Our redstarts

Just as every year since we live here the black redstarts (French : rougequeue noir) have been very active and productive since the beginning of spring and have a nice offspring that started their flying lessons yesterday.

This one began his exercises early evening and was lucky that when he had to make a pause the cats were already in the house taking their evening catnap.
Who knows what would have happened otherwise. Brrr.

Happy New Year 2016

Mas de l'Houvande wishes all its family, its friends and its guests all over the world a Happy New Year.

May 2016 be a happy year for all of you, fulfill all your wishes and bring you success, friendship, love and - last but not least - good health.

Cheers. Santé. Gezondheid. Zum Wohl. Cin cin. Salud !

Red wine harvest 2015

The last day of September - the day our last guests of summer left home - Vinovalie harvested our small vineyard, formerly leasehold by Château Les Rigalets.
This was way after the other neighbour winemakers who started the red wine harvest about the 20th of September.
As they said they wanted to wait the longest possible to assure that the skins and the pips became even more mature so to make sure that afterwards the tannins in the wine are softer and lighter and in the end the wine is tasting smoother, "plus soyeux".
This method is also used by the Seigneur wine of the AOC Cahors, such as e.g. Château du Cèdre, Clos Triguedina and Château Lagrézette.

Can't wait to taste the result !

Some photos :



For further info :

Today's article on the winemaking by Vinovalie (in french) and their website

Some basic knowledge on tannins.

Tango festival at Prayssac

As you know, every year in summer Prayssac is a center of tango activity.

During the last two weeks of July every day tango lessons take place and every night there is the possibility of tango-ing the night away.

Now you can see on Vimeo a nice selection of the maestro performances of the last few years.
Watch and enjoy their elegance and listen to the beautiful tango music.





Come and see next year from the 16th of July onwards.

Heatwave

Since about six / seven weeks no rain of any importance came down on earth in the Lot.
The garden is longing for water and looks a bit brownish.

Last year we had a nice field of sunflowers in front of our terrace.
This year it was wheat.
Because of the hot hot weather the wheat harvest is finished in the whole department.
Looks even more summerly now it is harvested.

The splendors of Cahors

There are a lot of reasons to visit Cahors, the capital of the Quercy, in the Lot, the northern department of the Midi-Pyrenees :

its panorama seen from the Mont St Cyr,
its medieval bridge Pont Valentré,
its cathedral with the gothic cloister,
the secret gardens,
its ancient streets with its half-timbered houses and
the market hall with the delicious local products as cheese, Malbec wine,
etc. etc.

Read for yourself (article in French) and come enjoy a stay.

Experience Malbec

A nice video on the Malbec experience commented by famous winemakers, sommeliers and critics - and for those who know the region : nice views of vineyards and castles and some well-known winemakers !





Do the Malbec tonight !

Château Les Grauzils : gold medal in Paris

Probably most of you know Philippe & Cathy Pontié of Château Les Grauzils, one of our neighbour winemakers.

There is very good news from them as their viognier white wine - Insolite - has been awarded a gold medal at the Paris wine competition this year.

It was the first time they competed.

Here the article (in french).


Have a nice wine at the terrace.

Cahors and its black wine : stars in a tv detective series

This Saturday, 17th of January 2015, Cahors and its wine region are the setting of a detective story, an episode of the French well-known tv series "Le Sang de la vigne".
This series after the novels of Jean-Pierre Alaux - he himself a native of the Lot - is a light hearted detective series, featuring in each episode a wine region of France : this time the valley of the Lot.

The series has been very successful over the last four years, on tv and in book, reaching top rankings.
One of the main reasons is - apart from the main actor, Pierre Arditi - the fact that in every episode a lot of touristic highlights of each region are integrated in the series.
In the Lot episode - amongst others - the most important that might be rather familiar to a lot of you are : The pont Valentré in Cahors, château de Mercuès, château du Cayrou in Puy-l’Evêque, château Lagrézette à Caillac, Albas et of course Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. The jesuit college in the centre of Cahors was transformed into the commissariat, the local police station.

A little fait divers on this episode is that your humble servant was present at the shooting at the Château du Cayrou and could talk to the main actor and a lot of the crew.

So if you don't have other things to do : watch it. Exact place and time: France 3, Saturday at 20.50 hours, title: "Chaos dans le vin noir".

For more information see : http://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2015/01/14/2028668-chaos-dans-le-vin-noir-samedi-sur-france-3-3.html

For those who cannot see it "live" there is the opportunity to watch it in replay until one week after broadcasting at the following address :

http://pluzz.francetv.fr/videos/le_sang_de_la_vigne.html

Have a nice tv evening.

preparation of the shooting at the château du Cayrou

the principal actors, a.o. Pierre Arditi, the detective-oenologist (2nd from left)

All the very best for 2015

Happy New Year!

