing comes down to a question of pronunciation, that is, to making it easier to pronounce gens in combination with certain adjectives. English does the same kind of irritating stuff, but we don’t notice it because we’re so used to it.

Last gens Rule, finally: what happens if we’re using the adjective jeune? Bring it on, you'll respond, mellowed by that glass of wine I suggested. Ah, but this is an easy one, a hard and fast, easy to grasp rule: use the masculine. Youppie! Example: de joyeux jeunes gens.

Fortunately for non-native speakers of French, the native speakers, who rely more on their ear than on their Bécherelles to guide them, don’t manage to perfection all these rules. Conclusion: non-native speakers are allowed some leeway. Those readers who have spent some time living in France will recognize this seemingly logical conclusion as wishful thinking. And why is that anyway?

One last word, in the form of a quotation I found on a French chat site for writers, a smile-provoking observation left by a professional, native-French translator trying to digest the rules concerning gens: “Cela m'amène à conclure que le mot gens, étant un mot difficile à faire précéder, les règles ont pour but de le faire précéder autant que possible par un adjectif finissant par le son "e". Si ce n'est pas possible au masculin, alors on met l'adjectif au féminin... Sans être une féministe obsédée, je trouve que ça aurait été beaucoup plus simple de décider que le mot gens est féminin! Ah la la ! quels gens!” [“This leads me to conclude that the word gens is a difficult word to modify by an adjective preceding it; the rules’ purpose is to impose, as far as it possible, an adjective ending in a mute “e.” If that’s not possible in the masculine, then you use the feminine form. Not to be obsessive feminist, but it would have been much easier to just make gens feminine! …”].

France is all about aesthetics, baby.

It's Beaujolais Time

I had planned on writing an article on French etiquette this week, but when I realized that it was already the third week of November, I decided to put off etiquette to a later date, in favor of writing about Beaujolais wines. Those of you who have come to my home for wine tasting parties, or to France with me for dégustations, visits to vineyards and caves coopératives will not be surprised by my choice.

For some years now, the third Thursday of November marks the appearance on the market of the much touted Beaujolais Nouveau. I’m all for the celebrations the event brings about worldwide. For you Seattle readers, check out Voilà Bistro or Le Pichet for a lively evening.

That said, I’m in no way a fan of the Beaujolais Nouveau wine itself. It’s not bad (well, sometimes, yes, it is bad) -- the problem is more that it’s just not very good. Its success isn’t connected to its taste, but rather to the clever marketing skills of Georges Dubœuf, et al. If you’re bent on trying the Beaujolais Nouveau (and you should at least once), be sure to chill it well and to serve it with anything but elegant dishes: French fries and sausages, for example, are a perfect match, kind of like beer and nachos. For that matter, Beaujolais Nouveau would probably work well with nachos, too. For something a bit more delicate, you might try a spinach salad dressed with walnuts, Roquefort, and a light balsamic vinaigrette. In this wine drinker’s opinion, though, that $10-20 you’re paying in the States for a bottle of the Nouveau could be better spent on a bottle of non-nouveau Beaujolais. Some of them are truly wonderful and almost always lower priced than a decent bottle of Burgundy or Bordeaux.

The densely planted Beaujolais fields are located in eastern central France, just a tad bit northwest of Lyon. Beaujolais wines are produced through an apparently unique method of vintification. I say “apparently” because I’m a wine lover, not an expert. My wine knowledge, as opposed to my wine experience, is limited: I’m familiar with numerous excellent small vineyards here in the south of France, as well as some from the Loire valley, Bordeaux, Alsace, and the Nantes region, some Italian, Californian, a smattering of South American and African wines. An expert, though, I’m not. When I take folks on wine tours here, I leave the technical explanations to the real experts: those who make the wine. What I can tell you about Beaujolais comes from some deliberate recent research for this article and from an American pianist, a real lover of Burgundies and Beaujolais, to whom I gave French lessons for five years. Hats off and merci, Monsieur C.

