Villereal 20/9/2008

Saturday has come round again and so, this morning we went off to the market at Villereal....

Local village markets in France, like the one at Villereal, are a trading post for all sorts of businesses...

There is a lot of food, stall after stall of delicious looking fresh fruit and vegetables, often being sold by the producer themselves, several fishmongers with their refrigerated display trailers and lots of very appetising looking fish and seafood....  This morning, one fishmonger was cooking moules marinière at one end of his stall and I stopped to watch as he poured a couple of bottles of Bergerac sec, the local dry white wine over a mountain of mussels and then liberally added hand fulls of roughly chopped flat leaf parsley.

The skillet was about 600mm (2ft) diameter and by the look of the sack and the pile of mussels I would guess he had about 5 kgs (11lbs) of cleaned mussels.. 

The word marinière in French simply refers to the method of cooking in dry white wine with garlic and some herbs....

There are also a lot of cheese stalls and today we bought some delicious goats cheese from a small producer who's farm is just outside Villereal and whose cheese we particularly like..

But as well as food, there are also lots and lots of other traders present.... During the week, working in garden I broke my watch strap, so part of today's visit was to see if the watch man could repair it for me....  Sadly, he couldn't as I had lost some pieces when it broke and he didn't have anything that would fit...  But he had a whole range of similar watches for very little money so in the end I settled for a rather nice large faced watch to replace the broken one...

One of the restaurant/bars which are in the market place was closed for annual holidays today so all the other bars were very busy but we managed to get coffee and some croissants at one of our favourite restaurants.....

Then I had to pay a quick visit to my bank before returning to the car to drive home...

Lots of people talk about excellent Farmers Markets where you can buy good fresh produce but here in France I believe we have the best of both worlds.  The farmers' stalls are excellent but a weekly visit to the market can encompass so much more than just buying fruit and vegetables

My Friend Bernard

I visited my friend Bernard the other day and was forced to try a couple of his wines.

The first was his 2007 AOC Bergerac Rosé. Of course, this wine was still very young at only a few months old but rosé is best drunk young.

This one was a very nice, well, rose colour and was very light on the palate although the label told me it was 13% alcohol.

I bought a few bottles to drink in the afternoons, sitting on the terrace, when the temperatures reach 35C (96F) and it's too hot to do anything else but have a chilled glass of rosé

The wine tasting went on with another 6 or 7 different bottles which I didn't sample as I was the driver!!! However, when Bernard produced a 1984 Monbazillac (pronounced "MON+BAZ+EE+YAC") desert wine I decided that, as I had only tasted the tiniest bit of rosé, I could also taste the Monbazillac.

Monbazillac is an Appelation covering about 2200 Hectares (5400 acres) south of Bergerac in South West France. From this tiny region about 6.5 million bottles of a sweet dessert wine are produced every year.

The New York Times recently rated the Monbazillac as one of the best dessert wines available and a "Must Buy" for it's wine collectors.

I love any Monbazillac but the opportunity to taste a 20 year old one doesn't come along that often so I allowed my self a half glass and reminded myself of the wonderful way that sweet wines develop over the years. This one reminded me of mango but with honey in there as well.

The colour was a rich golden. Monbazillac shows both the percentage alcohol on the label and the percentage sugar. So if you go to buy one, check the 2 figures - something like 14% + 8.5. They should add up to more than 21% and the greater the last figure the sweeter the wine. This is excellent wine to accompany very sweet desserts - or smooth rich pates like duck or goose.

Monbazillac is a very well kept secret with only about 20% being exported from France and most of that staying in Europe. I heard recently that exports to the USA had reached 5% of production but I don't know whether that is true.

If you get a chance, buy it and put it somewhere cool and dark. 24 year old Monbazillac is still quite young as the classic vintages will keep in excess of 60 years. However, please do remember to change the cork every 20 years!!

Ian