WINE ESTATE

Domaine Chaume-Arnaud

VINSOBRES

Les Paluds
26110 Vinsobres
04 75 27 66 85

Not too many women were running wine estates in the Southern Rhône back in 1987 when cheerfully determined Valérie Arnaud took over her parents’ vineyards to launch her own wines. With her husband Philippe Chaume (above), she has created one of the flagship estates in Vinsobres – organic since 1997 and certified biodynamic since 2009.

‘Biodynamics is the agriculture of the future,’ Valérie says. ‘We noticed an improvement in the vines right away, and in the wines after a year or two. With climate change our wines had become heavier and warmer and we didn’t like that. Biodynamics makes the minerality more pronounced as well as raising the level of natural acidity. But you have to embrace it fully. You can’t play around with it.’

No question about it: the Chaume-Arnaud wines, coaxed from 40 hectares all on the slopes and plateau of Vinsobres, have freshness and verve far above the norm. Look out especially for the silky, blackberryish estate Vinsobres (featuring a dash of Cinsault and old-vine Carignan as well as the usual Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre). The white La Cadène (50:50 Marsanne and Viognier) is also a delight – fragrant, delicate and lively all at once.

B&B

L’Aube Safran

LE BARROUX – NEAR MONT VENTOUX

450 Chemin du Patifiage
84330 Le Barroux04 90 36 39 91
www.aube-safran.com
PRICE RANGE – UPPER END OF MODERATE

Lost in the woods near Le Barroux is one of the smartest B&Bs in Provence – and one of the most interesting, too. Leaving Paris two decades ago, architect Francois Pillet and his wife Marie, a decorator and cook, roamed across the south of France looking for the spark to ignite a new life. Eventually they ended up close to Mont Ventoux, creating a magnificent guest house and a saffron farm.

Featured in endless magazines and television programmes, L’Aube Safran is cool and stylish, with the clean lines and restrained putty tones that have become so typical of modern Provençal interiors. (Marie also decorated Le Dolium in Beaumes-de-Venise.) In spacious common areas and five unusually large bedrooms, natural fabrics, bleached wood, stone, tadelakt and limewash give an organic feel which ties in with the organically grown saffron outside, and indeed with the organic ingredients in Marie’s carefully prepared breakfasts.

Add a fine pool, super mountain views and Les Safranades, a range of saffron-based preserves to buy and take home, and you have the basis for a memorable stay. Saffron-infused table d’hôte dinners are on offer at certain times.

More information about the Mont Ventoux area: www.provenceguide.co.uk

COOKERY CLASSES

Le Marmiton at La Mirande

AVIGNON

4 Place de la Mirande
84000 Avignon
04 90 14 20 20
www.la-mirande.fr

Ten o’clock on Sunday morning and a motley group of amateur cooks armed with wicker baskets is wandering around Avignon’s Les Halles, sniffing truffles, tasting pata negra ham, learning why shelled scallops are not a good buy… and wondering how on earth a respectable lunch of any kind can be conjured by midday.

Jean-Claude Altmayer, the seasoned Burgundian chef who has run cookery classes and table d’hôte dinners at gloriously civilised hotel La Mirande for years, is in no hurry. Bantering with stallholders he proceeds at a stately pace, like the Queen of England, making purchases without producing cash.

By eleven we are piling ingredients on to a massive table in the hotel’s original cellar kitchen. Chef Altmayer flings wood into the ancient range while his charming assistant, Séverine Sagnet, assigns tasks. Suddenly heaps of things are happening at once, and by some miracle, a knockout four-course meal is soon ready to be served in style.

Listen to this: pumpkin soup with girolles; scallops prepared three ways; loin of Bigorre pork with buttered cabbage, glazed carrots and roast shallots; roast whole pineapple with mango sorbet and passion fruit sauce. All accompanied by wines from well-known Châteauneuf-du-Pape estate Château Mont-Redon.

While some cookery courses provide more detailed instruction, precious few are half as much fun, culminating in a long, congenial lunch at a handsomely dressed table. Actually, that’s not quite true. The culmination comes at the very end when chef and sous-chef serenade us, M Altmayer belting out a somewhat risqué rap version of Sur le pont d’Avignon.