There are four classifications of Beaujolais: Beaujolais Nouveau, Beaujolais (a step up), Beaujolais Village (getting better), and ten Crus du Beaujolais (miam-miam): Brouilly, Chénas, Chiroubles, Côte de Brouilly, Fleurie, Juliénas, Morgon, Moulin à Vent, Régnié, Saint-amour. Specifics on these different Beaujolais are given towards the end of this article. First let’s take a look at what makes Beaujolais Beaujolais.

Of initial importance is the wine grower's choice of Gamay grapes for the encépagement (the ensemble of vine types in the field). Next is the very dense planting of the vines and the hand harvesting of the grapes. Some 35,000 harvesters are used during the ten to twenty-day harvesting period (vendange) in mid-September. Finally, Beaujolais is defined by a vintification process that uses the entire cluster of grapes -- as opposed to removing the grapes from the clusters, I would imagine. This technique encourages the best expression of Gamay fragrances and flavors.

At harvest time, the grape clusters are carefully loaded into vats made of cement or stainless steel, varying in size from forty to three hundred hectoliters. The juice that’s initially released fills between 10 to 30 percent of the volume of the vat. This quantity increases during maceration, to reach between 40 and 70 percent with the draining of the lie. Two fermenting processes take place at the same time in the vat: classic fermentation in the liquid portion and an intracellular maceration within the whole clusters of grapes. If I understand correctly, it’s this combination of methods that marks Beaujolais vintification as unique.

While the use of whole grape clusters is a constant in the Beaujolais wine-making process, variances in other elements create the spectrum of Beaujolais wines. Some are designed to be drunk immediately; some can be put down for short periods, and others for up to five years or longer. Beaujolais Nouveau, for instance, is drunk within several months of the grape harvest. Beaujolais and Beaujolais Villages have a longer life, while Beaujolais crus can and sometimes should be cellared for several years.

After fermentation, the grapes are pressed; the juice from the vats is mixed with the juice that has been pressed out. A second fermentation then takes place. Once completed, the wine can be filtered and bottled. The Beaujolais Nouveau is immediately bottled, since it’s put on the market the third Thursday of November. The other Beaujolais aren’t bottled for several more months.

The specifics that follow include suggestions for pairing the different Beaujolais with food. I personally don’t follow them too closely, since taste is very subjective. A “best” rule is to match wines and foods according to your own tastes; if you like the marriage, it’s a good match for you. What could be more obvious? You'll notice that Beaujolais is typically served between 50-57 degrees, the colder temperature being best for the Nouveaux. That, too, should be subject to your own tastes.

Brouilly
Acreage: 1200 hectares
Soil : granite and alluvial sand
Full-bodied, with a deep ruby color, nuances of red fruits, plums, peaches and mineral notes
Serve at 53°, with wild fowl and red meats

Chénas
Acreage: 260 hectares
Soil : granite sand
Well-bodied, with a ruby-tinted garnet color, floral and woodsy nuances
Serve at 57°, with lamb, sauced meats and strong cheeses

Chiroubles
Acreage: 350 hectares
Soil: granite and porphyry
Elegant, delicate body, vivid red color, very fruity with a floral nose (peonies, violets, lilies)
Serve at 53°, with charcuterie, poultry, pork

Côte de Brouilly
Acreage: 290 hectares
Soil : granite and schist
A Beaujolais thoroughbred, purple in color, with nuances of fresh grapes and iris. Ages well; should not be drunk too young
Serve at 55°, with charcuterie, rabbit stew or similar dishes

Fleurie
Acreage: 800 hectares
Soil: granitic sand
Smooth and elegant, carmine colored, with floral and fruity notes: iris, violets, roses, peaches, cassis, red fruits
Serve at 55°, with lamb, poultry, pork

Juliénas: one of my favorites
Acreage: 580 hectares
Soil : schist and granite, some clay
I read that this is a bit of a nervous wine (whatever that means) that can be drunk both young and aged for several years; strong red color, with a nose of peaches, red fruits, floral notes
Serve at 55°, with coq au vin, wild fowl, sauced poultry dishes

