Book review of Damson Skies and Dragonflies by Lindy Viandier

Damson Skies and Dragonflies by Lindy Viandier

Damson Skies and Dragonflies by Lindy Viandier

It is always exciting to find a good memoir about life in France but finding myself in the pages of Lindy’s Damson Skies and Dragonflies, gave me so much more than I was expecting. 

 

Lindy is married to a Frenchman, and together they split their time between Paris and their 300-year-old rural bolthole in the Burgundian countryside, Les Libellules (the dragonflies). As they snatch precious time away from Paris, this book is packed full of Lindy’s wonderful descriptions in her vignettes of life in the countryside. She also explains better than most the cultural differences, traditions and unique French ways of doing things, and these parts often had me grinning away. 

 

There is always something to do at Les Libellules, and Monsieur Viandier is usually tackling multiple jobs at a time, interrupted in the most pleasurable way by neighbours dropping by to share a coffee or aperitif, proof they have been embraced by their local community. For Lindy, time in the Burgundian countryside means the natural world that surrounds them easily becomes the focus for her camera and her writing. It was her descriptions of the birds, wildflowers, butterflies and dragonflies who visit them that were some of my favourite pages of this memoir.

 

I often feel when reading a good novel, that as the action builds towards the end I’m torn between binge-reading and wanting to slowly savour what remains of the book. I don’t normally feel this same sense of loss as a memoir comes to an end, but I did with this book. I knew I was going to miss my evenings spent enjoying the changes of seasons and pace of life at Les Libellules with Lindy, her husband, Pussy Willow and the others.

 

The great news is that Lindy has written a second book to keep me going over winter, Mellow Mists and Walnut Wine.

You can also find Lindy over at We Love Memoirs Facebook Group where she shares lots of the photos she loves to take of life at Les Libellules. 

Book review of A Vineyard for Two by Laura Bradbury

A Vineyard for Two by Laura Bradbury

A Vineyard for Two by Laura Bradbury

I enjoyed Laura’s ‘Grape’ series of memoirs of love and life in Burgundy, so was rather excited to get my hands on her first novel, A Vineyard for Two, also set in Burgundy where love, life and wine are key players.

We meet Cerise, widowed and with two young sons, who took over the vineyard lease when her husband died. With the expert tuition and guidance from vineyard owner Maxime, Cerise creates a name for herself in the male-dominated wine community.

When Maxime dies suddenly, Cerise’s stable life once more becomes a place of grief, loss and uncertainty. Inheritance in France is tricky, so it is no real surprise to Cerise to find Maxime’s wealthy grandson Clovis, vintner in his own name, has inherited Maxime’s vineyards and property. However, there is an unusual and unexpected clause. Maxime has left the vineyard Cerise rents to her and Clovis 50/50.

Working with Clovis for the grape harvest, Cerise’s first without Maxime’s guidance, would be enough of a challenge for independent Cerise, but her head and her heart are in turmoil. She is convinced the future for her sons depends on her strength and independence, so persuading Clovis to sell his share to her is the only option. However, the chemistry between them is difficult to ignore. Would giving in to passion and indulging in a harvest affair be so wrong? Would it weaken her position?

This book has all the colours, scents and flavours of France, and Burgundy in particular. We follow the ups and downs of the wine harvest, the hard work, the problems and of course the shared meals, parties and social side too. We get to virtually drink in the fine wines and learn that a good wine is like a glimpse into the wine maker’s soul. Wine becomes like an emotion in this book, intense and sensual. Life is full of decisions and compromises, and making the right choices is never easy. The fire and passion kept me turning the pages, but so did the hope, that even in the difficult times all would turn out right in the end.

I do hope we get to return to Cerise’s vineyard in the future. A Vineyard for Two is available in paperback and ebook format from Amazon and links can be found below.

You might also like my reviews of Laura’s memoirs:

My Grape Year

My Grape Paris

My Grape Escape

My Grape Village

Or her Lazy Sunday in France guest post she wrote for French Village Diaries last year.

You can sign up for her newsletter here and find her on Facebook Twitter and Instagram.

Lazy Sunday in France with author Nina Caplan

Burgundy, photo Nina Caplan

Welcome to another Lazy Sunday in France, where this week Nina Caplan is taking us to Burgundy for a perfect lazy day. Nina is a travel journalist specialising in food, drink and the arts and is the  author of The Wandering Vine: Wine, the Romans and me, you can read my review here. 

