Wine Tasting in the South of France, by Carol Drinkwater

I am frequently asked about good wineries to visit as a day trip from our Olive Farm in the south of France. The fact is there are dozens to suggest. So I thought it would be fun this month during these very hots days - in French we call such a heatwave la canicule - to offer a few snippets about our local wine history as well as making one or two suggestions of fabulous chateaux or more modest vineyards. Havens, where you can sit in the shade and sip a chilled glass or two of local wine.

From Banyuls,  close to the Spanish border, to Bellet above the coastal city of Nice, wines are produced. The South of France is a rich wine area with many varieties growing in the vineyards. Although all colours are being produced, the Midi is most renowned for its rosés. The hot climate marries well with a chilled lighter variety. This is a land of hilltop towns and sleepy villages where the most exciting event of the week is market day and where the playing of boules or pétanque in the village squares, shaded by plane trees, is still the most popular pastime.

The south was its own country. Links with Paris were almost non-existent. Southerners, with their own rich cultural identity, communicated and conversed in their own language, the langue d'oc, until 1539 when the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterets made French, the langue d'oil, the administrative language of France. By 1789,  the time of the French Revolution, these richly-poetic southern tongues had been outlawed. Provençal is a dialect of Occitan and was spoken in the eastern half of southern France. These are romance languages, once the language of the troubadours.

The great port city of Marseille, originally Marsilia then Massalia was founded by Greeks from Asia Minor sometime around 600 BC. These intrepid sailors were Phoceans from Phocaea, known now as Foça in Modern Turkey. That entire western coast of Asia Minor, today Turkey, was inhabited by Greeks until the population exchange of 1922/1923 that followed the Greco-Turkish War of 1919 to 1922.

Within striking distance of Marseille, you will find:
The Calanques National Park is on Marseille's doorstep.

This is where my latest novel, THE HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF, is set. A very moody shot taken on a wet and windy spring day.

Turning north, follow the D9 towards Aix-en-Provence, then direction to Puy-Sainte-Reparade and you will find Chateau la Coste.

This vineyard estate, also a hotel and art gallery, is a unique experience. The 600-hectare property is owned by Paddy McKillan an Irishman from Belfast. The chateau, more a country house, where his family resides, dates from the 17th century. The views while walking in the vineyards are memorable. Timeless. There are works of art scattered all about the place.

Until recently, southern French wines have been rather looked down upon even by the French. That is changing rapidly. The rosé wines from this area, though few are grand crus, are possibly the best in the world and perfectly adapt to the long hot days of our southern summers. 

Paddy McKillan of Chateau La Coste aspires to produce the best rosé in the world.

The Bandol area, west of Marseille, has an abundance of vineyards to visit. The coastal strip is very well-known for it rosés. Bandol itself has become a rather touristy resort town but take a short drive inland and you will find peace and quiet and time to reflect within the dozens of vineyards, most are ready to welcome you.

We usually buy a couple of cases for summer at Moulin de la Roque Bandol. Outside Bandol near Le Castellet. The winery was founded in 1950 in an old wheat mill. It boasts 305 hectares of land and straddles eight communes.

The Phoenicians visited our coast of southern France around the same time as the ancient Greeks, possibly even a little earlier. Both the Greeks and the Phoenicians were experts in agriculture. Wine and olive oil were two of their most valued commodities. The Phoenicians, who came from city-states in what today is Lebanon, Syria and parts of the coast of modern-day Israel, were not conquerors but traders. Traders, par excellence. They were on the look-out for tin and precious metals. They founded or visited ports, entrepôts, emporia, all around the Mediterranean bringing with them olive oil, wine, peacock feathers along with a wide range of exotic goods including marijuana seeds. They also transported aboard their ships, plants and agricultural utensils. They taught the local peoples they encountered how to farm and cultivate the products they were trading (not marijuana as far as I know!). Palestine, a neighbouring terrain to the Phoenicians in the Middle East, was renowned for its wines.

It was the Syrians who first put wine into glass containers and the Gauls who invented the use of the barrel.

There is some evidence to suggest that the Celts were cultivating grape vines here - vitis vinifera, which is the most common of all grape plants - even before the Phoenicians or Greeks arrived. It is a plant native to the Mediterranean. Cultivars of vitis vinifera are the basis of almost all the wines produced worldwide so this small plant, this liana, has certainly travelled and impacted on cultures everywhere and has been around for millennia, rather like the olive tree.

It is not Bordeaux or Burgundy but Provence that is the oldest wine-growing region in France. The Phoenicians transported wine to trade, possibly also vines for planting, but it was the Greeks who established the vineyards. This means that wine production in southern France dates back 2,600 years.

Archaeological remains found in this region indicate that the terraces were handcrafted as early as the 6th century B.C. Irrigation was achieved by the construction of the famous drystone walls. It is possible that the Greeks or even Phoenicians brought this skill to the local people.

