Le Sud de France 6.5: Le Vendage et le Primeur Vin

The grape harvest and the presentation of the “first” wine.

It has been a year since we arrived in France with our jam-packed suitcases and drugged out wild cat, and we managed to celebrate this anniversary with our whole community. We live in a “vigneron” village where most residents either own a vineyard or work on one. The vines are the main source of income and the very existence of Tourbes depends on them.

At the beginning of October, the vendage, the harvest, began and the roads and vineyards were filled with huge harvesters. Unlike the movie version of a wine harvest, with happy peasants taking days to pick the grapes, these monsters harvest a vineyard in a few hours. The harvested grapes are loaded onto trucks that deliver the tons of fresh grapes to the wineries co-ops where they will be pressed.  

However, viniculture has had a particularly tough grind for the last few years. The Languedoc-Roussillon has had a drought with rainfall in some areas down by 80%. Water tables are precariously low; and you need water to make wine and for the mundane tasks of cleaning vats, trucks and other equipment. In the last few years, the drought reduced vineyard production around our village to the point that our cave stopped producing wine and the vignerons elected to merge their operation with that of another co-op. 

The arrangement is that while grapes would continue to be pressed at our co-op, the juice would be transported by tanker the dozen kilometers to a cave in the town of  Montagnac for fermentation and bottling. The wines would then be sold under their “Montagnac” label.

Once the vendage was over, wineries around the region celebrated by opening their “primeur” wines. Most wineries produce many different wines and the primeur is simply the first drinkable red, white or rosé, from the previous year’s harvest. These openings are part celebration and part marketing event with speeches, food and music.

Although le Sud de France had had an exceptionally hot and long Indian summer, by mid-October, autumn arrived, gray and wet and we ended up walking to the cave in a cold rain. As we neared it we heard music and people singing, and it turned out to be a guy was playing accordion with a bunch of people performing old French songs. Diane and I joined in, although knowing neither the words or the music, the best I could do was to hum and scat along.                                                 

After about half an hour of music making, the official program began. The president of the regional winemakers association got up and spoke about how hard it was to market wine, especially with competition from the well know wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy. He spoke of the irony that these famous wines were actually made largely from Languedoc grape juice that those wineries quietly bought from us.  Next the mayor spoke, reminding everyone that wine making was the very life of the village. He is a vigneron himself and happily announced that the vendage had gone well. It had been a good harvest and this year they were getting good prices for their grapes. The mayor was followed by the director of the co-op, who spoke about the new wine. 

When he finished the vignerons and their wives began to bring out tray after tray of slices of paté, cheeses, hors d’oeuvres and of course, bottle upon bottle of the new wine.

The mayor came over to me, filled our glasses with the new wine and we tasted it together. He sipped and I sipped, we sipped again and then agreed that this “sauvignon nouveau,” as it was called, is a damn fine wine. 

The trays of food and the bottles of wine kept coming out. When I looked around me, I realized that this was a rather private gathering of our village. In an atmosphere of “Bonheur,” it seemed that we were reinforcing community bonds as well as celebrating a good harvest. This was a crowd of no nonsense, tough vignerons, who were relieved as people refilled their glasses again and again, visibly enjoying the new wine. Oddly, this means that once again, like so many great Languedoc wines, all of it would be sold locally before it had a chance to reach a larger, worldwide audience.

After a while, one of our friends pulled us aside and led us out of a side door where we found ourselves in front of a fire pit of burning grapevine stems, the glowing embers swirling up in the currents of hot air like fireworks, exploding in the darkness. Sitting over the fire pit was a steel wheelbarrow contraption filled to overflowing with mussels. Several men stood stirring the mussels with long ladles that were also used to scoop up the cooked mussels and pile them onto paper plates. Soaked in olive oil and garlic before barbequing, the hot barbequed mussels were delicious and despite the quantity of hors d’oeuvres everyone had consumed earlier, the wheelbarrow quickly emptied. 

 

We sat eating with a group of friends, mostly Parisian émigrés, on an old stone wall, struggling to balance the plates of hot mussels on our laps. We had no silverware so we ate with our fingers and ended up laughing at ourselves. Here we were a bunch of big city sophisticates, sitting around a blazing campfire, eating mussels with our fingers like children, happy as clams. No one even minded the persistent, cold drizzle anymore.  

