A Weekend in Provence VI

A taste of Provence

Before we headed home from our weekend adventure, there was one more activity we were involved with.  While the town had its weekly market on Saturday, it had its annual book fair on Sunday.  That provided another opportunity to take Mamie for a stroll; otherwise the fair was rather boring.  If I had been interested in books in French, it might have been more entertaining, but even my French companions weren't overly excited.

However, this being a major wine producing town, the local vintners were also present for a wine tasting.  As the book fair info states, they were there to blend culture with wine culture!

Opening the boxes of wine

Preparing the set-up

In order to present the wine to be tasted, it has to be taken to the location and set up. 

Doc Leo is very good at being helpful in such situations, easing a bit of the workload for our hostess.

He helped cart and unpack the boxes of wine, making the bottles easily available for whenever she needed another one, and he washed a ton of used glasses when they ran out of clean ones. 

What a guy!

Ready for a tasting and sales pitch

While she and her husband ran the business for many years, they officially turned it over to their two sons over 15 years ago.  The papa is now retired, but the mama is still involved.  However, I've been to these town wine tastings before, and it's always the two boys handling them.  I imagine she is now going to have to become more involved again, as it's still just a family business, but she was totally alone this weekend. 

It was a bit easier for us to not miss Vincent, because his girlfriend and son were visiting a friend for the week, and his brother and his family were away visiting the other side of the family, so there was nobody there anyway. 

Our hostess is totally competent of handling everything herself, but it's always easier to have help in such a situation, so I'm glad we could be there for her.  I have no idea what emotions she was feeling, as this was maybe the first time she was in this current situation.

Putting on a convincing demo

As it neared lunchtime, the visitors to the book fair ambled over and started looking at the selections provided by three different wine houses, giving the reps a chance to tout their wares.

It was interesting to watch all this serious analyzing and conversation going on, although I had no clue what anybody was looking for or if they found it!  But it does seem like they were enjoying the journey.

A congenial moment

One of the vendors was somebody I've met on numerous occasions before, I think he was a good friend of Vincent's.

It was nice to see him again as he's really personable, and I was able to find out a bit more during client lull moments about just what happened to Vincent, not wanting to press the family when I didn't quite understand their explanations (a common problem for me when the French get going in a conversation too rapidly, especially in a regional accent).

Collecting the dirty glasses

Replacing with clean ones

I quickly found a way to be useful right from the beginning.  The barrel tops were not very large, and it's not pretty to leave used glasses around, but there wasn't much place to put them, especially when the crowd started showing up. 

None of the vendors had an extra person, so I tried to keep all the work areas clean of the used glasses and restocked with clean ones.

That probably wasn't a spectacularly important job, but I really didn't see where any of them would have had time to do it themselves during the really busy period.

The three vendors enticing potential buyers

As the crowd wound down at lunchtime, we also went back to the house for lunch and a final social moment with our hosts.  Then we hit the road for the ride home of about five hours, give or take scenic detours.  I'll share some of that next time.