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shewhomustOver breakfast we planned out our day, using the paper tablemats with the gaily coloured tourist map on them. Inevitably, the things we ended up doing were not the things we had been planning to do, and vice versa.
We set off for Siran, where there was alleged to be a "Maison du Minervois", which we hoped would allow us to sample and then purchase a selection of the local wines. But on the way there we saw a signpost pointing off the road to the "Dolmen des Fados" (fados = fées = fairies, of course), so we swerved off the road into the car park: sunshine, sandy slopes, pine trees, no-one there but us and, on a low hill, the dolmen, a long passageway leading into an antechamner and finally an inner chamber, 24 metres long in all, walled with great stone slabs. Even if we had known it was there, it would have been exceptional, one of the major stone-age monuments in France, but to be there on pure impulse was magical.
Of the Maison du Minervois, on the other hand, there was no sign. It may have been in the hotel, which was closed, and may have been for sale.
We stopped in La Livinière to shop for a picnic lunch*, and in the little supermarket picked up a leaflet about L'Ostal Cazes: a winery situated in the former tile works, with a discovery trail around the olive plantation. This sounded good, and how hard could it be to find: the tile works had to be pretty visible, with that chimney. We drove three times round the village looking for it, then gave up, and, on our way out, drove straight past it. We tasted a couple of delicious, but not cheap, wines, and dipped bread in olive oil, and decided that we could maybe afford one bottle of wine and one of oil, especially if we were going to walk among the olive trees. And then we went and did so.
I'm not blasé about vineyards: that moment on each trip when you realise that you are, at last, driving between vines, that still thrills me. But olive trees are even more exotic than vines, and I loved that walk among the little trees with their grey-green leaves and their fruit.
The plan was to stop for the night in Homps, where the Syndicat de l'Appellation Minervois has a cellar, by the side of the Canal du Midi - a chance to make those purchases we had missed earlier, and to stroll by the canal. But the hotel was full, we knew when we were beaten, so we drove on south, out of the Minervois and into Corbières.
*We also bought a copy of the Guardian which carried the story that researchers had decoded the genome of the pinot noir grape. Inevitably, let a bunch of oenophiles research the genome of a grape, and they're going to choose pinot noir - whose genome turns out to be by a clear margin more complex than that of human beings.
We set off for Siran, where there was alleged to be a "Maison du Minervois", which we hoped would allow us to sample and then purchase a selection of the local wines. But on the way there we saw a signpost pointing off the road to the "Dolmen des Fados" (fados = fées = fairies, of course), so we swerved off the road into the car park: sunshine, sandy slopes, pine trees, no-one there but us and, on a low hill, the dolmen, a long passageway leading into an antechamner and finally an inner chamber, 24 metres long in all, walled with great stone slabs. Even if we had known it was there, it would have been exceptional, one of the major stone-age monuments in France, but to be there on pure impulse was magical.Of the Maison du Minervois, on the other hand, there was no sign. It may have been in the hotel, which was closed, and may have been for sale.
We stopped in La Livinière to shop for a picnic lunch*, and in the little supermarket picked up a leaflet about L'Ostal Cazes: a winery situated in the former tile works, with a discovery trail around the olive plantation. This sounded good, and how hard could it be to find: the tile works had to be pretty visible, with that chimney. We drove three times round the village looking for it, then gave up, and, on our way out, drove straight past it. We tasted a couple of delicious, but not cheap, wines, and dipped bread in olive oil, and decided that we could maybe afford one bottle of wine and one of oil, especially if we were going to walk among the olive trees. And then we went and did so.
I'm not blasé about vineyards: that moment on each trip when you realise that you are, at last, driving between vines, that still thrills me. But olive trees are even more exotic than vines, and I loved that walk among the little trees with their grey-green leaves and their fruit. The plan was to stop for the night in Homps, where the Syndicat de l'Appellation Minervois has a cellar, by the side of the Canal du Midi - a chance to make those purchases we had missed earlier, and to stroll by the canal. But the hotel was full, we knew when we were beaten, so we drove on south, out of the Minervois and into Corbières.
*We also bought a copy of the Guardian which carried the story that researchers had decoded the genome of the pinot noir grape. Inevitably, let a bunch of oenophiles research the genome of a grape, and they're going to choose pinot noir - whose genome turns out to be by a clear margin more complex than that of human beings.