At the beginning of 2015 Mas de l'Houvande would like to thank all its guests and wish them all the best for the year to come.
Best greetings and wishes also to all our friends and family all over the world.

May all your wishes and dreams come true and may 2015 be filled with happiness, joy and - above all - a good health.

Cheers !

Fireworks at the Pont Valentré in Cahors

Cahors wines amongst the best of the world

Just in time for the end of the year festivities there is excellent news from the Cahors wine front :

two very renomated American wine magazines, Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast, have listed three Cahors wines amongst the 100 best wines of the world : a great honour to the ancient wine region the Lot where malbec is the main grape variety.

Read for yourself (article in French)

the photo album of 2013

At last, a few days before Labour Day - uff, I will be allowed to enjoy the first of May ! - I could finish the photo album of 2013 with a selection of the photos received from our guests.

Thanks a lot to everybody who contributed.

As you can see from the pictures it was a hot summer with a lot of birds (esp. owls), bees and butterflies.

I hope you like it.

Deer all around

It's has been a winter's time since my last post.
As in most parts of Western Europe winter has been rather "hot" here and rainy but - contrary to last winter - not that grey at all.

But now spring is in the air and I want to break my bear's sleep.

I don't know if it is due to spring time or because of the mild winter but for the first time since we live here, i.e since 6 years, we see a lot of deer around the house and in the whole of Prayssac.
According to the older neighbours this is very exceptional.

I always loved this animal - not only because of its natural beauty and elegance - so it's nice to see them around much nearer.

Here they are - our new friends.

Best Wishes 2014

Mas de l'Houvande wishes all his friends and guests all over the world a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

May 2014 fulfill all your wishes and bring you success, friendship, love and - last but not least - good health.

Cheers. Cin cin !

Beautiful autumn colours

This year - due to the mild temperatures and enough of rain - the colours in the vineyards are very beautiful again. Especially as it hasn't frozen yet.

Look for yourself : some pictures I've taken in the neighbourhood.




Have a nice week end near the fireplace.

Wine harvest 2013

The wine harvest 2013 is finished : after some rain in the beginning the weather changed to almost summerly temperatures of around 25 °.

As could be imagined with the bad weather in spring the yield is very small.
It will depend largely on the skills of the winemaker if the millesime 2013 will be a good year for the consumers.
But for that we'll have to wait still a while.

Premiere this year : compared to the years before smaller harvesting machines were used in our vineyard.

Still nice flowers in the garden and on the terraces

Allthough it is already october a lot of plants begin to flower again - thanks to the nice weather : sun and above 20 °.

The first is a special kind of hibiscus, the second a salvia.

This year the wine harvest will be very late, later than in the past 20 years.
It will only start this week - not only for the white wines (normally mid september), but also for the red ones. This is about two to three weeks later than normal.
The explication is simple : bad weather during the blossoming and after a too hot summer a lot of rain in the first half of september.
Expected are : a very low yield and a lot of extra work for the winemakers.
It will be - as they call it - a very technical wine year.

George

Most of you know, George, our toad that comes along every now and then after the evening dinner.



Well, George - and his female of course - have been very productive this year.
Since a little while we see a lot of little Georges and Georgettes.

They stroll across the walls of the house to do their ancestral roads; afterwards they turn back all the time and do the same ways again.



I didn't know they were so small.

Cahors wines vinified in a different way

Since shortly Cahors winemakers use different methods of vinification to try to give an extra dimension and aspect to the red AOC wines.
One of the methods we already described earlier in this blog (see this entry) is using amphores like in ancient Roman times.

Recently they hit the news with another method : wine making using ovoid tanks.



The vertical ovoid tank takes its inspiration from the Roman “dolia”, a large jar for storing wine.
It takes advantage of the micro-oxygenation that is made possible by the clay-cement material.
In this giant “egg”, the lees are continuously forced upward by an internal current resembling a vortex.

Amongst the pioneers in the Lot using this method is one of our neighbours, Philippe Pontié of Château Les Grauzils.

See for yourself :



Here is the direct link to the tf1 website.

Two spectacular bird rescues in recent times

In the last days Griet and one of the guests did some spectacular bird rescues.

First of all a little "rouge cul" that didn't succeed well his first flying experience was saved out of the mouth of our cats and put back into the nest.

Today a little church owl was rescued out of our chimney and put to liberty again.

Happy bird life.