Morgon: another favorite of mine
Acreage: 1100 hectares
Soil : granitic schist, broken rocks
Rich and full, with a garnet color and aromas of cherry, peach, apricot, plums
Best aged
Serve at 55°, with sauced meats and game

Moulin à Vent: the Beaujolais of Beaujolais, one of my favorite wines (hmm, I have a lot of favorites...)
Acreage: 650 hectares
Soil: manganese-rich granite
Deep ruby red in color, big taste, with floral, spice, and ripe fruit nuances
Ages exceptionally well
Serve at 57°, with red meats, game, full-bodied cheeses

Régnié
Acreage: 650 hectares
Soil: sandy granite
The most recent Beaujolais, classed in 1988
Supple, well-structured wine, cherry color with a touch of violet, fruity nuances of currant, blackberry, and raspberry
Serve at 53°, with terrines, white meats, and dishes with cream

Saint-amour
Acreage: 280 hectares
Soil : siliceous clay
A lively, well-balanced wine, ruby colored with aromas of kirsch, spice and reseda
Serve at 54°, with organ meats, poultry and wild fowl

Beaujolais-Villages
Acreage: 5850 hectares
Soil : crystalline
39 towns can use this appellation
Cherry-red color, smooth in the mouth with nuances of red fruits (most notably cassis and strawberry)
Serve at 51-53°, with charcuterie, poultry, and a wide variety of dishes

Beaujolais
Acreage: 9700 hectares
Soil : chalky clay and granite
This is the porte-drapeau (standard-bearer) of Beaujolais; they tend to be floral and fruity, a good go-with-everything wine
Serve at 51°

Beaujolais Nouveau and Beaujolais-Villages Nouveaux
2/3 of these come from Beaujolais acreage, 1/3 from Beaujolais Villages acreage
They are brightly red, currant or cherry colored, are typically fruity and floral
Serve at 50°

OK, now that you know a bit about what you’re in for, go have some fun at your local Beaujolais Nouveau party. My village isn't celebrating, though -- yup, that happens in some French villages --, so I'll have to wait till a later date to try out this year's production. If you're testing it out this evening, please raise a glass for me, hopefully to the tune of Chevaliers de la Table ronde. Then go hunt down a bottle of good Beaujolais.

Peyre

Just 7 kilometers southwest of Millau is the troglodyte village of Peyre. Typically you won’t find it listed in the Michelin Atlas France, whose index does however list a Peyre that’s located near Pau, not far from the Pyrenees. The troglodyte Peyre is in the Aveyron, a stone’s throw from the Parc Naturel Régional des Grands Causses. While it may not appear in the Michelin index, it does appear on the Atlas’ map, so before you mistakenly head off towards the Spanish border, locate Millau in your Michelin, then look a bit to the left to find Peyre just off the D-41.

The name means “stone” in Occitan, also known as and langue-d'oc and provençal; it was the language of the medieval troubadours of southern France, and bears an obvious similarity to the French word for stone, pierre. Like Breton and Catalan, Occitan is still alive and kicking, having survived 19th and 20th century government measures to standardize French, to the detriment of anything other language spoken in the country. Classes, music, and literature of all sorts are available in Occitan; there are festivals that spin around its culture, and local bilingual publications where articles appear in both standard French and Occitan. Its melodious sounds are distinctly Mediterranean and carry with them the historical French-Italian-Spanish influences of southern France.

It’s not particularly easy to pronounce “Peyre” correctly if you’re an Anglophone: try saying “PAY” followed by “re.” You’ll notice a bit of a stop in your throat and a dramatic change of lip position between the two syllables if you’re on the right track. Stretch and tighten your lips for the first syllable, then purse them to pronounce the clipped “-re.” Correctly pronouncing the village’s name will help you immensely when you stop to ask for directions, because, once you’ve located Peyre in your atlas and are en route, you may discover that it’s just as difficult to find the village in the actual countryside as it was in the Michelin. It’s an easy matter for French and foreigners alike to miss the one and only, poorly positioned road sign. If you’re hesitant to ask for directions, just wander around the Millau viaduct area and you may eventually bump into Peyre on your own.