Le Sud de France 6.4 : Journées Taurines, the Days of Bulls

The young men stood nervously rocking on the balls of their feet, waiting for the riders and horses. The long allée of plane trees leading into the heart of the village was full of people. New parents pushed strollers, old folks walked slowly with canes and teenagers gossiped ceaselessly on their mobiles. Every one of them passing easily through the tall red, steel barriers that had been erected along the allée. They chatted and laughed in the street, oblivious to the danger the young men next to them were anticipating.

The gardiens are France's cowboys

In the distance, from the direction of the village recycling bins, came the clacking of hooves on hard asphalt. Within seconds, the young men could see the Camargue gardiens and their graceful white horses turning the corner and racing down towards them. The tightly packed horses surrounded something, something dark and foreboding. In a ghostlike blur, they flew passed the young men. Just visible between the horse’s flanks were two black bulls.

After several circuits of the village the bulls are tired and can be caught up with.

The youths took off after them, running as fast as they could. They tried to catch the bulls and a few got close enough to grab an animal’s tail for a few seconds, but most did not. In frustration, some of the young men shouted out at the rapidly disappearing animals.

“When I catch you, you lousy son-of–a-cow, I will turn into a McBurger!”

The young men show their cajones.

“Hola bull, I had your sister for dinner. Nice steaks, she tasted great! I’m waiting for you.”

Then, winded and sweating, the young men stopped and bent over to catch their breaths to the scattered applause of a few friends. For those who touched the bulls’ tails there was visible elation.

Welcome to our village’s “Journées Taurines” or “Days of Bulls.”

We are located in the Herault, halfway between Spain and the cattle ranches of the Camargue. Raising bulls and bullfighting is a tradition in the Languedoc and many cities have arenes (arenas). The larger venues, like Nîmes, Carcassone and Béziers, are part of the “corrida” circuit that the toreros travel each year. While bullfighting may be a controversial sport, with its ardent supporters and equally ardent detractors, the Journées Taurines is not a bullfight at worst it is bull annoyance.

The bull running began Saturday and continued on Sunday. The first year the event was held one of the organizers stepped out in front of a bull and taunted it. The taurine was not impressed and flung the man into the air, a moment immortalized on YouTube.

Thinking of breaking out?

Thereafter crowd control and public safety became a big concern. This year along the Avenue de la Gare, the tree lined road that leads into town, the village workers erected heavy, red steel barriers. About two meters tall, there was enough room between the bars to allow people to pass through them, but not enough space for a large animal. However, there was a glitch in this security arrangement. No one cared that you were supposed to stay behind the bars. People just passed through them and continued on their merry way, as though nothing were going on. The event announcer kept telling people to stay back behind the barriers but no one seemed to pay any attention to him except for the local band, Fanfare Banzai. They wisely sat well back from the barriers and played their music from the terrace of a nearby restaurant.

This old guy threw his hat at the bulls to get them to run faster.

The horses and bulls made a wide circuit down the allée and around through the fields. Each time they came down the Avenue, the crowd stepped aside to make room for them and cheered a little, then just as quickly stepped back out into the street.

As the village photojournalist, I loaded up my professional gear, long lenses and all and covered the “action.” And, there I stood out in the middle of the street, cameras at the ready, ignoring the taunts and the warnings of several British friends who shouted from behind the barriers.

Fanfare Banzai played from the safety of the restaurant.

Even Diane added to the chorus, begging me to come back to safety.

“No,” I said proudly, “I am a photojournalist and my job is to get the photos.”

My sang froid rising, I added, “I’ll be okay because I will stand next to this old lady and her two little granddaughters. Surely, not even an angry bull would harm a child or the photographer standing behind her.”

Then I heard the sounds of the approaching horses and I began to have some misgivings about my plan. Luckily, the little girl looked up at me and smiled.

The horses flew by us and I hurriedly snapped frame after frame. Most of these shots, of course, were photos of the rear ends of horses, young men, and bulls. No, Pulitzer there. Clearly this event would not rise to level of an Ernest Hemingway bullfight, there was not even going to be a broken arm much less a Death in this Afternoon.

