A wonderful evening

I started the week, as usual, with tennis for an hour. I was useless, not having slept very well the night before, but at least it gave William something to go home and crow about. How do I know he crows? The last time I saw his wife in town, she repeated, score by score, all our recent games. That's how I know! He's extremely likeable but very competitive, so remind me to kick his butt on Wednesday.
We always have a coffee after tennis and 'shoot the breeze'. He told me the story of a mayor that he knows, who was recently found exposing himself, whilst dressed in women's clothes, on a nudist beach (that alone made me laugh) and was arrested. When he later broached the subject with the same man, he totally denied involvement (even though he was arrested and spent the night in the slammer), and put it down to false stories being put about by his enemies. He'd make a good American politician!

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Jan continues to progress slowly and she can now put her heel down to walk. As long as she can walk in the direction of the kitchen, I'm happy.

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There are only three vignerons in Gard, under the Vins de Pays section, who are worthy of inclusion in Hachette. One of them, Domaine Leyris Mazière, is right here in the village, about 100 metres from us, and to our shame we have never bought wine from them. At the Bastille Day celebrations last week, he very kindly invited us for a tasting. Wow, what an evening. His name is Gilles Leyris (his wife Odile is the Mazière) and he took us first to his cave, where we tasted some dozen wines. It was fascinating to note the differences between the same wine made in different years (albeit with some subtle differences in the cepage) and the passion and love he puts into every wine. He recounted with humour the fact that, after the floods of 2002, he had to make a 15 kilometre detour just to get to his fields, and that he sat down and cried when he saw the state of the vines. He phoned his wife and told her that they were ruined (he only had 1.2 hectares under cultivation at the time), but when I asked him about what he had said to the bank, he burst out laughing and said that he had told them that everything was fine. We tasted wine from bottles, spanning several years, ageing wines from barrels, wine from cuves holding several thousand litres and yet to be bottled and experimental wine (we didn't like his first attempt at rosé and he admitted frankly that neither did he) and new grape varieties. Naturally he saved his best until last. With a twinkle in his eye, he told us that this was the most expensive vin de table that we would ever taste. He explained that he couldn't sell it under his normal classes of wine (Coteaux du Languedoc or Vin de Pays d'Oc) because the cepage at 100% Alicante is not allowed under the rules, so he has to sell it as vin de table. It was amazing stuff. The whole experience was absolutely fascinating! But there was more. We then understood that we were to be invited back for aperos (as if we hadn't had enough already), which usually means nibbly bits swilled down with pastis or whisky or some such. Oh no, we get the full blown 5 course dinner treatment. They were so kind, and such lovely people. A wonderful evening.