Rupestral Peyre is principally known for its troglodytic church and the spectacular view it offers of the Millau viaduct. The unusual juxtaposition of ultra-modern and medieval will instantly prompt you to reach for your camera, like many other visitors to the region. Beware: I’ve read that since the viaduct’s inauguration in 2004 by none other than former French President Jacques Chirac, car accidents in the area have increased sharply, with motorists hopping out of their cars along the départementale to snap pictures of the panoramic oxymoron. This surely has nothing to do with Chirac…

It’s best to leave your car in one of the parking lots near the new church at the base of the hill leading into Peyre, then hike the short distance up to the medieval St. Cristofol. It's not a long hike, nor a particularly steep hill either, whereas it is difficult if not impossible to find parking in the village proper. If you try, you're likely to annoy those who live there – to whom the handful of parking spots rightly belong – and, if (when) you discover that the spots are all taken, you'll have to maneuver a tricky about face, drive back down the hill and park your car where you should have left it in the first place.

You’ll notice that the narrow, winding streets of Peyre, called calades, are made of stone, and that the houses are made of limestone. Some have maintained their troglodytic aspects, with doors leading into compartments carved into the cliffs. As I wandered through the small village specifically looking for photo ops of such compartments, I found myself uncharacteristically wanting to knock on private doors for some personal insights into cave dwelling. I really wanted to see the interior of one of these troglodyte homes. My only experience with troglodytes up to that point had been literary: via an 18th century Montesquieu text, an interesting social commentary from Les Lettres persanes. You can read about this book and those letters specifically concerning the Troglodytes on one of the Wikipedia sites indicated below. I resisted my impulse, but learned to my great dismay that some visitors, usually photographers, do indeed intrude on the private life of Peyre's small population.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troglodyte_(peuple)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Letters

Once you reach St. Cristofol, position yourself at the low wall just in front of the church -- vertigo sufferers, breathe deeply --, with your back to the limestone cliff (tuffa) into which the church is etched. As you gaze out over the Tarn River, you’ll see before you British architect Norman Foster’s 2460 meters long, 343 meters high miracle of modern technology, the Millau Viaduct. This is a safer point from which to take a photo than on D-41. FYI: the viaduct photo attached to this article was taken halfway up the hill between Peyre’s two churches.

St. Cristofol was named for its patron saint, whose relic, apparently brought from Spain in the tenth century by Crusaders returning home to the Aveyron, was re-located to the newer church when the troglodyte church was recently restored for non-religious use by the Communes de Millau Grands Causses. The tombs whose stones can still be seen in the floor of St.Cristofol were also re-located to the newer church. The town council auctioned off the cave-church in 1872 in order to fund the newer place of worship. Today St-Cristofol plays host to local art exhibits. During my visit, Line Bonfils' acrylics were on display. Her magical paintings open onto quite another world; they can be seen online at: http://www.line-bonfils.com/

The Romanesque-style church’s location was well chosen; it’s elevation and situation allowed approaching potential attackers to be spotted long before they arrived at the village’s base. Those who constructed the edifice in the 11th century took advantage of the overhanging, corbeled cliff to reduce construction needs and also to take advantage of the security the cave could provide. To what already existed naturally, they added a projecting bell tower and a small perpendicular wall for entrance into the church. All was fortified in the seventeenth century to provide for better defense of the site and the village’s inhabitants, who took shelter there during menacing times. Before going inside, take a moment to stroll off to the left of the church’s present entrance to see the wonderful inscriptions around the older, no longer used door. They are witness to the blending of paganism and Christianity in the region many centuries ago.

Inside Saint Cristofol, you’ll find some beautiful stained glass windows. They’re a very recent addition to the church, designed by master glass maker Emmanuel Chauche, and installed in 2001. In reading about Chauche’s design, I learned that the artist drew his inspiration from the site’s natural surroundings: the rain gently passing through rock fissures, the different levels of the cave-church’s interior, the staircases leading nowhere. The windows associate drops of richly colored, heavy leaded crystal with granite to create sculptures of light that are perfectly in sync with their surroundings.