After a lot of taunting this taurine chased a kid across the arena. 

Then I realized what the village’s little secret was. These bulls were rather young. Imagine if you will as one year old, sweet, and gentle Ferdinand the Bulls, rather than some sort of steamrollers of death. As herd animals they ran, dare I say, happily in the safety of the horses? 

Notice how small the bull is.

Moreover, unlike Pamplona where the bulls chase the people, in Tourbes people chase the bulls and try to catch up with them. Sure, these frisky steers could hurt you but you literally have to get in their faces to do it, as that event organizer did in that first running. Cattle are nearsighted, that is why toreros use red capes to get their attention, to get hurt you have to get in their way.

A log day of running bulls draws to a close.

“Gardiens,” the cattle ranchers from the Camargue marshes of the Rhone, operate these bull runnings all around the region. They are in control of the animals and having raised them are aware of each one’s mood and attitude. I’ve written about the gardiens before. These are the French cowboys who at the turn of the 19^th century hosted Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show when they were forced by bad weather to spend a winter camped in the Camargue. The gardiens learned a lot about riding and roping from the cowboys and adopted both American style saddles and clothing.

People without barriers watch the loose bulls.

Although the weekend went well and there were only minor injuries, some question remains about whether or not there will be a Journées Taurines next year. While the bulls were well behaved, the people were not. With dozens of people milling about oblivious to the bulls, horses and men racing by, it was an injury lawyer’s dream and an insurer’s nightmare.

Most people totally ignored the barriers. The bulls, on the other hand, recognizing the danger these people posed, wisely sought shelter with the riders and horses. Facing the horde of reckless moms, wandering children and incautious grannies, that was the smart thing to do. In their hooves, I would have done the same.

Le Sud de France 6.2 : The Dance of the Vignerons, Part 1-The Fête Begins

Our village is a quiet place surrounded by hectares of hushed vineyards. The only sounds that disturb the peace are from the morning boulangerie traffic, the children playing in the schoolyard and the occasional karaoke night at the café. Two thousand years ago, Tourbes was settled by Romans who built houses and roads, planted olive trees and grapevines and prayed to the god Bacchus.

We moved here in January and over time learned about the various village festivals and in particular the big “fête locale” in late July. At first I thought  it would be like a “Renaissance Faire” with villagers dressed as quaint peasants and whole lambs roasting on spits over smoky open fire-pits. These images were quickly dispelled by one of our English friends.

“Actually, mate, it's four nights of show bands with strobe lights playing until two every morning. And here’s the part you’ll like best,” he added with a gleam in his eye. “the show's right under your front windows.”

With these words, our storybook French village of good-natured eccentrics and happy-go-lucky locals turned upside down. At the end of July, we were going to have ringside seats for four nights of Las Vegas, baby. 

“Don’t worry, mate,” my pal went on, “this too shall pass.”

July arrived hot and damp. By late in the month, the autoroutes were bumper to bumper with vacationers heading to already crowded, Mediterranean beaches. Several days before the fête, metal barriers sprouted on our streets, closing the village center to traffic and in front of our house, village workers erected a stage. Large white vans slipped silently into town like a caravan of circus elephants and camped around our 13^th century church.

The fête was to begin Friday night and that morning, the vans disgorged an entire amusement park, complete with carousels, bumper cars, games of chance and a stand that sold “Barbe de Pape,” cotton candy. In the center of this newly planted forest of fun, on a high pillar, was our statue of the Virgin Mary, hands raised in supplication to God, and now staring down in wonder at the chaos below. However, I’m sure she was pleased because each  night, kids and parents would ride the rides, play the games and enjoy themselves a lot.

In the late afternoon, the women of the “Comité des fêtes” set up huge paella pans on a long table near our front door. They filled them with sausage and chicken, and, humming merrily, crushed huge cloves of garlic into the simmering platters. They were making “macarrronade,” a paella like dish with pasta instead of rice. It would be the base of the village meal, the repas, that kicks off the fête. The Comité is group of hard working volunteers who labor year round to produce events and this was their biggest weekend.

A "fête locale' is a big happening in a small village. Each night the population triples or quadruples with foreign tourists and visitors from nearby villages. They come to drink and dance and drink.

