Bonjour,
Welcome to the weekly publication from France.
I hope you and yours are nicely.
Right here, France is in full summer season temper, with flea markets each weekend and festivals galore, and for me, it means time at dwelling for longer than typical.
I spend all yr touring round France, visiting locations in numerous seasons, writing about them for The Good Life France Journal, for the web site and for a guide I’m writing (extra on that in a number of months after I’m prepared to speak about it, for the time being, very a lot a notes format!). However in July and August, I have a tendency to remain put. Our youngsters come to go to; the laborious work Mark, my husband, and I put into rising greens involves fruition, and typically we assist the native farmers with their work.
This yr, nevertheless, I will likely be taking every week in mid-Summer time to return on the highway – or moderately the Canal. I’m heading to Champagne to take a cruise on the Marne Canal and go to a number of the best-known and lesser-known Champagne areas from Hautvillers – the ‘birthplace’ of the bubbles, to Meaux, well-known for its cheese. Include me as I share pictures and movies on Instagram (although sadly the tastings can’t be shared)!
A few weeks in the past, I helped Claudette, my nonagenarian neighbour to make walnut wine, vin de noix, a fortified type of wine. She had her son-in-law, Jean-Claude, accumulate some nuts and a handful of leaves on June 24 from a gnarly outdated walnut tree down just a little dust monitor across the nook from the place we reside. It’s a practice right here to select them that day because it’s St John’s Day (John the Baptist – and so they’re known as St John’s Walnuts). The inexperienced nuts are steeped in crimson wine and alcohol (often vodka or brandy) to which Claudette provides sugar, lemon rind and spices. It’s then saved for 3 months, filtered, left for one more month and bottled – in time to provide away as presents at Christmas and a few stored for ingesting in tiny glasses – a style of summer season in winter.
It was a sweltering scorching day as we sat in Claudette’s kitchen mixing the elements and holding cool along with her do-it-yourself lemonade. I informed her about a number of the legends I’d examine St. John’s Day and the custom of creating walnut wine, an historic artisanal custom. In Italy, it was once mentioned that the walnuts needs to be picked by a barefoot girl climbing the tree – we each agreed that’s not going to occur right here in the midst of nowhere, rural northern France. However she did just like the customized of consuming snails on June 24 which matches again to the times of Rome and a pagan pageant that grew to become Christianised – and I agreed that although I’m not a fan of escargot, subsequent yr I might be part of her in consuming them when we have now our conventional walnut wine making session!
Wherever you might be – I want you a really bon weekend from a heat and welcoming nook of France, the place the lavender is out in full bloom.
Bisous,
Janine
Editor of The Good Life France Journal and web site
Learn the entire publication right here
Janine Marsh is Creator of My Good Life in France: In Pursuit of the Rural Dream, My 4 Seasons in France: A Yr of the Good Life and Toujours la France: Dwelling the Dream in Rural France all accessible as e book, print & audio, on Amazon all over the place & all good bookshops on-line. Her newest guide Learn how to be French – is a celebration of the French way of life and artwork de vivre.
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