A trek to Peyre will leave you time for other activities, so if you’d like to visit additional sites in the vicinity, try the (very) tiny truffle museum in Comprégnac (La Maison de la truffe), where you can learn about everything truffle and purchase a wide variety of truffle products. I'd avoid the truffled chocolate drops, although the truffled hazelnut butter, also chocolate, is exquisite; idem for the truffle oil. You may also enjoy a visit to the Roquefort caves, where you will discover some very practical uses of the region's limestone caves. Check out the following website, available in both English and French, for more information: http://www.roquefort.fr/

A New Skill to Add to My CV?

It’s been a long while since my last entry on this site. Contrary to what one might think – that I’d have time on my hands living in a lost-in-the-middle-of-nowhere village –, this back to basics life can be quite time consuming. On the other hand, both the setting and pace are relaxing, at least in the warmer months: I’m writing this on my laptop, seated on a sun-drenched stone terrace next to my tomato garden.

That sounds better than it actually is. The wind is starting to whip up and there are only three tomato and four basil plants in the garden, bordered by drooping sunflowers and lots of dahlias and zinnias, all unfortunately orange. I dramatically limited the size of my garden because seeds are pricey here and mostly because I don’t have any water faucets for outdoor purposes. At least, that’s what I thought in the spring when I dug up all the weeds and ivy next to the terrace to make a small garden spot edged in large stone slabs. I managed to carry those heavy (heavy!) slabs from the front yard, down the steps to the terrace by constantly visualizing how lovely they would look there. This mentality exasperates some folks and is absolutely incomprehensible to others. Happily none of those people belong to my inner circle and everyone found my insanity quite normal. Hmm…

Back to why the garden is so small, albeit prolific. I didn’t realize that in France, the outdoor water faucets are often located in the garage, and only mid-way through the summer did my upstairs neighbor fill me in on that important detail. I’ve spent quite a bit of time living in France, but I’d never bothered with gardens here till now. The water faucet-in-the-garage is apparently a given for the French; my neighbors and partner alike found it odd that I didn’t know. I found it odd that they had all seen me going back and forth between my kitchen and garden with large plastic bottles of tap water, for months, yet no one had mentioned the faucet in the garage before now. Feeling unjustly criticized, I countered with the obvious question: “So, where are the water faucets in the United States?” Blank looks all around, I tried to suppress a smug smile. I didn’t try all that hard.

Like any intelligent soul, I walked all around the premises to locate the water faucets when I first moved into my little apartment. Seeing none, I assumed that the garden plants had to be watered the very old fashioned way: with watering cans filled at the river or the kitchen sink. I never considered catching rainfall in barrels. I’m patient about many things and ecologically minded, too, but catching rainfall in barrels would be way too much trouble for a few tomatoes. For a brief moment, though, I considered buying a really long length of hose to siphon water from the river into my garden. I know how to do that from all those years on a farm way back in another life. But I abandoned the idea as folly because the distance to cover was uphill, too long, crossed someone else’s garden, and the hose cost too much anyway. I resigned myself to a garden small enough to water by hand, with water from my kitchen. Besides, I reasoned that Jean-Paul and I had a large garden spot at his house – and I thought it would be relaxing at day’s end to make a "few" trips back and forth from kitchen to garden. Maybe village life is deteriorating my brain cells.

The short of it is that I put in a few tomatoes, some herbs and flowers at my place, and we put lots of tomatoes, basil, and other big, sprawling stuff at Jean-Paul’s, where there is no garage, and where the faucets are indeed outside – so why all those surprised looks when I expected faucets at my place to be outside? (Va comprendre ces Français, même ceux que l’on aime. Go figure, those French, even those we love.) And I’ve been filling containers with water at the kitchen sink to keep my plants happy and growing. What seemed an easy chore has become an annoyance and I find that, even though I am melancholic to see summer’s end, I’m not dismayed to see the leaves on my tomato plants starting to die off. Just to be clear, it’s not from lack of water.