The Wandering Vine by Nina Caplan

Lazy Sunday in France by Nina Caplan 

Sunday morning starts with coffee, in a bowl – a clever French habit, intended for café au lait but ideal for those of us who like it black and require caffeine right now. I bring the beans from London: they say that the French were forced to boil ground-up chicory during World War II, and judging from the bitterness of the coffee they sell in our local supermarket, they miss it. 

Nina Caplan LazySundayinFrance

I spend around half my weekends in Burgundy, where my young stepchildren live, and during term-time there’s no question that Sunday wins all prizes. There are two reasons: the lie-in, and the brunch. Saturday involves running around to two sets of piano lessons in another village; Sunday is pure hedonism, at least until homework rears its head. Our town has an excellent boulangerie– the baker couple are so hardworking that Madame apologised to me, one Christmas Day morning, for the fact that they were only staying open until lunchtime – so any leftover bread can be reserved for pain perdu: French toast. All four kids, even the nine-year-old, can turn out perfect golden slices; actually, especially the nine-year-old, as she’s the one who wants to be a chef. Our toast, egg-soaked and fried, isn’t really French, though. My partner is Canadian, so our pain perdu is preceded by a dish no Frenchman would serve: fèves au lard, a delicious form of baked beans flavoured with bacon and maple syrup that was created (or adapted from the Bostonian version) as fuel for Quebecois trappers, hauling through the snow at 30 degrees below freezing.

That level of cold has never happened, to my knowledge, where we are, and I don’t think a trapper would make much of a living here unless he found a market for cowhide. But the beans are a family tradition, followed by French toast drowned, naturally, in more maple syrup. (We bring it back from Montreal; you can buy it in France, but obviously the best stuff comes from the source.) This delightful but calorific brunch works best, obviously, in winter. We might not get bone-freezing Quebec weather in Burgundy but we certainly suffer through some dodgy weather: it usually snows, and can hail well into spring or even summer. I love to pop to the boulangerie on crisp, cold mornings, when the whole town smells of woodsmoke: most people here still heat with wood, and some of them have to get up in the middle of each night to tend an open fire, or they risk a very chilly morning. We’re lucky, as our house is centrally heated, but these old Burgundian buildings, with their foot-thick walls, take a fair bit of time to warm up, and sometimes that Quebecois brunch feels as justified as it must have done to its creators across the Atlantic.

Burgundian vineyards, Nina Caplan

Since I write about wine, everyone assumes that I live among the vines, but actually our part of Burgundy hasn’t really produced wine since the phylloxera louse destroyed all France’s vineyards, in the late 19^thcentury. When the time came to replant, the Côte d’Or, 45 minutes drive south of us, scraped together the wherewithal to do so – thank goodness, because those are some of the greatest wines in the world, even if many of them are too expensive, these days, for any ordinary budget. But the vin ordinaire from these parts wasn’t worth reviving, when plonk from the sunny Languedoc was so cheap and reliable, and so although the odd villager still has rows of vines in their garden, and the beautiful hillsides look as though they had only temporarily mislaid their rows of trellises, the only real producers here are a couple near Flavigny-sur-Ozerain, a fantastically scenic village that smells not of woodsmoke but of aniseed, thanks to the little anise sweets that have been made here since the Benedictine monks founded their abbey in the 8^thcentury. Oh, and Simonnet-Febvre, who make several excellent whites, from Chardonnay and a local grape called Auxerrois. But here I have digressed into wine, not for the first time, which surely means that brunch is over and it’s time to think about Sunday dinner… 

©NinaCaplan2018

The Wandering Vine is published by Bloomsbury and available in ebook and hardback versions and links to Amazon can be found below. You can also read more from Nina at her website here and follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

The Wandering Vine by Nina Caplan

Book review of The Lost Vintage by Ann Mah

The Lost Vintage by Ann Mah

My review today is for The Lost Vintage, the new novel from Ann Mah, released today. 

Set amid the Burgundy vineyards, we meet wine expert Kate, as she heads back to her French roots to study for her Master of Wine exams. While helping with the family harvest, a discovery in the wine cave reveals a fractured family with long-ago buried secrets, and leads to many questions, all needing answers.