And, let me be frank. There was a lot of drinking at the fête. We are a vigneron village, grape growing and winemaking is our business. Our vignerons produce a superb rosé from cinsault grapes grown in our vineyards. It is a civic duty to drink this rosé, and, of course, to help others enjoy it too. The fête is paid, for in part, through the sale of rosé, beer and pastis. However, in the whole weekend of fête, there was no public drunkenness or fistfights and surprisingly, the peace was kept without a single cop or security guard. Everyone just behaved well and watched out for each other.

Around seven, people drifted into the square. They bought their first drinks, and milled about saying hello to each other. By 8:30, they began to line up at the big paella pans, and the repas commenced. Everyone got a large portion of macarrronade, and in no time at all three hundred people were having dinner on our doorstep.  

The stage lights came on at ten and two singers began singing. Several showgirls joined them and soon everyone on stage was dancing and singing energetically. 

The Herault makes its money in the summertime and there are dozens of show bands, karaoke singers and DJs working the region. They play endless one-night stands at restaurants and hotels entertaining vacationers. The bands usually consist of a few singers and dancers, and half a dozen musicians. They all play “Nonstop,” that is without a break, intermission, or change of key or tempo for four hours straight.

The opening band for our fête was typical with several large banks of powerful amplifiers and a spider web structure packed with lights. There were even huge klieg lights like the kind normally used against enemy aircraft or to light up the Empire State building. For four hours, the band turned our cozy French town into Studio 54 and consumed more electricity in a night than the entire village in a month.

And what they played was disco. Remember disco? ABBA, the BeeGees, the Village People, mirrored balls, bell-bottom pants, and John Travolta’s white suit? Well, it may be 2011, but show bands play forty year old, American disco.

Worse yet, most of the songs were sung in English, a language that neither the performers nor the audience, understood. It made for some bizarre moments, as when one singer shouted to the crowd, “Shakes you booties” and in bewilderment, people raised their hands and clapped.

On the stage, the singers every song rapidly and at maximum volume. The dancers repeated the few routines they had learned watching MTV, and they had changed costume for every song. The band played nonstop and then abruptly at two, like sleepwalkers awakening from a dream, they stopped, packed up, and moved on.

People began to go home. I envied them going home. We couldn’t go home, we were home, put under some kind of disco house arrest by our own village.


Saturday morning the village workers hosed down the quai and the streets. The mayor and some of the Comité sat at a table eating bread and cheese and drinking rosé before they got up and put on plastic gloves to clean the public bathrooms.

The events for Saturday included a decorated bike and scooter competition and the election of the best “Mamies” or grandmothers in the village. Low keyed and sweet, they felt oddly out of place in our neon Las Vegas.

In the evening, the village filled with several hundred ados, what the French call teenagers. It was Saturday night and the kids needed to get out of their historic, old villages and party.

At ten, the show began. A singer started a song and half a dozen “showgirls” began to dance. I stared in disbelief. I had seen this all before, the night before. It was the same disco show. The ados seemed oblivious to this, they were there to dance and did their version of moshing and, dare I call it, break dancing. Mostly they stood in place, shaking their shoulders, hopping up and down and occasionally lifting one of their own into the air amidst a lot of laughter.

I watched the ados from the café bar with a friend. Shaking his  head in amazement he said. “It’s really weird, these kids aren’t pissed.”

Yup, these kids weren’t pissed. They had come for a good time, to dance and have fun. In spite of drinking a good deal of beer and wine, they remained polite and mostly sober.

Around midnight, the tech guys set off “snow” cannons. You couldn’t hear them because of the music, you’d just see them belch little puffs of “snow.” The kids laughed at the snow and at 2 AM, the band stopped and went home.

The ados began to disperse and we walked the few meters to our house. As we were crawling into bed, Diane heard a noise and we went downstairs to investigate. We found a couple of ados sitting on our doorstep. The girl jumped up in embarrassment but her boyfriend looked up at us and said in awkward English, “Excuse us, we meant nothing bad. We were just romancing.”

We smiled at that, the “romancing” on our doorstep and wished them a good night. We closed the door and went upstairs to try to get some sleep.  