After the Greeks came the Romans who, while empire-expanding, spread the knowledge of viticulture throughout France giving birth to France's most famous wine regions: Bordeaux, Burgundy, Alsace, Champagne amongst others.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, France's agricultural prowess went into decline. Charles 1, Charlemagne, crowned Emperor of the Romans by Leo III on Christmas Day in the year 800, brought unity to Europe and power to the Catholic Church. The church was involved in the development of viticulture.  Wine was an important part of monastic life. There are many Benedictine and Cistercian abbeys that in their day offered rooms to travellers, spiritual repose and were centres of learning. Hospitality, of course, included food and wine.

Right on our doorstep, a half an hour journey by boat from the old port of Cannes, lies the island of Saint-Honorat. This pretty little island is home to a community of Cistercian monks who grow their own food, keep bees and produce their own wine from eight hectares of vineyard. They have been producing fine wines and liqueurs since the Middle Ages.

(A little fact about Saint-Honorat Island that always pleases my Irish soul is that Saint Patrick studied here during the 6th century).

The vineyards of Bellet nestle quietly up in the hills behind the port-city of Nice which became a part of France in 1860 when it was ceded from Italy. Nice is the only city in France - aside from one small vineyard in Montmartre in the heart of Paris - to claim vineyards within its city boundaries. This area was once an important viticultural department. This is no longer the case. Still, the Bellet wines are well regarded and sell for a good price. I recommend a visit to the vineyards of the Château du Bellet with its rather lovely private chapel.

                             The interior of the private chapel, once part of the family estate of the Château du Bellet, Nice. The chapel has been deconsecrated and converted into the wine-tasting area.

The Château de Bellet is approximately twelve kilometres inland, high above Nice. The vineyards are no longer owned by the de Charnacé family, the ancestors of the Barons of Bellet. The present owner, Ghislaine de Charnacé, grandson of the last Bellet Baron, inherited the estate from his mother Rose de Bellet, whose family gave its name to the local wine. In 2012, the family sold off the vineyards and chapel but not the ancestral home with its round towers and ochre and red façades. The vineyards are now in the hands of a conglomerate, 'La Française Real Estate Managers' - a rather unattractive moniker that conjures up none of the romanticism and history of 'Barons of Bellet'. To be fair, this company has kept the traditions, the local cépages, while bringing its winemaking technology into the twenty-first century.
A day trip from Nice is easy and, when I last looked, you did not need an appointment. Lovely views, four to five degrees cooler than down at the coast and well worth a visit.
By the way, this is an organic vineyard and has been since 2013.

                                      Views from one of the Château du Bellet vineyards.

There are many influences and a wide variety of political histories, Greek, Roman, Catalan, Provençal to name but a few. Each has brought something to our wine story.

Cheers! This is me sipping our homemade orange wine.

My novel, The Forgotten Summer, is set on an vineyard in the south of France. A French family who fled Algeria after the War of Independence buy a rundown vineyard overlooking the Mediterranean ...

www.caroldrinkwater.com

France as my Inspiration, by Carol Drinkwater

                                       The famous green boxes used by the Parisian bouquinistes

                                         They have been designated a World Heritage Site status

I am deep in work at present, lost in the brambly mire of editorial notes on my still untitled novel due for publication in 2017. As well, I am also preparing or rather allowing to gestate the novel I am about to begin writing. I am not a Plotter. I start with grainy images of characters and places. Once I have a first instinct about what these people, this particular character - usually a woman – wants, I begin to trail her, as it were. What period am I traversing? Where are we? What is at stake for HER? The questions are endless. It goes back to my drama school days when I was taught to build the inner life of my character, the role I was rehearsing. "Get to know everything about her".

Agents and publishers like material they can sell, they can establish you with. In my case, in one broad word, it is FRANCE.

My six memoirs set on our Olive Farm in the South of France became international best sellers. They established me, as it were, as one of those Brits who had upped sticks and moved abroad, to France. A rather simplified summation of the facts, but never mind.
My agent is happy that he can sell the combination of moi and France.

But no one wants to write the same book over and over so I am always looking for new approaches, different angles for stories. And this is great fun.

My latest novel, published this year, THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER, is set on a vineyard overlooking the Mediterranean somewhere not far from  Cannes or St Raphael. There are also several scenes set in Paris. But at the heart of the book, where its dark family secret lies, I take the reader back to the last days of the Algerian War of Independence in 1962. The fallout when war is in its dying throes. The people who are affected by the retreat. Sometimes the characters might be victims, sometimes perpetrators. Right at the core of THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER is a choice, a decision taken when no other direction seemed possible.

The research involved a trip to Algeria – an expansive, varied and very beautiful country with many layers of its own fascinating history. I was fortunate because I had recently returned from a four week trip there for research on a previous book, a travel book: THE OLIVE TREE.

So powerful were the images and history of the country that they stayed with me; they haunted me until I decided to use them for THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER. The story took root within me and would not go away until I wrote it. I think it’s a fair claim that this is a good situation for a writer. The emptiness of no inspiration and the silent question: what on earth am I going to write about next? is not what any of us wants.

