Tag: Wine

Life in France

Did you say rum tasting?

Ready to taste the rum
Ready to taste the rum

When you live in the middle of what we think of as “wine country” it’s not surprising that there are at least a dozen shops in town devoted to that one product. Every supermarket has aisles and aisles of bottles and boxes of wine and even the tiniest inner-city convenience store devotes a full floor-to-ceiling area to red, white, rosé, and sparkling. With that in mind, it surprised us to hear our favorite wine shop owner invite us to attend a rum tasting that she was hosting later in the month. Continue reading “Did you say rum tasting?”

Unknown's avatarBob3 Comments
Life in France

Not like I recall

A very fit and trim Père Noêl
A very fit and trim Père Noêl

This time of year was always fun growing up because lots of Christmas catalogs would arrive and you could spend hours sorting through all the latest toys, games, and all the other items you never knew you wanted. As an adult in our fantasy land called France, it’s really no different except that the amusements that now catch our eye are likely to be centered around food and drink but it’s still fun to peruse all of these catalogues de Noël looking for everything we didn’t know existed, seems unusual, or we just don’t recall ever having seen before. Continue reading “Not like I recall”

Unknown's avatarBob1 Comment
Life in France

And they named it….

Can you see the Pyrenees?
Can you see the Pyrenees?

It’s not at all uncommon, especially in rural areas, for houses to have a plaque above the front door with a name; not of the owners but of the house. Examples we’ve seen include “Long Weekend”, “Good Times”, and “My Dream”. We were invited for lunch to a small village outside of Carcassonne with precise directions and the reassurance of “If you get lost just ask for the Tile House; everyone knows where it is”. We arrived without incident to discover that our hosts lived in a former tile factory, hence the name. With that inspiration, it’s time to name our new place and we think we’ll call it “Modération”. Continue reading “And they named it….”

Unknown's avatarBob
Life in France

What goes around…

Wine festival poster from the city's website
Wine festival poster from the city’s website

We’ve only lived in France for 7 months and already we’re returning here to an annual event. How’s that possible? Once we had decided that Carcassonne was going to be our new hometown, we had to find a place to live. Thanks to Bill’s Internet searching skills and to the generosity of our landlords, that part was easy, although they insisted that we visit the property in-person before they would accept our rental deposit. Darn, that meant that we would have to fly over from Atlanta to France to cement the deal. I wondered at the time if there might be some kind of festival going on since we had been following the city’s website for quite a while and noticed that every weekend there seemed to be a party. How about the 2-day Fête du Vin wine festival? Continue reading “What goes around…”

Unknown's avatarBob1 Comment
Life in France

Oh it’s wineing time again

This week's wine advertisements
This week’s wine advertisements

Twice a week our mailbox is filled with flyers from lots of businesses; both national chains and local businesses vying for our euros. These are called pubs, short for publicités that you and I might recognize with the English word “advertisements” that we could easily stop, but why spoil all the fun, especially at this time of year. It’s grape harvest time so every catalog that we receive is featuring wine.  In the photo you’ll see just a few of the pubs that arrived today. Looks like we need to go shopping! Continue reading “Oh it’s wineing time again”

Unknown's avatarBob1 Comment
Life in France

Which one?

A field of sunflowers near Limoux
A field of sunflowers near Limoux

If you’re in the US and tell someone that you are from Washington they might assume that you mean the state but it could easily be the nation’s capital or about 25 other cities, towns, mounts, and ports around the country. According to the post office, if you address a letter to Springfield without including the state name, they will have a choice of 41 locations where it could be delivered. Last Sunday our neighbors asked us to go with them to a festival in Villelongue which we had to look up in a mapping program to see how long the car ride might be. Since there are a dozen towns or villages in France with that name, we hoped they had chosen the one about 45 minutes south of Carcassonne. Continue reading “Which one?”

Unknown's avatarBob2 Comments
Life in France

Truth or marketing?

Wine fountains
Wine fountains

If I say “boxed wine” to you, what comes to mind? Depending on your own experience it might be a bad memory (or no memory, if a bit of overindulgence were involved) or you might have lucked out and found something you like. Now, what if I say “wine fountain”? Ah, visions of wedding receptions and stacks of champagne glasses with bubbly flowing over the sides to fill the glasses below. Guess what our supermarket calls their display of wine in plastic and cardboard? Continue reading “Truth or marketing?”

Unknown's avatarBob4 Comments