These past months have brought me other new experiences as well. The most out of the ordinary was working in a small honey extraction facility. I hesitate to call it a “factory” because that would conjure up something much larger and more organized than the actual place. I remember my first thoughts upon stepping inside and seeing the machinery and equipment, some of which could definitely be termed hazardous: “Ah, no phone lines, no cell phone reception, no emergency gear, hornets and bees flying about menacingly, you’ll be here alone much of the time – fais gaffe! Watch out!"

The bees, boxes and combs belong to a friend of ours whose back is shot from years as a beekeeper. He couldn’t do the extracting himself this year, so he asked us if we would help out. Even with our very limited experience, we can empathize: we’re both in dire need of a visit to the local kiné. Thankfully the extracting is in hiatus at the moment.

There are numerous apiculteurs and apicultrices in the south of France and all kinds of honey produced. Chris’ honey comes mostly from chestnut trees, although all his jar labels say otherwise. Here’s his very practical explanation: he sells most of his honey in bulk, in large vats, and only a small quantity currently goes into jars for sale to individuals. When he first started out years ago, that wasn’t the case. Back then, he sold his honey in different sized jars, mainly to individuals, so ordered a large number of labels for the kind of honey he was then producing: a blend coming from different flowers. Even though his production and marketing have changed, he hasn’t used up all the labels he bought years ago, so sticks those on his limited jar production, noting the correct year. He reasons that anyone who knows honey will know that it’s chestnut honey and will be intelligent enough to understand that the label means nothing; it’s just a bearer of his name and the year. On top of that, most of the folks who buy jars of honey from him are from the area anyway, so know him as well as his honey. He told us that occasionally someone driving by will come into the extracting facility out of curiosity and will purchase a jar or two. Out of these customers, a handful come back to complain that the honey in the jar is not what’s indicated on the label. Chris just shrugs. He figures they just want to act like experts. Who in their right mind, he asks, would drive all the way back up into the mountains to make such a dumb complaint?

He also talked to us about the honey market, saying that although it’s fairly good these days, to actually make a living beekeeping, you have to have many, many hives (ruches) and take dramatic and often costly measures against diseases. Entire hives can be wiped out nearly instantly. Eco-friendly measures are in general expensive and time-consuming. He and his wife practice ecologically sound beekeeping, just barely eking out a living from their 500 hives. Other local beekeepers tell us that that’s a respectable number and that you can’t live on fewer unless you have a second job or also sell your honey on the village market circuits, and for that you have to get up at 5 every morning, load your goods into your van, travel to that day’s market (there’s a market to be found somewhere every day in the region), then spend long hours pitching your product. Chris refuses that life-style, even though it might increase his income. He prefers having some free time for other pursuits. He composes incredible jazz and blues numbers on his guitar, just for pleasure – being timid about such things, he’s never played in public. His wife shares his perspective about the market circuit. She suffers from lumbago and no longer works in the miellerie, although she still goes out into the fields with Chris when she’s able. She supplements their income by working as the village librarian for our closet-sized stash of books.

We learned that the bee scene requires a certain steady nerve. Decked out from head to toe to fingertips in white beekeeping garb, Chris and Dom, along with a Dutch friend of theirs, go out into the fields to collect the hives when it’s extracting time. They load the hives onto their truck and cart them off to the miellerie, which Chris financed and built with help from the local government and the European Union. Other apiculteurs use the miellerie as well, but it’s not a co-op. It’s Chris’ project and his equipment for the most part, too. The others book time to use the space and equipment, then come in with their hausses (bee boxes filled with honey-laden frames, and a few still very buzzing bees) to process.