So, when I am inching towards that empty stage where, somewhere there, the next story is waiting to be told, I look about me in earnest, on the hunt as it were, for spoors, threads.

I make trips to brocantes – junk and antique stores - which in any case is a form of relaxation for me. I am searching for objects that might kickstart my imagination. I visit galleries and stare into paintings. I watch old movies.

A few weeks ago I drove to the edges of the Champagne region to visit a huge jumble yard; one I know quite well. It is so sprawling that usually I only stroll about the Art Deco or Art Nouveau sections or the garden furniture. But on this occasion I was trying to solve a writing problem and so just meandered about not really looking at anything. I found myself in the book section. This is a very fusty, dark room where lorry loads of books that have been collected from House Emptying expeditions are stacked in piles. There is no order to it; you just have to rummage. There I found in excellent condition a biography of Francois Truffaut, a director I greatly admire. It was a snip at 2 euros.

                                                           A bouquiniste's treasure trove

It took me back to an era of modern France that has always fascinated me. France in the late 60s and the 70s. An evocative period in which to set a novel. Last week, I was wandering the bouquiniste stalls in Paris and I spotted a rare black and white magazine hanging from a clothes peg on one of the stalls on the Left Bank. It was not a snip at 32 euros. Still, I couldn’t resist and bought it. It brought to life through pages of black and white photographs the period when Truffaut was making such films as Fahrenehit 451, Stolen Kisses ...

And so I have found a key, a door into my next novel.

Fascinatingly, an episode from my early past that I had completely forgotten until now was that in 1971 or 1972 I met Truffaut. He would have been about forty. He was in London casting, looking for the lead for the film that won him his Oscar for Best Foreign Film: La Nuit Americaine or Day for Night. I lost out to Jackie Bisset who was given the role. My French, Truffaut decided, was not sufficiently fluent.
And now here I am living in France, living my life in the French language, reading his biography in French. How life turns!

                                                           François Truffaut 1932 - 1984

Truffaut died at the age of fifty-two. Tragically young, but he has left behind him a body of masterpieces. He changed the direction of French cinema and his work acutely chronicles two generations of modern history.
He is buried in Montmartre.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

A vineyard in southern France, by Carol Drinkwater

It is that time of year again. Late September. The season of ‘mellow fruitfulness’. There are no mists here at this time of year in the south of France but there is a great deal of mature sunlight oozing its warm beams for long hour after long hour. I love this time of year and what has been extra special for me this year is that THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER was published last week in paperback.

To celebrate its publication, my husband and I visited one of our local Foire aux vins, a rendezvous for all lovers of good wine where a vast selection of French wines are on offer at slightly reduced prices.

THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER is set, predominantly, on a family-owned vineyard in the south of France. The book opens with the harvest, la vendange.

When I was a student, many of my colleagues would zip off to France or Italy about now and help with the grape-picking. The stories they returned with, along with their healthy sun-kissed cheeks, always made me a little wistful. I was one of those students who couldn’t really afford to travel, (which is possibly why I have been on the move ever since!) I had never visited a vineyard. I didn’t know anything of the back-breaking work, the heat in the fields, the sweet juice staining my fingers. All of these joyous experiences came to me later, and whilst writing on THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER I spent a great deal of time on several vineyards throughout all seasons to learn the entire wine-making process, but I particularly loved being out of doors in the fresh air at harvest-time. As well, I enjoyed the camaraderie that grows out of working with a small thrown-together team. It is all about picking by hand, just as we do with our olives. One of the main reasons for this is that discerning pickers will know to leave the poor fruits alone and not mix them in with top quality fruits.

The moment of when to pick is an ancient art and getting it right is vital to the quality of the wine to come. Most winemakers decide their moment dependent on the sugar and acid levels in the fruit. Weather, too, is an important factor. This becomes clear in THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER when an unpredicted hail storm arrives from nowhere and beats down on the newly-picked grapes, destroying entire baskets of the estate's most cherished variety.

The south of France with its abundance of rosé wines has been capturing the attention of wine connoisseurs the world over. Wine production here in the Midi has come of age, experts are claiming. It is true that until recently it has never been held with the regard given to Burgundy or Bordeaux productions but since Phoenician times it has been an active if not always top-notch business here.

                             The cave where the earliest known winery was located in southern Armenia

I read on Wikipedia that the oldest-known winery, -and judging by the remains excavated there it was a reasonably sophisticated affair - was found in Vayots Dzor, Armenia, and dates back to around 4100 BC. If this were the oldest winery it would date the industry at approximately 6,000 years old, which is at least 1,000 years younger than olive cultivation in the Middle East.

I wonder.

                                     Mosaic with Armenian writing depicting grapes and birds

Georgia was producing wine during the same period as the Armenians and possibly earlier. They discovered wine-making when they buried wild grape juice underground in shallow pits throughout the winter. When the juice was dug up it had fermented. The next step was to sink grape juice in clay vessels with sealed wooden lids and leave these kvevris sometimes for up to fifty years.