To Be Continued in Le Sud de France 6.3: The Dance of the Vignerons, Part 2, below, scroll down to read more.

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Le Sud de France 6.3 : The Dance of the Vignerons Part 2- All’s Well That Ends

Early Sunday morning and I have not slept for two days. In some corner of my mind, I'm aware of a distant rumbling that sounds like an army with pipe and drum has invaded the village. I roused myself, put on clothes and went downstairs to see what was going on. Opening the door, I stepped outside and a cloud of white enveloped in me. Through its haze, I could make out crazed figures in red and one that was throwing a bucket of water at me. I tried to avoid the wave, but it was too late, I was left soaked and covered in a wet flour paste.

Welcome to «le tour de ville» a Tourbes village tradition. It’s a group of guys who spend fête Sunday covering themselves and every square millimeter of our pristine town with flour and water while downing lots of beer. Having been thus baptized by the boys, I grabbed my camera and ran off to join the merry making.

Le tour had thoughtfully brought along tractor pulling a decorated flatbed. On it was a bench, cases of beer and an inflatable pool full of cold water. Frolicking through the town, le tour would scoop up surprised villagers and dump them into the pool. When their hapless victim stood up to get out of the water, they were pummeled with flour.

Le tour took many beer breaks that featured wild dancing, and the singing of odd, wordless songs. As they marched along to drum and pipe they left streets shrouded in floury clouds that rose in the air like the smoke from some urban battleground. To my astonishment, villagers whose cars and homes were being “floured,” hung out of their windows laughing and urging le tour on.

Finally, still a bit hung over, I gave up the chase and went home, where Scaramouche our cat, greeted me at the door. He has been seriously unhappy about the fête and its nightly disco bombardment. The thumping basses and screaming singers had driven him into our windowless downstairs bathroom for shelter. Head aching, I felt like joining him there.

Sunday night came when we got to the café, we found the boys of le tour recovering from a hard day of village flouring, by drinking more beer. Some slouched on the bar, a few stood straight up, dead asleep, and a few muddled on, the piper playing random notes, the drummers listlessly banging their drums. Around the quai were glistening trails of slimy wet flour, as though a herd of giant prehistoric snails had passed this way.

Tonight’s band was a “jazz” band but as soon as the show began, I knew their “jazz” was just more disco. The audience was sparse. Earlier, the quai had been full of Loto players but after the games they had drifted away and only few stayed for the show.

The disco was loud and it would have been just another night of soulless warbling and robotic dancing, had it not been for the Michael Jackson imitator. 

He came on stage dressed like the 1982 Jackson and sang “Billie Jean.” Through the whole song he held his hat in front of his face and he sang without moving. There were no dancers, no Jackson steps, no moon-walking; he just stood there immobile and flatly sang the lyrics.

I knew then that we had hit bottom. 

The show ended at two, there was only one day left.

Monday morning and the end was in sight. The day began as usual, with workers hosing down the streets while the Mayor and Comité cleaned the toilets. Three nights of bands, booze and disrupted sleep had taken its toll. Everyone was walking in a daze, punch drunk and exhausted.

That night, the quai filled, not with visitors, but with townspeople. I concluded that we must have just worn out everyone else in the Herault.

Tonight there would be a lone DJ but I feared it would still turn into another night of disco. But, when the DJ arrived, I knew something was up because he didn’t have a truckload of gear like the others, just a few amps, a mixing board, and some speakers. A lone teenager, helped him set up and then he hunkered down behind the mixing board. Flanked on either side by low banks of black speakers, he stretched across the board checking the sound levels, his fingers racing over the sliders like manic spiders. In the darkness, his face dimly lit by the board’s lights, he looked like a medieval alchemist hovering over vials of bubbling liquids.

The show began and instead of bone rattling, mind-numbing disco, the DJ played a quiet, elegant “corrida,” one of those songs from the bullfights. As it started, some of the older villagers, mostly vignerons, stood up and began making their way to the front of the stage. They escorted their ladies to the dance floor, where they gently wrapped their arms around them and began to glide across the pavement with long stately strides.

Unlike the previous nights, these dancers danced dances of intricate steps and patterns; dances they had learned in their youth. When the corrida ended, the DJ played a foxtrot, then a few tangos and rumbas. Throughout the night, he kept tight control of the music, changing the tempo, altering the mood, weaving spells around the dancers. With his simple light system, he created scampering spots of colors that played across the dancing vignerons.

I was standing to one side of the stage taking pictures, when, I was suddenly pulled into the dance by our beautiful postmistress. She startled me but I quickly fell in step with her. We danced for a few moments and then changed partners. I danced with my wife, Diane, and then with the vignerons’ wives, and then some ados. I danced nonstop, until I finally had to rest.

Tired beyond tired, I thought of those long, dead Romans. Though no one in the village would call this fête a bacchanalia, I’d bet the Romans would have recognized it in spite of the lack of wild dancing and sex.

Beneath it all, this midsummer’s celebration had all the elements of a primeval ritual. Days of dancing, nights without sleep, the consumption of quantities of wine, the morning washing of streets, village leaders cleaning toilets and le tour de ville, like some drunked shamans, interceding with the gods on behalf of the village and purifying it with water and flour. Even the showgirls played a role, as pagan priestesses.

I stood there by the dance floor, thinking these thoughts, wondering if I had gone insane or if I was just plain, stupid drunk.

But, it felt right. Our village of 1700 dog-tired souls was dancing on the very same spot where the Romans had danced two thousand years before. Here, far from Rome, those veterans of Caesars’ Legions celebrated their harvest and worshipped Bacchus, our village was just carrying on that rite.

We are small village yet we an amazing cross section of humanity is here. We are the children of Cathar and Castile, of Albion and Africa, of Australia and the Americas, and our vigneron t-shirts are proudly emblazoned with the words, "we are les enfants de Bacchus,” the children of Bacchus.

Amidst vineyards, heavy with grapes, fragile and imperfect as we are, we shake our booties in the face of life’s madness. The fête, the bacchanalia, is how we reaffirm that we humans are one tough bunch of bastards and together we can get through anything.

We drank our vignerons’ wine, danced madly for days and I think, I hope, we made old Bacchus howl with delight and get up and dance too. 


Yeah, you put your left foot in you take your left foot out. That’s what this was all about.

Finally, it all had to end. The DJ played the last song of the night, couples embraced. High over our heads, the first shooting stars of the Perseids began to fall, like silver melting in the night sky. I took Diane’s hand and we stepped out onto the asphalt dance floor. We swayed to the music and there, in front of our house, we danced the dance of the vignerons.

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Le Sud de France 6.1: Hot Time, Summer in the Herault

They’re here!!!

A family heading to the beach.

Summer and the autoroutes of the Herault are teeming with the rattled masses of Europe yearning to get warm. There are daily reports of hundred kilometer long traffic jams as the population of the EU melts southward to the Mediterranean beaches. The Herault is overflowing with tourists-- up 6% over last year report the tourism people. Sadly, restaurants and local businesses say that despite that sales are down 30-50%. While more people are heading to the Herault, they have less money to spend because of the lingering economic crisis. Many tourists even come with their own food and stay in their camper vans at public campsites near the beach to cut their costs. It's a shame if they just stay at the beaches because there is lot to see and do in the Herault and much of it is inexpensive or free.  

The Butte de Leves near the village of Faugeres

The Herault has one of the most remarkable and varied natural environments imaginable. About the size of the American state of Delaware, it has an interior landscape of thousands of square kilometers of vineyards and long, straight rows of vines, framed by rugged mountains to the north and long, sandy, beaches on the Mediterranean to in the south.

The village of Roquebrun sits above the Orb

The Haut-Languedoc Natural Park, in the north of the Herault, is a large mountainous (the “Monts de Espinouse”) area that is a favorite of campers and hikers. It is an expanse of mountain lakes and forests, trails and camping sites, comparable to American national parks like Washington’s Cascades Mountains. One of the many entrance points for visitors to the park is the small village of Roquebrun, a lovely collection of stones houses perched above the Orb River. Down river from Roquebrun, the Orb narrows and becomes a series of rapids that are a favorite challenge for kayakers from all over Europe.