One Sunday morning while I was working in the miellerie, expecting to be entirely alone, Nadou the apicultrice showed up with her hausses. Ready to retire in just a few years, she’s owned and run her own small honey business most of her life, with a few sideline gigs teaching French to foreigners. She sells her honey and pollen in small, hand-labeled jars, mostly to individual buyers at the local markets and in a couple of village shops. Her hands, gnarled by arthritis, betrayed her hard beekeeper’s life. Her attire did not. She was dressed in a lovely skirt and snazzy sandals, whereas I was dressed in an old pair of roller-blading shorts, a tank top, and a pair of plastic tongs. It was hot and humid and the work messy, hence my choice of clothing. Nadou donned an apron and went to work. I doubt that an apron would have covered me sufficiently for the tasks with which Chris had charged me. There was honey dripping everywhere, off of everything, including every one of my fingers. There’s no way to extract the honey without getting some of it on you – a lot of it in the beginning, when you’re just learning how. Nadou was mostly tapping her honey into jars that she then labeled. I like to think that it's easier to be elegant pasting a label than scraping honeycombs with a big hand rake to knock off the seals the bees have made (they’re very efficient little creatures). That’s what I was doing when Nadou arrived, prepping the honey boards for the centrifuge machine that would spin the honey out of the combs.

If you’re working on a small scale, you can do all the scraping by hand, then put the honey frames into a small spinner. If you’ve got a lot of honey to extract, though, like we did, a large spinner and a cutting machine are more practical. The cutting/scraping machine we used could hold 50 honey frames; the centrifuge machine could hold 30 at a time.

Here’s the process, with my apologies to anyone reading who knows the correct vocabulary in English. I’m writing with the handicap of having experienced honey extraction in French only. You lift what can be a heavy-with-honey frame from a bee box, to place it into the scraping machine. Carefully. There are blades at the bottom that can take your fingers off. And the metal rods that hold the frames in place can easily crush your hands. I quickly figured out that it was easier to stick my fingers directly into the honey combs in order to correctly position the frame between the (moving) rods instead of trying to do it by holding the outside edges of the frames. The machine moved the frame down between the blades that scraped most of the seals, then was pushed along into a holding bin. Occasionally the machine got out of whack, sending a frame down a bit sideways. If you were quick enough, you could send the frame back up by setting the reverse button, enabling you to re-position the frame. Sometimes, though, the frame broke, its pieces caught between the rods. That was not fun to fix.

In fact, the first time it happened to me, I didn’t have the slightest idea of how to fix it. I thought I’d broken the machine. I was the only one in the miellerie, no one was around, I had no cell phone (which wouldn’t have worked anyway since you couldn’t get any reception in the place), and was therefore very, very wary of putting my hands into the machine to dislodge the broken pieces of wood. I knew that Chris was skeptical about having a woman working there, too; he’s a great guy but a tad bit sexist. That factored into my determination to fix things on my own, even though I was nervous about just how to do it.

I turned everything off, unplugged everything, too, then studied the machine. It seemed to me that it was out of balance on the right side, causing the frame to drop more on the left side rather than uniformly. Figuring that out would help me repair the machine to make it run more smoothly IF I could get the stuck and now broken frame out. Nothing was plugged in, so it was unreasonable for me to be afraid of the machine suddenly lurching into motion. However, that’s exactly what had me frozen. I could almost feel my hands being squished between the rods. “Ouch” does not express what I was imagining. This is not the kind of work you’re trained for if you have a PhD in literature…

BUT I took a deep breath, told myself that there really wasn’t any danger – which was true, since the machine was both off and unplugged – and with the help of a metal spatula and a hammer was able to pull out all the broken pieces of wood. I then re-set things, plugged the machine back in, ran alternately the reverse and forward motions until the machine was unjammed and running smoothly again. That was a good moment. It was a better moment when I positioned a new frame of honey and it dropped down evenly between the scraping blades, allowing me to continue the job. I remember asking myself aloud what I was doing there in that miellerie anyway. Good question.