                                                         Ancient kvevris in Georgia

The kvevris resemble early amphorae which, from at least Phoenician times, were used to transport liquid produce such as wine or olive oil all around the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians played a vital role all along their maritime trading routes in disseminating both wine and olive knowledge.

                                           Roman amphorae used to transport olive oil or wine

The search for the origins of viticulture is as complex a journey as my own Olive Route expeditions. It is possibly why the history of wine-making fascinates me as much as the olive culture.

                                                       Egyptian wine jars 6th - 4th century BC

I can remember standing in the West Bank on a very sunny February morning planting olive saplings in groves where the old trees had been felled, and looking about me. Unrestricted views in every direction. Palestine. Ancient Palestine. Canaan, Phoenician fields. Israel. On each of these territories wine production has had an impact and that impact has been carried to ports all across the Mediterranean.

                                         An exquisite Greek wine-mixing vessel, from southern France 500 BC

Southern France, the original small port that was founded as Massilia, modern-day Marseille, would have seen the arrival of wine stock and olive trees somewhere around 600 BC. The Phoenicians first or possibly the Phocaean Greeks who came from the Asia Minor coast, from the port-city of Phocaea – today Foca in Turkey. Both peoples would have transported with them cultivation know-how as well as a floating nursery of sorts. The resident Gauls were choosy about what they accepted from these long-distance foreigners, but they did welcome wine. After, came the Romans who planted up vast swathes of the Languedoc, the Mediterranean coast, Provence with vines.

A couple of years ago I was invited to the Robert Mondavi Institute, University of California, Davis, to give a couple of lectures on my Olive Route experiences, embracing both the two travel books and the films. While there I came across a very excellent book, which I thoroughly recommend if the history of viticulture is of interest to you.

                                                    ANCIENT WINE, by Patrick E. McGovern

It is a vast and intoxicating subject, and one I would love to travel to discover further.

THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER, unlike THE OLIVE ROUTE and its sequel THE OLIVE TREE, is a novel. It is full of love, fine food and wines and intrigue. I hope that it is also imbued with my passion for southern France's agricultural past and the region's history.

I leave you with Dionysus, or Bacchus. Such a handsome god in whose company I would enjoy driving a glass of wine.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

Favourite hideaways of mine in Ireland, by Carol Drinkwater

 I have just returned from a memorable trip to Ireland - my semi-adopted homeland because I was actually born in London. My recently-departed mother and all her family were born and bred in County Laios, set in the Midlands of Ireland. The farm her parents spent their hardworking lives running is still in the family and belongs now to two of my cousins. They were a struggling, hardworking Catholic family.
Until 1922, when the Irish Free State came into existence and British rule over Ireland was drawing to its bitter close, Laois was known as Queen's County (a nod to British monarchy).
My mother used to recount to me many stories of local Protestants helping the Catholics and vice-versa (lending one another tractors, or a gallon or two of petrol when rationing during the WWII badly hit their agricultural way of life even though Ireland had chosen a neutral position). She told me that the families of the two faiths lived alongside one another in peace. Of course, this wasn't always the case.

Like most counties in Ireland, Laois has its fair share of grand Georgian or Regency properties built by the Protestant British when they were the landlords of the island while the tenants or farm workers were the less privileged Catholics. 

Ballyfin, considered the most lavish Regency house in Ireland, is an example. It was built in the 1820s on the site of previous luxury manor houses, by Sir Charles Coote and his wife Carolyn. It stayed in the Coote family until the 1920s when it was bought by the Patrician Brothers, a Roman Catholic teaching order. At this stage, Ireland was taking back its independence from the British and the brothers ran Ballyfin as a school right through to the twentieth-first century. In 2002, a decline in vocations, less brothers to run the school, forced them to sell the estate on.

Today, after nine years of restoration by its present owners, a couple from Chicago with Irish connections, it has been transformed into a sumptuous five-star hotel, Ballyfin Demesne, set in some 600 acres of manicured gardens. 

If your budget can run to even a cup of tea there - room rates start from around 850 euros a night - it is worth visiting just to get a sense of its splendour and to imbibe the stories and ghosts from its past. If I were to covet any of it with Big House envy, it would be its magnificent conservatory.

                                                           Ballyfin Regency Manor House

The history of Laois reaches back at least 8,000 years, to pre-Neolithic times when tribes of hunters roamed the forests in search of nuts and berries to supplement their diets. There are several sites and monuments that bear witness to the history of this region from Neolithic times to modern days, and it is claimed that Christianity came to Laois even before Saint Patrick arrived there.

I spent two or three days in the neighbourhood paying tribute to my mother, leaving a lock of her hair at my  grandparents' grave to reunite her with her family and the place of her birth.

We stayed in Offaly at Gloster House, a Georgian mansion built for the Lloyd family in the 1720s.