In a journal shared only with the reader, we meet Hélène and follow her life through The Occupation. While we know how she suffered, the hardships of daily life, the sacrifices she made and the risks she took, Kate and her family only know the shadow of Hélène that hangs over the older generation. Her life was incredibly sad, and her journal was a very moving account of the war years.

This book is well researched, both in terms of history and wine facts. There is a good mix of characters, some with an edge of mystery, whose actions made me slightly wary; their motives unknown as we wait for them to be revealed. We have a lost love and an awkward reunion, regrets of past decisions and possibilities of future reconciliations. It all flows beautifully, I enjoyed the switch from the journal to the present day and along with the descriptions of the changing seasons in the vineyards, I felt part of their lives.

Being back in France makes Kate question what she really wants from life. Wine is in her blood, but is the Master of Wine part of her future? Can the older generation let go of the past and let the younger ones move the vineyard forward to a brighter future? You’ll certainly have a great read finding out!

I know this book has been many years in the making, but like a good wine, it has only benefitted from this process of maturation. If you enjoy family historical sagas and a good glass or two of French wine, take this book on holiday with you, it won’t disappoint.

The Lost Vintage is out now in ebook format with the hardback and paperback versions available for pre-order on Amazon UK now. You can read my review Ann's Mastering the Art of French Eating here and links to Amazon for both books can be found below.

If you missed Ann’s Lazy Sunday in France guest post and fancy a quick trip to Paris, you can read more here.

Laura Bradbury's Lemon Tarte recipe

An invasion of Minis

As promised yesterday, here is Laura Bradbury's Lemon Tarte recipe that went down well here last night when we were invaded by a small convoy of Minis, driven by friends of over 20 years, despite my best efforts at cocking up Laura's simple recipe.

Lemon Tarte

This is one of those stalwart, life-saving recipes. It really isn’t that difficult, but it gets absolutely rave reviews every time. The first time I tried it was at my friend Marie’s house. She made it for dessert one day when just she, Franck, and I were having lunch together. Between the three of us we ate almost the ENTIRE tarte. 

Shortbread Pastry

Ingredients

1 cup (125 grams) butter (salted or unsalted)

1 cup (125 grams) white sugar

2 cups (250 grams) flour

1 egg

Method

1.    Preheat oven to 360° F (180° C).

2.    Mix all the ingredients with an “S” blade in your food processor until they form a ball.

3.    Wrap with Saran Wrap (clingfilm) and flatten into a disc. Let it sit in the fridge for an hour or more.

4.    When you are ready to make the tarte, roll out the pastry and press it into a buttered and floured quiche pan. It is normal for the pastry to be a bit crumbly. You’ll want to press it together likes pieces of a puzzle. Once pressed into the pan, poke all over with a fork.

5.    Bake the pastry shell for 10 minutes. You can use those bean thingies to keep your pastry from puffing up, but I never have them on hand, and it turns out fine. Keep the oven at 360° F (180° C).

Lemon Filling

Ingredients

¾ cup (150 grams) cream or crème fraiche

2 eggs

1 cup (100 grams) sugar

1 soupspoon flour

2 lemons

Method

1.    Boil the cream in a saucepan. Set aside to cool.

2.    Zest and juice the lemons.

3.    In a bowl, mix together eggs, sugar, cooled cream, lemon zest, and 50 ml lemon juice.

4.    Pour mixture into pastry crust. It’s normal that the mixture just barely covers the shell.

5.    Bake for 15 minutes or until it doesn’t jiggle in the middle anymore.

6.    Cool in the fridge, then serve. 

It was at the 'cool in the fridge' point that I realised I had forgotten to add in the flour to the lemon filling, hence the slightly odd looking texture to my tarte, sorry Laura, I promise to try better next time! However, my polite friends did confirm it is very tasty and as Ed tucked into the leftovers for his breakfast this morning, I guess it can't have been too bad and I will certainly be trying it again soon, with the flour.

My lemon tarte, not quite perfect, but tasted great.

Thank you Laura. If you missed my review of her latest memoir My Grape Paris, click here and to read all about her Lazy Sunday in Burgundy, click here. Sign up for her newsletter here which contains recipes, insider information, and lots of treats. She can also be found on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram