The ‘vendange’ (wine harvest) begins with the return of summer!

With the arrival of Tony’s mum and aunt (pictured above with a very friendly waiter!), summer made a re-appearance.  The leaves are still beginning to turn as we had a brief glimpse of autumn last week but this week I’m pleased to report we’ve had temperatures back in the high ’20’s and even a day in the low ’30’s!

So we thought it would be nice to go and see what was happening in the vineyards around Bergerac and perhaps take in a tasting or two.  The vendange was well underway but that didn’t stop the lovely winemakers from offering a tasting of previous years product (photos below) and we also stopped to have a look at Chateau Monbazillac (photo above) and the grapes which I can report are nicely and ‘nobly’ rotting on the vines!

We also popped in to Perigueux where there was a lively market underway - I will surely miss the markets with all the wonderful produce they have - one of the photos below is of the fish stall where you can buy the raw produce from the same shelf as all manner of pre prepared dishes such as seafood paella, made in a dish big enough to feed the 5,000 - delicious!

It’s early Thursday morning and as I type, I have some fresh tomato sauce bubbling away having been delivered yet another gift of bounty from the neighbours garden which I’m loathe to let go to waste and so will be trying tomato and goats cheese tarts from a Delia recipe later (if it’s tasty will pop it on the blog) to serve to the neighbours when they pop round for an aperitif tomorrow evening.  In addition to an enormous bag of tomatoes, they also gave us another 3 aubergines (and we’ve still got another 1/2 dozen or so on our plants) and another enormous bag of green beans which we’re getting used to having to be creative with - the other day we enjoyed a salad of green beans (cooked just enough to retain a bit of crunch) with olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette with garlic, thinly sliced red onion, toasted almonds, feta cheese and bacon bits - it was lovely but then not being a vegetarian I think bacon improves most things!