This house, with a 1960s convent stuck onto its rear, was sold to its present owners, Tom and Mary Alexander in 2001. It was a purchase of love, no doubt about it. The nuns who had run the place as a rest home for rich elderly women and a school in the convent addition at the back had, through lack of funds, allowed the property to fall into a very sorry state of disrepair. I know this first hand because my mother and I took the gate lodge in 2005 as a rental and over the years we became friends with the present owners. We have witnessed the painstaking renovations undertaken. Today, Gloster is both a stunning private residence and can be booked for wedding and birthday events. If you are looking for a location for a very special occasion, I cannot recommend Gloster highly enough. 

                                           Gloster House - Photo taken last week by my husband, Michel Noll

Here is a piece I wrote for my website earlier this year. 

http://www.caroldrinkwater.com/introducing-gloster-house-county-offaly-ireland

           A view of the Slieve Bloom Mountains in Laois where I spent many blissful childhood days 

From Laois and Offaly, we turned southwest to the coast, to Bantry Bay, a picturesque stop along the Wild Atlantic Way.

As I write, this year's West Cork Literary Festival is drawing to its close. I was the first event of the 2016 festival. It was held in the library of magnificent Bantry House overlooking Bantry Bay in West Cork, and I am thrilled to say it was a sold-out event. On Tuesday morning I did a smaller event in the tea rooms at Bantry House. Bantry is also a country house I know quite well. My first stay there was, again with my mother, for my first visit to the West Cork Lit Fest. It rained - 'lashed', as we say in Ireland - from the moment we drove into the fishing town till our departure. Again, my event was at the great house. On that occasion we were also staying in the elegant annexe area the Shelswell-White family use for bed and breakfasts. Mrs Brigitte Shelswell-White was so welcoming, lending us two of her Burberry raincoats (bought in charity shops, she assured us) and wellies, showing us into the private areas of the house, that I have been marked by this place, that visit ever since.

Here is a 'snapshot' history of this property: http://www.bantryhouse.com/bantryhouse/visit-2/history/

Egerton-Shelswell-White, Brigitte's late husband, a much-loved patron of the arts in West Cork, was the eight generation of his family to reside at Bantry. Since his death in 2013, one of his children, of which there are six, Sophie, has taken over the responsibility of management of the estate. No mean feat.

The family continues to host events for both the West Cork Chamber Music Festival and the West Cork Literary festival.

Eimear O'Herlihy, Festival Director, (standing) introducing me. To my left (right as you look at the pic) is Elizabeth Rose Murray who hosted my first event. Elizabeth is also a writer and was appearing at the festival later in the week for her own events.

Here is the jacket of THE HUNGER, a historical novel I wrote for adolescents. It is set in Ireland during the 1845-1849 Irish Potato Famine, published by Scholastic Books

My latest, THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER (the novel I was in Bantry to read from and talk about), is a Summer Special on Kindle e-books. A GREAT deal at £1.99

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forgotten-Summer-Carol-Drinkwater-ebook/dp/B016JKY3IE/ref=pd_rhf_se_p_img_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=CDB7DDQ00XQWABZ4R68R

Or if you prefer to wait, THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER will be published in paperback on 8th September in UK. In Ireland it was published last week

www.caroldrinkwater.com

History beneath my feet, Left Bank, Paris, by Carol Drinkwater

Caveau de la Huchette

 Sidney Bechet in 1922

                                                             


What is in a street?
It was my husband, Michel's, birthday last week. We were in Paris. I decided that aside from taking him for a delicious dinner it was time for us to stay up late and go to a jazz club. We haven't done that in a while. Instead of choosing one of the spots we have visited in the past I thought I would find somewhere unknown to us both and after trawling through the pages of Pariscope ( a Parisian equivalent of Time Out, sort of), I settled on the Caveau de la Huchette which promised good jazz and dancing. Because I was busy I did not take the time to find out the history of the place. I looked up the Californian clarinetist, Dan Levinson, who was billed to play, but nothing about the building itself, housed at 5, rue de la Huchette, a small cobbled street running westward from Rue St Jacques,  and a very short walk from Shakespeare & Co. Quintessential Paris cinquième, steps from where Michel and I first lived when we began our love affair some years ago in Paris. (And where several chapters of THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER are set).

                                                    Rue de la Huchette, Paris 1900

The street itself is one of the oldest along the capital's Left Bank, running horizontal to the Seine and it claims some rather handsome buildings, once hotels. I did not know the meaning of the word huchette and neither did Michel. So, I looked it up in my four-volume Harrap's dictionary. The closest I found was huchet, a masculine noun meaning a hunting horn. I then read on Wikipedia that as early as the year 1200 the street was known as rue de Laas and ran adjacent to a vineyard which was sold off in the early thirteenth century for urban development. I have failed to find out anything further about the vineyard, or the wines grown there. If anyone reading this knows more, I would be fascinated to hear from you.

