Reflections on the Riberac Market
and announcing: Project Mead
I'm writing from just south of Riberac, in the Dordogne region of France, an hour and a half east of Bordeaux and less than an hour north of Bergerac, a fertile region of rolling hills and slow, modest rivers. It is a rare day of full sun. At this time of year the great yellow orb never rises very high. Its slanted light creates long slow silver sunrises and sunsets that smolder for most of the afternoon before the dark winter night descends at five. The egrets are hunting the still-green field outside my office window, little ones, majestic when they fly but resembling scrawny chickens when they walk about, bobbing their heads, as they are doing now. A kestrel only just left its perch on the corner of the nineteenth century barn where the red squirrels live. Sometimes two foxes, old and young, take their breakfast under the walnut tree across the road. Hedgehogs are said to be common, but we haven't seen any. One of the donkeys we visit on our walks has gone a lame; we're concerned he won't live through the winter.
The town is still scarred by the summer tornado and hail storm. Many of the businesses have closed indefinitely for repair. So many properties were damaged that there are simply not enough builders to repair them all in a timely fashion. And yet the weekly Friday market in the town square is a grand event, with two mobile fish markets, half a dozen butchers, four cheese-mongers, innumerable fruit and veggie stalls, artisans selling local honey, mead, wine, arts and crafts, and a second-hand table with clothes heaped up in piles on the tables that people dig through with the intense abandon of foxes after a burrow of field mice. We buy nearly all our groceries there every week in lovely woven baskets purchased at yet another vibrant stall. Sarah says she has too many clothes already, but I think she'd look wonderful in these cherry red corduroy overalls on display. None of the local restaurants are quite to our liking, but the Copper Cock, a British pub in the centre ville, has a lively open mic night on Thursdays and the gin they make is quite nice. We have yet to thoroughly explore the wider region, however, and there are dozens of villages within a forty minute drive, or roughly the amount of time it takes to get from 207th to the East Village.
Sarah's approach to winemaking education has shifted somewhat. It is unclear, due to visa issues and other factors, if she'll be able to work in the Southern Hemisphere this spring, although details for working in the Republic of Georgia are starting to come together for the following summer. Rather than be fully nomadic for the next four years, we may decide to look for a home for ourselves and and Sarah's winery earlier than we thought. We would then build the domaine alongside Sarah's ongoing travels, education, and apprenticeships. This will of course entail hundreds of hours on real estate sites, travel all over the country (and perhaps beyond!), as well as the navigation of complex bureaucracies as we attempt to become residents of another country, but I suspect the readers of this newsletter would welcome such content.
In the spirit of learning by doing, Sarah's started a small home meadery. She currently has four five-liter batches going, each from a distinct local honey: “1000 flower,” acacia, linden, and sunflower. The meads are all wild ferments, using only what yeast was still living in the honey itself, with the help of some the yeast found on some fresh rosemary, lavender, and dandelion flowers from our yard. The weather is chilly. It is rare that we move through the house without a sweater or a jacket. The yeast don't like the cold any more than we do, so the fermenters sit in the place of honor on a shelf just above our biggest heater swaddled in little towels. Sarah gives the bottles a shake every few hours. Each mead has its own color and aromatics already. We're hoping the wild yeast is able to create a fully dry mead, but if it doesn't, she might finish them with a commercial champagne yeast.
We have many stories to tell! After harvest was over, we spent two weeks touring French wine regions, Languedoc, Ardeche, Beaujolais, Burgundy, Champagne, and Jura, and in the coming weeks I hope to share with you all what we saw and learned in all these places. France continually inspires. Next week we'll be in Paris for Sarah's birthday and to pick up my son at the airport for his winter visit. And between the start of this note and its completion, we went to a small restaurant in a neighboring village, La Confrerie du Bourg in Bourg-de-Bost for the first time. There's nothing else open in this tiny village, not a tobac (small shop able to sell cigarettes and other misc) nor bakery or a butcher or a grocery. The space was recently remodeled with a nice little bar, a fireplace, and interior seating for perhaps 30-45 people. La Confrerie is only open for lunch from 12pm-2pm and only serves a daily menu. (A menu, in France, is a set three course meal comprised of a starter, a main, and dessert.) After being greeted at the door by a small, golden, fluffy dog, we took the second to last table. The final table was seated shortly after and we felt lucky to be there. Children of the staff played with the dog and the children of the guests. We ordered a bottle of white Burgundy to accompany our Asian inspired meal of pot-stickers and pad thai. Dessert was chocolate mousse for Sarah and two cheeses for me, followed, of course, by espresso. It was a fully French experience, if not a traditional French meal. We still have many places to visit in the area but La Confrerie du Bourg might just become our local. It has an oasis quality that we found deeply satisfying.
Back in the NYC wine world, we are thrilled that our friends at Clay and Contento were noticed by the Michelin people, that our friends at Ruffian were included on the Times' Best Wine Bars list, that and former Tannatians Dante Clark and Julianny Gomez are breaking down barriers with their wine pop-ups for the people at Preshift!, to note just a few of this year's highlights. Being a small part of the New York scene was like nothing else, and to see our peers evolve and collect honors is deeply satisfying. Keep on shining, all you brilliant beautiful brave party people.
I'll end with a note to you, the readers and subscribers of this newsletter. My gratitude is immense. I genuinely enjoy this work and the traveling life can be lonely. This feels like a letter to a friend. Some of you even write emails back, and I can’t thank you enough.