More information: http://bit.ly/wN9QmC

RECIPE

Roast Pears with Chestnuts and Chocolate

ALEX MACKAY – ‘COOKING IN PROVENCE’

‘The warm pears and chestnuts with the chocolate sauce and chestnut cream make a great combination for winter. You could of course have just the pears with the sauce, but I think the chestnuts and cream make it into something really special. Both cooked chestnuts and purée are widely available; the sweetened purée is a favourite breakfast spread all over France.’

Taken from Cooking in Provence by Alex Mackay with Peter Knab, published by Ebury Press

SERVES 4

2 very ripe Comice or Williams pears

200g (7oz) whole cooked and peeled chestnuts

2 tbsp melted butter

4 tbsp liquid honey

CHOCOLATE SAUCE

150ml (5fl oz) water

50g (1¾oz) icing sugar

40g (1½oz) cocoa powder

50g (1¾oz) 70% chocolate, grated

CHESTNUT CREAM

1 x 250g (9oz) tin sweetened chestnut purée

100ml (3½ fl oz) double cream

Preheat your oven to 190º /375ºF/Gas 5.

Halve and core the pears, then put them in an ovenproof pan with the chestnuts, butter and honey, and bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven.

While these are cooking, bring the water for the chocolate sauce to the boil with the sugar and cocoa powder and simmer, stirring continuously, for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat, add the chocolate and stir until it melts completely.

Soften the chestnut purée by stirring, and mix in the double cream.

Serve the pears and chestnuts either warm or at room temperature on the chocolate sauce with the chestnut cream spooned over or on the side.

WINE ESTATE

Château La Coste

COTEAUX D’AIX-EN-PROVENCE

2750 Route de la Cride
13610 Le Puy Sainte Réparade
04 42 61 92 90
www.chateau-la-coste.com
NO APPOINTMENT NECESSARY

As it has become quite the thing for well-heeled wine estates to make bold architectural statements, I arrive into Château La Coste’s Tadao Ando-designed visitor centre feeling a little blasé. But hang on a minute. Surely that isn’t an Alexander Calder sculpture at the entrance? Oh, it is an Alexander Calder sculpture. And the giant spider hovering over the lake just outside, so like the Louise Bourgeois giant spider in Tate Modern? Ah, it is by Louise Bourgeois.

And that, folks, is only a teaser – a tiny amuse-bouche to conjure up the flavour of a wine estate that will thrill devotees of modern art and architecture. Owned by Irish businessman Paddy McKillen and managed by his sister Mara (photographed with winemaker Matthieu Cosse and spider), Château La Coste incorporates in its 130 hectares of vines an art trail with five pavilions by leading architects (including Frank Gehry) and 20 sculptures by some of the world’s most renowned living artists (Richard Serra, Andy Goldsworthy, Sean Scully, Tom Shannon, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Paul Matisse…).

Even if you were to spend half a day here (as all art lovers should), it would not be long enough to absorb the aesthetic richness of the trail which winds up through vineyards to Tadao Ando’s serene chapel at the top of the hill, then down again. It has been constructed with immense sensitivity; rather than screaming ‘look at me’, pavilions and sculptures are tucked into nooks and around corners, fitting into the landscape and surprising visitors as they make their way along the route. For such a lavish treat the fee charged is reasonable,  with the option to include a cellar tour and tasting for a few extra euro.

This is only the first phase of a project with limitless ambitions. Work has also been commissioned from Renzo Piano (gallery), Richard Rogers (exhibition room) and James Turrell (tunnel of light). An ultra-luxurious 29-room hotel is under construction. And I almost forgot to mention that the winery was designed by Jean Nouvel, France’s most revered modern architect.

Admiring the whole place – so inspiring, so serene – it was tempting to think: this is all about art, not wine. But the wines, certified organic since 2009, are crafted as carefully as everything else at Château La Coste (without the help of a consultant oenologist, interestingly: young Matthieu Cosse works alone). The refined rosé and the stylish, Graves-like white Grand Vin (Rolle, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay) are the standouts in a remarkably strong line-up.

Note for those whose energy is flagging at the end of a long visit: there is also a café with tasty, homemade food.

