Wednesday 3 December
Food &Wine pairing behind closed doors at Mervrouw Hamersma’s
The influential Dutch wine writer, Harold Hamersma, reminds us that Christmas is just around the corner. He was on to this quite early in the day, his article was actually published last month, but we’ve only just seen it. He chose our Odyssée to accompany a recipe proposed by his cook/culinary/cookbook expert wife, who trades under the name of and from a shop called Mrs Hamersma in Amsterdam. They make quite a food-and-wine couple.
The ‘unusually elegant’ chardonnay goes well, she thought, with a veal and shitaki dish, and she’s right. It does.
Saturday 5 December
Saint Nicholas visits Holland today, and he stopped at Rives-Blanques as well. To celebrate the event, we had Dutch pea soup with all sorts of bits and unfashionable pieces of pork in it, as well as smoked sausage – the whole is so stiff you can stand a spoon in it – as well as Hutspot, a carrot and potato hodgepodge served with braised beef. Neither dish is particularly Saint-Nicholassy, but both are certainly very Dutch.
And then we made our own food-and-wine breakthrough: Occitania! What a great, wonderful combination for going Dutch! it really is a wine for all seasons and reasons, but then we knew that all along. The amazing thing is that we keep being surprised by its versatility.
Monday 7 December
Matthew Stubbs MW is a wine expert we know and admire very much. So we were very pleased when the Regional government financed a series of videos on Occitanie’s viticultural regions, taking one wine as an example of each, to be tasted and commented on by Matthew. They chose our Odyssée to illustrate Limoux blanc, and here is what Matthew had to say about it (click on the picture).
As usual, forensic, and a lot more objective than we can ever be …
This month definitely seems to be Odyssée’s month. A white Christmas in s store! And actually, the truth is, Odyssée is all a turkey wants for Christmas.
Thursday 10 December
But no! The month belongs to our Blanquette de Limoux! And it’s bubbling over with bonheur, joy and jubilation! Jingle bulles all the way!
The world’s favourite glossy wine magazine, Decanter, carried out a tasting for experts, by experts, to chose their favourite wines of the year 2020.
Our Blanquette de Limoux featured in the no 6 slot of the sparkling wines.
It was also Decanter’s “Value” Sparkling Wine of the Year.
Christmas has come early to Rives-Blanques!
Friday December 18
Clear night sky tonight, and we all notice a couple of unusually luminescent stars hanging low on our SW horizon. You couldn’t miss them. Spellbinding.
So I photoshop them on to our digital Christmas card, a painting of the view we have from the tasting room.
An Oxbridge astronomer on the BBC tells me it’s the conjunction of Saturn and Mars, last seen 800 years ago. And possibly/probably also seen two thousand and twenty years ago, by a certain trio of wisemen, hanging over a little town called Bethlehem at around this same time of year.
The time and motion logistics of this apparently effortless synchronisation are way too mind-bending for a little terrestrial mind to get around. And did you know that Saturn is the mother of Jupiter (or possibly vice-versa)? On Monday they will appear to be in touching distance of each other.
Saturday 19
We’re having an embarrassment of Christmasses here, thanks to being amongst the oldest and the youngest inhabitants of the village. First we had Saint Nicolaas, but that is neither here nor there, Sinter Klaas tends to find Dutch families wherever they are. But then Papa Noël organised a most wonderful present of a cut-out pop-up book for 5-month old Maia (and something equally thoughtful and appropriate for each and every child of the village) kindly delivered by his adjunct, the village postmistress in a Santa Claus hat; and then today, who should come by, red hatted and all (the same hat?), none other than Papa Noël himself – bearing a hamper with a decent bottle of locally made Merlot, some amazing chocolates produced by an amazing local chocolatier, jars of guinea fowl conserved in Crémant, and a goose paté. Close inspection revealed our Mayor lurking under the layers of ho-ho-ho, personally delivering this gift to all those over 70. Honestly and truly, this could happen only in France. Vive la République!
Monday December 21
But we don’t see Jupiter and Saturn touching, because it is overcast, as it is in most parts of Europe.
A surprising number of people come by to buy wines. We had mentally closed shop – living in the time of Covid does that to you, puts your mind into lockdown eventually. But life goes on, and people come by as if all’s well with the world. We take a giant step back if they come from anywhere other than our immediate vicinity. We retreat right to the other end of the room if they come from Brussels, Amsterdam or London. That’s already become second nature.
We’ve also totted up our accounts of the year, and that’s a surprise too. No, our sales are not way worse than previous years, even though our restaurant customers have collapsed all over the world, and cellar-door sales also took a big hit, but in fact, they are pretty much in line.
We count ourselves lucky.
Thursday 24 December
Christmas Eve begins in the morning with Homeric rosy fingers of dawn stretched across our horizon. Much of the day spent preparing dinner: no turkey, no veal with shiitake, just Irish salmon with crab claws and blinis of salmon roe, filet mignon with a Bearnaise sauce, a most wonderful creamy camembert filled with truffles, and Nigella’s Christmas pudding, But it’s the wines that that take the bow: 2017 Puligny-Montrachet (Faiveley); a 2005 Volnay Premier Cru (la Bousse d’Or) and a Kopke Vintage 1985 port. Wow! Roll on dinner!
The port and the pinot are aberrations: other than that, our Christmas will be White!
Tuesday 29 December
Monsieur Li has been back on board for a couple of weeks now. He’s part of our fittings and fixtures, a lonely, luminescently-clad figure on the winter landscape, who prunes the vines with infinite patience and care, and he’s here, every winter. We have long chats with him, he’s got a great sense of humour, harbours some undoubtedly well-founded grudges, but is largely, and on the whole, totally incomprehensible. You need to speak a number of languages, including Vietnamese or possibly Cambodian, French and English with unepected dabblings of Spanish at unexpected times, in order to perfectly understand him, but we get the general gist. As always, he begins the pruning season by laying out an offering for the gods, a number of oranges and other edibles, which Benson (the springer spaniel for whom they are not intended) launches into with gusto. He’s a Buddhist and has a very definite code governing his life. He forgives Benson for this travesty, one we find highly embarrassing. He’s a nice man. and he forgives us for insisting that the vines for the top wines should be pruned when the moon is declining and descending; it seems to make sense to him.
The moon is shining with all its might at the moment, so full it too seems full of portent.
Thursday 31 December
A New Year’s Eve unlike any other ever seen, or experienced. or even heard of, in our lives. We sit down to a Black Velvet (Guinness with Blanquette in our case) with oysters (Fines Claire) branded as ‘rich in water and fine in flavour’, and its fleshier Mediterranean counterpart. Oysters and shells alike are completely different from each other.
The President, Monsieur Macron joins us in the kitchen. We listen with interest, 
expecting Lockdown No. 3 to be announced. But no, he kicks off with Europe, music to the ears of the European sitting at the table, showing undisguised contempt for the “lies and misinformation” that had led to Britain leaving the EU. Five-and-bit month old Maia was probably the least impressed in the room.
And then back to the oysters.
What an odd New Year.
What an odd year.
… to be continued next year /-
…./to be continued.