Rue de la Huchette, around 1900

When we lived around the corner from Rue de la Huchette,  I have to admit I always hurried by this narrow street, avoiding it when possible, because I found it rather touristy, full of slightly tacky Greek restaurants touting for clients. I have never really taken to its ambience.  I now discover that as early as the seventeenth century, the street was lively with taverns, hostelries, cabarets and rotisseries and that the cries and drunken shouts of laughter could be heard all over the quarter! It is claimed that Abbé Prévost (novelist and Benedictine monk) penned his short novel, Manon Lescaut, published in 1745, in one of these auberges. One wonders with such noise going on how he managed it!

The novel was a huge success and three operatic adaptations were made of the Abbé's oeuvre. The first, the least known, was Daniel Auber's published in 1856. In 1884, Massenet wrote his opera, Manon. Shortly after, Puccini adapted the book keeping the original title. This he wrote between 1890 and 1893.
There has also been at least one film adaptation of the book.

Théâtre de la Huchette

At number 23 stands the Théâtre de la Huchette. What is remarkable about this small theatre is that it has been staging the same two Eugène Ionesco plays, performed as a double bill, with the original production values and sets, since 1957:  La Cantatrice Chauve (The Bald Soprano) and La Leçon (The Lesson). This makes these two plays, as a double bill, the longest running show in the history of modern theatre. Also astounding is the fact that the theatre seats a modest 85 and yet over one and a half million spectators have seen the double bill. Now, a third play has been added to the repertoire, but this changes from time to time. Why, I asked myself, would the same two plays continue to be performed? This story is also fascinating. The theatre opened on the 26th April 1948, founded on a shoestring by Marcel Pinard and Georges Vitaly. In 1952, it was bought outright by Pinard who brought to its stage the works of Genet, Lorca, Ionesco, Turgenev amongst others. Some of whom, like Ionesco, were criticised, spurned by the mainstream theatrical community. When Pinard died in 1975, the theatre was threatened with closure, so the actors who were performing the two Ionesco plays formed a limited company in order that they could continue with the production and fight for the principle's that had been the life-blood of the theatre.
Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jean-Paul Belmondo are but two of a long list of actors who made their first or early appearances there.

Outside Le Caveau de la Huchette 1949

Now to 5, Le Caveau de la Huchette. The jazz club exists in a sixteenth-century building, formerly a hotel, where the American journalist, and author, Elliot Paul, resided during the 20s and 30s. Paul left Paris in the thirties due to ill health and went to convalesce in Spain but moved back to Paris at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. When WWII was declared, he returned home to the States.  Once back in America, he went to work in Hollywood. One of Paul's most notable co-screenwriting achievements is the classic Rhapsody in Blue. (Clifford Odets was another contributor to this screenplay though uncredited)

Original poster for Rhapsody in Blue

Released in New York on 26 June 1945 and nominated for one of the Grand Prizes at the Cannes Film Festival in September 1946

Poster for the first Cannes Film Festival held in September 1946

Back to Rue de la Huchette.  No 5 is built of stone with a cavernous dungeon-like interior with dangerously narrow winding stairways that lead to two seating areas. The largest 'room' is the underground dance floor and stage where Dan Levinson was playing.
Caveau de la Huchette started its life as a jazz club in 1946 and today is hailed as the Temple of Swing.

But looking back centuries earlier into the history of No. 5, I discovered that it was a meeting place for the secret brotherhood of the Rosicrucians and also for the Templars. The history is a little woolly after that, but it seems that in the early seventeenth century, the building was used by a Brotherhood of Freemasons. (Freemasonry was founded from "ecclesiastical associations of builders formed by bishops from the Middle Ages, especially the Benedictines, Cistercian and Templars" so perhaps the use of the space was passed down from the Templars?)
The lodge was composed of two basement rooms, one on top of the other, which served as the meeting rooms. From these rooms, two subterranean tunnels were excavated. One led to Châtelet and the other to the cloister of Saint-Severin.
(This is not as incredible as it sounds. Paris is built on old holes, quarries, catacombs and subterranean trails. As Victor Hugo wrote, "to plumb the depths of this ruin seems impossible".)

                                             Georges Danton Lawyer and Politician  1759 - 1794

During the years of the French Revolution, No. 5 became an important gathering point for radical democrats seeking to dislodge the monarchy and create a republic. It hosted members of the Club of the Cordeliers. The upper room was transformed into a public house where such political luminaries as Danton, Marat and Robespierre came to drink and sing revolutionary songs, songs of La Liberté. Trials and executions took place in the lower room. A very deep well still exists there which is claimed to be where the corpses of those executed were thrown. Arms from that epoch still decorate the walls.

In 1946, Paris was a capital celebrating its freedom, a different liberty. The Germans had gone, the Occupation was at an end. The Americans were back. Everybody was in the mood to party. Jazz and its upbeat energy swept through Paris. The Caveau de la Huchette claims to be Paris' first jazz club but I would contest this because Sidney Bechet, to name just one, was playing with his own band in 1928 at the the chic nightclub, Bricktop's Club in Montmartre, owned by flaming red-haired, "one-hundred percent American negro",  Ada 'Bricktop' Smith.
The Caveau certainly welcomed the GIs and with them came the beginning of France's passion for be-pop and swing. It was nicknamed the Temple of New Orleans jazz.
Sydney Bechet's jam sessions down in those cellars after his return to France in 1950 have become legendary.

