Foraging for lunch

Today, it took us most of the morning to acquire the ingredients for our lunch. It consisted of the usual, with some important differences:

• bread, purchased in Lodève prior to our departure - OK, not too different :-)


• olives, of the variety lucques - both black and green. These were purchased in St-Etienne-de-Gourgas, the village where they are grown.


• wonderful fromage de chèvre made from lait cru and purchased at the end of a narrow, twisting, rough road high on a mesa from the man who made it, Didier Le Drogo.


• delicious wine - Les Faïsses de Jean 2003 from Domaine Puech-Auger in Montpeyroux (one of the sub-regions of Côteaux du Languedoc). This was purchased from the domain right in the village of Montpeyroux.

Finally, we purchased a bunch of organic carrots from a fellow in Lagamas and ate our booty in the yard of the church there. This just happened to be a rather pretty building surrounded by vineyards and it was a great lunch.

Afterwards, we went to Domaine des Crès Ricards where they were in the middle of the vendange. There we tasted and purchased two wines: Les Hauts de Milési 2003 (the 2002 was a coup de coeur in the 2005 Hachette) and Cousin-Cousine 2004 which is a 2-star selection in the 2006 Hachette, which we just picked up while here.

We ate dinner again tonight at Sauveurs du Grand Sud where we both had a Moroccan style taboulé followed by tajine confit de canard avec olives, carottes et citron confit. It was delicious! The weather was a perfect 3.0 on our scale.


View from our window in Lodève


The olive lady


Fromage du chèvre


Detail on the church in Lagamas


Notre Dame d'Hortus (just east of Ceyras)


Today's wine for lunch