RESTAURANT

Thym te voilà

APT

59 Place Saint Martin
84400 Apt
04 90 74 28 25
PRICE RANGE – MODERATE

Some people probably come here because they’re tired of Michelin-type swagger and stiffness; others because they don’t have Michelin-type budgets to blow. Either way I bet they go home happy, because this charming little place with its slight air of boho-chic maintains reasonable prices for food that is down-to-earth without being dull.

You might start with a tasty tart of organic carrots and cured ham (as I did), proceed to a hearty lamb tajine and finish with a chocolate fondant flavoured with black olives: daring yet delicious. Owner Nicolas Daubigney, who worked as an accountant in the film business before allowing his passion for cooking to spice up Apt’s restaurant scene in 2005, has travelled enough to enjoy the cuisines of other countries and it shows just enough to make the menu interesting. You will see him, be-aproned and smiling, making sure that everybody is happy.

One other thing: this is a good spot to bring kids. Young customers are encouraged to do a drawing for the cover of the wine list (which is short, by the way, but fine).

WINE ESTATE

Domaine Guillaume Gros

LUBERON

325 Chemin du Carraire
Le Bouteiller
84660 Maubec
04 90 76 63 30 / 06 75 70 87 50
www.domaineguillaumegros.com
APPOINTMENT ESSENTIAL

With 30 tiny parcels of vines to tend single-handed, Guillaume Gros is too small a producer, and too fastidious about his vineyard work, to be set up for visitors. But if you are serious about unearthing some of the Luberon’s most exciting wines, it may be worthwhile to arrange to see him – or at least to look out for bottles bearing his name. At the end of a sequence of cellar visits for a recent Decanter magazine article on the Luberon, a tasting session with Guillaume Gros propelled me home from this gorgeous region on a high.

Born into a vigneron family installed in Maubec for seven or eight generations, Gros left for Paris at the age of 17 to work as a sommelier –in Guy Savoy, Taillevent and Jules Verne, no less. Moving to Alsace, he fell so deeply in love with wine that he worked for renowned producer André Ostertag in 1995 before gravitating back to the Southern Rhône. Armed with experience at Domaine Santa Duc in Gigondas and Domaine de la Janasse in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, he was ready a decade or so ago to fly solo.

His wines range in style and price from Loquito, an uncomplicated vin de pays, through the poised, Carignan-influenced estate red to a couple of special cuvées, notably rich Coteau de l’Ara. Although lavish (reds are the main event), they have in common what he terms ‘the Ostertag effect’ – fantastic freshness and a succulently juicy mid-palate. One further plus: they are ready to drink, because Gros believes in holding his reds for a couple of years before release. And there’s birdsong in his cellar: who knows what benign effect that may have?

More information on wines in the Vaucluse:   http://bit.ly/yBYNLN

CHARCUTERIE

Boucherie La Farandole

ARLES

11 Rue des Porcelets
13200 Arles
04 90 96 01 12
www.maisongenin.com

I’m in luck arriving into this shrine to the temptations of flesh on a Wednesday – the only day in the week when genial Bernard Genin makes saucissons d’Arles. This medium-sized salami which has been an Arles speciality since the 17^th century has been made by the Genin family since their butcher’s shop first opened in 1877, with a shrewd great-great-grandmother registering them under the name of the local dance ‘La Farandole’ right from day one.

‘The secret,’ explains Monsieur Genin, shoving his meaty mixture into an interminable sausage skin, ‘is that, unlike other salamis which are based on pork, this one is 50% very lean beef and the balance pork – mainly lean but with a proportion of little lardons. It’s flavoured with garlic, pepper and red wine.’  Here you see him in the cellar beneath the shop, where the saucissons hang for about two months until they have dried all the way through to the centre, shrinking dramatically.

As demand for these famous sausages is high and each Wednesday’s efforts produce only about a hundred, they are sold only here in the shop. Worth a detour, and you’re unlikely to forget the address: rue des Porcelets is piglets’ street. They’ll keep in the fridge for about a month.