Sidney Bechet 1897 - 1959

The club's reputation has never faded. Lionel Hampton performed there for the club's thirtieth birthday celebrations in May 1976.

Every night of the week there is live jazz, and, what was an eye opener to Michel and me, was the dancing. Be-pop and swing are alive and jumping in Paris. Dozens of couples, singles too, congregate there to dance. It was a remarkable sight to see and you cannot help feel energised and uplifted. Dan Levinson, in from California to play for two nights, said that it is one of his favourite clubs to perform anywhere in the world. No musician could claim that the reception was anything less than 'très chalereux'.

My new novel - the one I am at work on now - its title for the moment, though for a very different reason, is All that Jazz (though I am sure Penguin will have other suggestions!) It begins in Paris in 1947.  I feel very tempted now to write a scene set at the Caveau de la Huchette.
Here, below, is the cover of THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER, also partially set in Paris, published a couple of months ago.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

Queen Victoria tours the French Riviera, by CAROL DRINKWATER

I won’t pretend otherwise. This February is proving to be a very bittersweet month. As I mentioned in last month’s blog, my new novel THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER was published on 11th February with a few nice events lined up by Michael Joseph/Penguin to launch it. A special and exciting moment for me as this new novel has been a while in the writing and I am very proud of it.

Unfortunately, my wonderful Irish mother, Phyllis, – a best friend and big sister to me – died in my arms totally unexpectedly on 4th February. It was a gift for her that her passage between life and after-life was so swift and painless but a terrible shock and heartbreak for me. Obviously, the show goes on and THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER was published. It has - I am writing this just a couple of days beyond its publication - been receiving some wonderful five-star reviews and seems to be selling very healthily.

So, because I am locked in pre-funeral arrangements, I am going to cheat this month and post here the text I wrote for an article published in the Mail on Sunday Travel section on 14th February. It tells a little about my patch of Provence.

"Provence is a large region of southern France. Officially, it is Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, PACA. My corner is the geographically stunning tip that stretches to the borders of Monaco and Italy to the east, the Alps to the north, Hyères to the west and the sparkling Mediterranean to the south. The French Riviera or Blue Coast. Its reputation is so celebrated with tales of wealth, resplendence, decadence and all-night jazz hotspots that you expect it to disappoint, yet it never does.

                                                                          Menton

"Queen Victoria loved the French Riviera. She visited on nine occasions and did a great deal to bring this wintering resort its international reputation. Her first trip in 1882 delivered her from a damp Windsor by carriage, train, crossing the channel on her yacht, Victoria and Albert, descending by train to Menton, the last hilltop stop before Italy, appreciated today for its Val Rahmeh Botanical Gardens and its exuberant Lemon Festival. Victoria was entranced by the palm and citrus vegetation, the sweeping views and the benign microclimate. She made expeditions along the coast, eulogising the landscape, which she later described in her diary as ‘a paradise of nature’. The local shepherds, she wrote, were ‘very handsome’ in their breeches and ‘large, black felt hats’ that protected from the sun.

"The widowed, ageing Queen returned regularly for the balmy climate. Her stays grew longer. One outing took her to the perfume town of Grasse, to Alice de Rothschild’s Villa Victoria. Alice had purchased 135 hectares of olive groves to construct her chateau. Spending millions, she laid out magnificent grounds and employed eighty full-time gardeners. Each year, she imported literally tons of violets to bed in the olive groves, giving vibrancy to the silvery fields while her forests of yolk-yellow mimosas perfumed the air.

"According to gossip, our doughty Queen stepped clumsily and crushed several plants underfoot. Alice, infuriated, told her royal visitor in no uncertain terms to ‘get out’. Other versions of the tale suggest that Victoria planted a tree as was the tradition, digging it in herself, to commemorate her stay, or perhaps to offer her apologies? Baroness Alice, who suffered from rheumatic fever, spent six months of every year in Grasse returning to Buckinghamshire for the summers. 

                                Statue of Queen Victoria in Cimiez district of Nice where stayed.

"By the beginning of the twentieth century, Cannes and the coastal strip that winds its rocky way to Monaco was the winter resort for the rich, the royals and a few well-heeled writers and artists such as the Impressionist Auguste Renoir who in 1907 settled in Cagnes-sur-Mer where he hoped to cure the rheumatism that had crippled his hands. Renoir’s home is now a museum dedicated to the artist. A must see.