The Cirque de Moureze

The Cirque de Moureze with landscape of strange dolomite rock formations is another natural wonder of the Park. There are a number of hiking trails through the Cirque that range from an easy hour’s walk to a hard, ten-hour trek. Best of all the Cirque is only a few minutes from the bustling town of Clermont l’Herault. Further north, towards the eastern side of the Herault, is the Tarn River Gorge, a spectacular series of canyons and cliffs carved by the river as it flows south to the Mediterranean. The only cost to a visit to these natural wonders is the price of gas.

In the southern Herault is the Herault is the Bassin du Thau, a huge saltwater lake that it is the heart of the area’s mussel and oyster farming industry. The Bassin lies on the Med and has a ten kilometer long sandbar of beaches along its seaside. Unfortunately, by early summer, the sandbar is packed with the camper vans and huge RVs of the European middle class. The line up of hundreds of TV satellite dishes next to the camper vans makes the sandbar look like Cape Canaveral before a shuttle launch.

a dolomite formation

The mussel and oyster farms of the Bassin du Thau

At the western end of the Bassin is Le Cap d’Agde, a resort town that looks a lot like South Beach. As the locals tell it, if you want to experience a good old fashion Roman orgy, nothing matches the antics of the folks of Le Cap d’Agde. From private clubs to “naturalist” beaches it is a playground for the suburban European working class looking for a very good time.

And speaking of the Romans, they settled here over a thousand years ago and left their mark all over the Herault. They introduced wine and olive cultivation to the region and built bridges, roads and villas, much of which survives today. Near the village of St.Thibery, for instance, there is a lovely old Roman bridge spanning the Herault River and further south near the village of Loupian there is a preserved Gallo-Roman villa.

Sand fills the Orb river at Valras-Plage after a storm, turning it yellow.

The Jardin St.Adrien near the town of Servian

Another beach town, one of our favorites, is a far calmer place than Le Cap d’Agde. Valras-Plage is an old-fashioned seaside town with a long sandy beach and a beachside “boardwalk” lined with cafés, restaurants, and beach clothing shops.

The actor Gilles Buonomo performing

Another surprisingly big part of life in the Herault is art and culture. With a total population of less than a million people, it is a surprise that so much music, theatre, and art can be supported here. Montpellier is the capital of the Herault and it is considered by many France’s “third City” after Marseille and Paris. Each year it has a ballet festival, classical music performances, and art exhibitions. The city’s municipal museum is currently showing the photographs of Brassai, one of my personal icons.

About 25 kilometers southwest of Montpellier is another seaside town, one I’ve already written about, called Sète. In July, the town goes water jousting mad as rower powered boats race towards each other carrying jousters with lances, who try to knock each other into the water. For a more serene activity, the museum in Sète is showing the works of Joan Miro this summer, should you need a break from the sportive types.

Calderoni sings in Pezenas

I’ve  written about Pézenas, the town we live next door to in pieces like “A Passion for Pézenas” and “Searching for the Moon and Molière.” It is a small town with only about 8500 inhabitants and yet its arts and cultural programs are extraordinary. The town has a small, elegant Molière museum, the Museum de Vulliod-Saint-Germain, which is an old mansion that was donated to the town by its wealthy owners. It has a wonderful performance space with superb acoustics for concerts. In the last few weeks, we attended two concerts there. One was an “a capella” performance of lyric opera songs by an extraordinary soprano named Kamala Calderoni, who I may add is originally from San Francisco, and a second a concert of violin and cello duets by a couple of Irish musicians, The Duo Chagall.

A fete du vin 

Summer activates in Herault aren’t just these events but include hundreds of small village fêtes. For example in our little village of only  1500 people we have had  since June 1^st ; a “fête du vin,” a poetry and theater fête, a music fête, three wine tastings at the caveau (the wine co-op), a motorcycle and old American car rally, a regional judo championship, a monster car and truck show, a three day village fête (including dinner for the entire village on our street) and an event that involved children pushing young bulls into plastic swimming pools (please, do not ask.)

at the poetry fete

After all of this the village takes a small break and resumes it activity in September with the 3^rd Annual “running of the bulls” through the ancient, narrow streets of our tiny village. It is an event you cannot miss because the  bulls run right past your front door.

A little scary yes, but hey, it’s all part of summer in the Herault. 

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