HOTEL

Hotel Notre Dame

COLLOBRIÈRES – NEAR LE LAVANDOU

15 Avenue de la Libération
86310 Collobrières
04 94 48 07 13
www.hotel-notre-dame.eu
PRICE RANGE – MODERATE

One of the nicest surprises of a recent Var discovery trip was how easy it is to flee the built-up coast and disappear into wild countryside. Around the village of Collobrières, for instance, up behind Le Lavandou, there are forests of cork oaks, chestnuts and wild boar, not to mention the impressive Hermann tortoise. Worth exploring… particularly if you arrange to spend a night or two in this attractive hotel perched above the river.

Over the past few years, Olivier and Nili Faivre have breathed new life into the old inn in the centre of the village. Exuberant Nili, an Iranian who worked as a fashion designer in Vienna for a time, has created ten pretty rooms, each with a different look and feel. Meanwhile Olivier, whose parents owned Château de Caraguilhes in Corbières, has ensured that the hotel’s restaurant also functions as a wine bar with a short but interesting list.

The rooms vary considerably in size. While the largest (including the Onyx suite in the picture) are undeniably more luxurious, the smallest seem to me to offer by far the best value.

READERS’ CHOICES

Most popular posts of 2011

As there are now almost 250 posts on this site and the year is drawing to a close, I thought it might be interesting to chew through statistics and find out what attracts readers most.

Restaurants make up the most popular category by far. Exactly as I thought: for food and wine enthusiasts, useful eating-out suggestions contribute more to the enjoyment of gorgeous Provence than anything else. And, although every restaurant featured here can’t be expected to deliver an equally positive experience to every reader who ends up there, at least each one has been vetted by me personally. As I’m a food critic as well as a wine writer, that should make for more reliable restaurant write-ups than those on many other sites.

What about the most frequently visited pages? The number one hit is Edouard Loubet’s La Bastide de Capelongue in Bonnieux (photo top left), a comfortable country house hotel whose restaurant holds two Michelin stars. While service can be slow, and the adventurous flavour combinations may not always quite come off, I certainly enjoyed it enough to want to go back.

The second most popular page belongs to La Petite Maison in Cucuron, also in the Luberon (photo bottom left). Although its soigné food has deservedly earned it one Michelin star, Eric Sapet’s restaurant is neither particularly formal nor particularly expensive. I absolutely love it.

Third comes the Luberon wine estate, Château La Canorgue (photo top right) – perhaps as much for of its cinematic fame (as the setting for the Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe film A Good Year) as for its excellent biodynamic wines. (Three out of four for the Luberon… there’s a message in that, I guess.) And fourth is Le Tracteur (photo bottom right), a simple but delightful restaurant near Uzès in the Gard where chef Numa Testud shows what a sure touch can achieve with a tiny menu.

Next, the Sunday antiques market in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue; then the celebrated Châteauneuf-du-Pape estate Château de Beaucastel… Will they all hold their positions through 2012? That’s up to you, folks. Happy new year! Be sure to spend some of it eating and drinking around Provence – and please send me your comments.

RICE FARM

Domaine de Bouchaud

ARLES

13200 Arles
04 90 97 00 31
www.domainedebouchaud.fr
NO APPOINTMENT NECESSARY

As the healthy eating barometer is about to rise any day now, spare a thought for the red rice of the Camargue – deliciously nutty in taste, chewy in texture, satisfyingly filling and, hurray, wholesome. Just outside Arles, the Domaine de Bouchaud is a good place to find out more about this strange grain which was popular in the 1600s, then pretty much forgotten until the 1950s.

Visit in April/May and you’ll see the rice being planted in flat, flooded fields; come in late September/early October when the harvest is on; or drop by any time to pick up a bag of the best and chat with Sylvie Aillaud (above) or her partner, rice farmer Stephan Bonistalli. A kilo (€4) should last for months.

The estate itself is as interesting as its rice. The seat of the Comtes de Bouchaud de Bussy from the 17^th century, it was left to the Benedictine order in 1974 – so 15 monks are attached to the priory right beside the shop. But the estate farm has been managed by generations of Bonistallis – one of the many Italian families who settled between Arles and the sea in the 1920s, bringing with them expertise which helped the Camargue to become the star rice-growing area in France.

Vines and wheat are cultivated as well as three kinds of rice: long-grained white, round white and red, the local hero. I like it best prepared like a risotto – but whichever way you cook it, allow 30-40 minutes or your teeth may never be the same again.