"Around the turn of the century, two other members of the Rothschild banking dynasty constructed sumptuous properties along this coastline. The Villa Rothschild in Cannes was purchased by the local council and transformed into a media library while the Villa Ephrussi on Cap d’Antibes encircled by nine gardens with breath-taking views is open to the public and well worth a visit. If you are a budding painter, look out for Painters’ Day. In June, the villa opens its blossom-filled gardens to artists, offering them the inspiration and tranquillity required to create. In August, Ephrussi’s covered patio hosts a small, intimate opera festival.

"Although much construction has taken place around Grasse destroying many of the jasmine, rose and lavender hills that serviced the perfumeries, a visit to the traditional houses, Galimard, Molinard, Fragonard, with their old copper vats on display is de riguer. Or drop by Le Jardin de la Bastide, a paradisical garden, where Michelle Cavalier is producing organic rosewater products.

"Alice’s Villa Victoria is now Palais Provençal, an apartment block.

"Only after the Great War did the area became a summer venue. In 1921, the American composer Cole Porter with his heiress wife, Linda Lee Thomas, rented a house in the little-known fishing village of Juan-les-Pins. They invited fellow Americans Gerald and Sara Murphy, also both heirs to fortunes, to accompany them. So enchanted were the Murphys with this magical coastal playground that they persuaded the palatial Hotel du Cap in Antibes to stay open for the summer. Friends were beckoned south. Amongst the wide circle of prestigious guests were Picasso with his first wife, the Russian ballerina, Olga Khokhlova, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and the Hemingways.

                                    The Murphys with guests on the beach 1923 at La Garoupe

"In 1924, the Murphys purchased a ‘seaside chalet’ near Plage de la Garoupe and christened it Villa America. The summer season was here to stay. Taste that mythical Jazz Age by dropping in to the Art Deco piano bar at the Hotel Belles-Rives, once Villa Saint-Louis, the rented home of the Fitzgeralds and incarnated in his classic novel, Tender is the Night. Sip your cocktail and gaze out at the emerald sea bobbing with linen-white yachts while a photograph of Josephine Baker with her pet cheetah gazes down on you.

"In 1923, while in Monaco, Coco Chanel was introduced to the stupendously wealthy 2nd Duke of Westminster, known to friends as “Bendor”. The affair between designer and Bendor lasted a decade. While out sailing along the coast in the company of his couturier mistress, the Duke spotted a plot of land on a terraced hillside in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. It had been part of the private hunting grounds of Monaco’s royal family. Bendor bought it and gifted it to Coco. When she returned to Paris, Coco was seen in a backless dress and bronzed skin. Until this time, to sport a tan was judged vulgar. Only peasants were bronzed, but Chanel’s appearance in the city of fashion confirmed that sunbathing was the new mode. In 1928, Coco built the exquisite villa, La Pausa on the plot Bendor had given her. This hillside property with its lazy summer warmth remained her residence until 1953. 

                                          Bendor and Coco on his yacht, The Flying Cloud 

                                                                     

"If you are fortunate to have friends like Bendor to take you sailing, the passage between Menton and Cannes gives marvellous coastal sightings of many iron-gated, stone-walled Belle Epoque mansions clinging to the rocks. Otherwise, healthy walks along the littoral offer you glimpses into the mysteries of how the other half lives. Who knows you might cruise by Ecstasea, built for Roman Abramovich, or Zaca, anchored in Pont de Fontvielle. One time it was Errol Flynn’s and it is whispered his ghost walked it decks at twilight. His other yacht, Sirocco, is docked near St Tropez and has been rechristened, Karenita.

                                                                          Léon Blum

"In 1936, the Jewish socialist and three times Prime Minister, Léon Blum, revolutionised France by bringing in two weeks annual paid holiday for all employees. For the first time, the ordinary man could take a vacation. The luxurious Le Train Bleu, the Calais-Mediterranée Express which, apart from the Great War years, had been transporting the elite to the south since 1886, added second and third class sleeping carriages. Middle and working class families were off to the seaside and the Riviera was to change forever.

"During WWII, the Cote d’Azur as a holiday destination closed down, but once the Allies had liberated the coast in 1944, the French Riviera’s infrastructure grew rapidly. In 1946, the Cannes Film Festival was inaugurated. Cannes was glamorous and chic while the international airport of Nice opened up the region to mass tourism. And so it has remained.

"Provence-Côte d’Azur offers everything. Walking tours, camp sites, Greco-Roman history, vineyards, chic beaches, glitzy casinos, dozens of music or flower festivals, luxury villas, open-top cars, magnificent art galleries, Provençal markets. In winter, every Sunday coaches depart Nice airport at 9am delivering skiers one hour inland to the slopes, then back home in time for dinner. The spectrum is as broad as you wish and it’s all yours. Léon Blum would have been proud."

I hope, if you have enjoyed this little snippet of South of France history, you might be tempted by THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER. It is set on a vineyard set back from the French Riviera coast. A love story with family secrets at its heart.


www.caroldrinkwater.com

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Forgotten-Summer-Carol-Drinkwater-ebook/dp/B016JKY3IE/ref=pd_rhf_se_p_img_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0ZSS3E2KGBV6DA4FN1Y9