Rhythm of life in the Sauternes

Having been here in the Sauternes region for the last week I now know what it feels like to be completely cut off from the outside world.  We are aided in our time-keeping by the 13c church which stands almost outside our bedroom window.  Every morning at 7am the open belfry erupts with a collection of different rhythms and tones. Although at first this was a little startling, in time I have grown to love this bell and belfry. We have no internet connection and the mobile phones are unable to pick up a signal.  This means we have to drive into Langon about 10 kms from our gite in order to use the nearest internet café.  We have a television and have brought some films with us so too tired to do anything else in the evenings after our day’s vineyard picking we just crash out and watch a film.  Outside the gates of our stronghold is a ‘place’ or square, on one side of which is a traditional café where the bar is propped up by a male only clientele, most of whom, including the patron, are smoking away.  On entering one is forced to become a passive smoker even though the law now prohibits smoking in bars.  Next door in the adjoining and interconnected grocery shop is the patron’s other half, a very glamorous, model-type lady, as sophisticated as the patron is not.  At the beginning of the week, before we had become too exhausted, we did venture out to have a drink in this bar and discovered that the bread is some of the best we have come across.  So although the grocery shop is a daily visit for us for our bread, the bar now looks like a place too far.

Yesterday, being Sunday and not a work day (the legal weekly limit being strictly 35) we decided to treat ourselves to lunch in Sauternes.  Although the sweet white wine from here is renowned throughout the wine-drinking world, the place itself is a tiny collection of houses, a few shops, one or two restaurants and many vineyards.  We chose our restaurant from a tourist brochure as the picture looked the cosiest compared to the others and on this very rainy day that was what we craved.  We were not disappointed.  We had an excellent aperitif of Sauternes followed by a local speciality of ‘lamproie’ a river eel that abounds in these parts.  Just outside the restaurant was a machine which I associate with the distribution of Cokes and Mars bars which one sees in foyers and contentiously, in some schools in the UK.  Here something much more useful for keeping body and soul together.  After inserting your euro a fresh crispy baguette drops down into the tray, and the name, "Distripain" of course.

Not a Mars bar in sight