Next step in the process: once you’ve run enough scraped frames into the holding bin, you lift them one by one to check that the seals have all been adequately scraped. If some remain, you scrape them by hand with a pronged metal tool – very sharp, by the way, very slippery, too, since it’s covered with honey. If a frame is substantially laden with pollen, you set it aside, to be placed in the spinner in a particular fashion. Once you have the frames all prepped, you load them into the spinner, ten per arm of the spinner. Then comes the hard part that requires some muscle power. You have to lift up the full and very heavy arm in order to position it in the spinner. It's a backache in the making. Once all three arms are full and a few other details taken care of, you can (finally) turn on the spinner, first at a slow speed to make sure all’s well, then kicking up the speed little by little to full blast. The honey flows and flows, running through several filters and finally into a huge vat. It's lovely to see, especially when you've done it all yourself without too much mishap.

The post-centrifuge process involves removing the spun frames from the spinner, placing them back in the bee boxes, then stacking the boxes. Not so interesting. Once you’ve emptied all the frames and are down to the metal catch-tray that protects the floor from being covered with dripping honey, you head outdoors to deposit the tray on the ground. Hoards of bees descend on it to eat up the remaining honey. Everything is recycled, nothing wasted.

I’ve never been a honey lover, but found myself licking my fingers and liking the gooey stuff. I’ve not touched a drop since my last day of extracting, even though we have several jars of it in the kitchen cupboard. It’s not the same. My guess is I won’t eat anymore honey till next season, and then only what drips its way directly from the combs onto my fingers.

For those more constant honey lovers, I’ve included below two honey bread recipes, one in French and one in English. Bon appétit.


PAIN D’EPICES AU MIEL
Ingrédients :
* 125 g de beurre
* 250 g de miel
* 75 g de sucre roux
* 2 oeufs
* 225 g de farine de blé complet
* 2 pincée de sel
* 1 cuil. à café de levure chimique
* 1 cuil. à café bombée de cinq-épices (ou d’épices spécial pain d’épices)

Préparation :
1. Faites chauffer le miel, le sucre et le beurre, en remuant, jusqu’à ce que le sucre ait fondu.
2. Dans ce mélange légèrement refroidi, ajoutez les oeufs battus en omelette.
3. Incorporez, enfin, la farine tamisée avec la levure, le sel et les épices.
4. Versez la pâte dans moule carré de 18 cm de côté et faites cuire, à 170° C, pendant 1 h 30 environ : votre pain d’épices est cuit quand ses bords se détachent du moule.
5. Démoulez et laissez refroidir.


HONEY SPICE BREAD
Ingredients for 2 loaves (10 slices each)
* 2-3 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
* 315 ml (1 1/4 cups) whole milk
* 250 ml (1 cup) packed brown sugar
* 375 ml (1 1/2 cups) buckwheat honey
* 1 liter (4 cups) unbleached flour
* 2 tsp. baking powder
* 1 tsp. fennel seed
* 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
* 1/2 tsp. salt
* 1/4 tsp. ground cloves
* 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
* A pinch of ground black pepper
* 2 tbsp. candied ginger, finely chopped
* 1 large egg + 1 yolk, at room temperature


Method
1. Preheat the oven to 125° C (250° F). Butter two large (9 1/4 x 5 1/4 X 2 1/2) loaf pans, line the bottom with parchment paper and butter the parchment. Everything must be well-buttered or it will stick. Set aside.
2. Heat the milk, sugar and honey in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat and set aside until slightly cooled.
3. In the bowl of a heavy duty mixer fitted with the paddle attachment combine flour, baking soda, fennel seed, salt, cinnamon, cloves, ground ginger and pepper. In two batches, add the tepid honey mixture and candied ginger. Scrape down the sides as needed, and blend on low speed until just combined. Add the egg and egg yolk and beat on medium speed until well blended.
4. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pans, dividing the batter evenly and not filling the pans more than half full. Transfer to the heated oven and bake until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, 2 to 2 1/2 hours. (Watch the last 30 to 45 minutes, and cover with aluminum foil if the bread starts to become too dark).
5. Remove the loaves to a rack to cool slightly. Turn the loaves out of the pans and remove the parchment paper. Slice each loaf into 10 slices. The bread keeps well very tightly wrapped in plastic wrap for up to 1 week.