19

The Foie Gras Festival

Four more days of successful trading followed. The clients of La Pinède shared our view that after a day lazing on the beach, rosé was the perfect drink. We sold out of François Crochet’s Sancerre and a couple more of our wines, and our blackboard became crisscrossed with a satisfying number of ‘fini’ annotations.

At breakfast on the fifth morning I was scooping slices of ripe melon into my mouth and Tanya was trying to avoid dripping juice down her dress as she bit into a plump peach. The sun was just peeking above the roofs of the houses and we felt the first warm rays on our skin. As usual Peter was beginning his day with a cigar and an extraordinarily strong cup of coffee. He paced up and down in front of the table, sat down briefly, decided it was uncomfortable and resumed prowling around the small hotel garden. Tanya flicked through the property pages of Nice-Matin, and I began peeling a kiwi fruit. We had the whole morning to relax – or so I thought – before we headed down to the beach and opened La Vie en Rosé. Pushing my plate away, I prepared to return to our room.

‘Good, you’ve finished. Now come over here,’ said Peter impatiently. It was only just 10.30 a.m. but on a table in the shade he’d set up a small tasting. There was a bottle of pink wine and three glasses. ‘Don’t worry, you only have to have a sip,’ continued Peter as he poured. ‘It comes from a very special vineyard.’ The colour of the wine reminded me of a Sancerre rosé we’d tasted the previous summer – it was more golden orange than pink, and the technical French term for it was pelure d’oignon, or onion skin.

Peter gave each of our glasses a vigorous swish to release the flavour of the wine and explained about the vineyard, which was in Languedoc Roussillon, near Belesta-de-la-Frontière. Château de Caladroy was built in the twelfth century. Its grounds contained a chapel and an old schoolroom, and for centuries it had defended the frontier against Spain, sheltering a whole community within its walls. But since 1989 it had been empty, and there was now a proposal to convert most of the buildings into a luxury hotel. ‘It will be a shame if it happens, but they still make bloody good wine,’ said Peter, holding up his glass.

Tastebuds are vulnerable things first thing in the morning, but the Château de Caladroy wine was remarkably smooth and unlike any rosé I’d ever tasted. It was slightly more viscous than a normal wine and reminded me of a Muscat in the way it coated the back of my throat with a delicious sweetness.

‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Peter, finishing his glass and helping himself to a little more. ‘It’s called Rivesaltes Ambré and is made from letting the juice from a white grape oxidise over a period of four years. The colour comes from the fact that the barrels have previously been used for red wine.’

All summer Peter had been trying to find a rosé to accompany foie gras. It was his Holy Grail. In Champagne he’d tried to persuade us that a light rosé saignée was the perfect match. Unfortunately for Peter, we’d checked with a local vigneron and ascertained that although buttery aged vintage champagne was a frequent companion, foie gras was never eaten with rosé. Ever since, Peter had been determined to prove otherwise, asking in nearly every vineyard we visited. The responses had ranged from polite rebuffs to total incredulity, but now he thought he’d found the answer, hence his overexcitement and frantic prebreakfast pacing.

‘Don’t you think it would go well with foie gras?’ continued Peter. ‘Apparently there’s a farm up in the hills that we can visit and buy in bulk. They even do lunch. And then imagine it – a foie gras and rosé festival.’

I had to admit that in Château de Caladroy he’d found a wine so decadently sweet that it would perfectly accompany foie gras, but there were plenty of reasons to say no to this latest scheme. Travelling into the hills behind the Côte d’Azur was becoming increasingly dangerous – a series of fire warnings had been issued recently and every morning the local paper printed a colour-coded map showing the various regions in Provence and the risk level. On a sliding scale of colours, yellow meant a negligible risk of fire and black meant that the police advised against travel. Adding to the problems, the squadron of lumbering Canadair fire-fighting planes had been grounded. During the summer they were usually a common sight on the coast – belly-flopping into the sea and climbing slowly away with a cargo bay full of water – but due to a crash in Calvi, each and every plane was undergoing a safety inspection. As a result this wasn’t a sensible time to go into the wilds. But Peter wasn’t to be denied, pointing out that the area he wanted to travel to was only rated orange by the paper. And as for my suggestion that we purchase the foie gras from the local deli, Peter simply raised one bushy white eyebrow. If La Vie en Rosé was going to serve foie gras, it was going to serve the best.

‘But Rivesaltes Ambré isn’t even a rosé,’ I persisted.

‘Nonsense. There’s no such thing as a technical definition of a rosé,’ countered Peter. ‘If it’s pink, or nearly pink, it’s a rosé.’

In the end Tanya settled the matter. Due to our lack of success with estate agents we’d been discussing pursuing a different approach and hiring a professional to find a bar for us. Glancing up from the paper, she announced that there was a property-search agent based in the town nearest to the farm. It meant paying an extra set of fees but hopefully we’d increase our chances of success.

‘Marvellous,’ said Peter, ‘we’ll meet him for lunch at the foie gras farm.’

 

Peter put on a fresh shirt in preparation for the lunch and chatted excitedly for the whole car journey. At the beginning of the summer he’d ordered foie gras at every opportunity. Whether a chef sautéed it, stuffed steak with it or served it as a carpaccio, Peter didn’t mind – he’d grin and enjoy every mouthful. But just recently I’d noticed that he’d become more discerning. Foie gras was on offer at most restaurants but typically it was poor quality and arrived in great slabs, and so Peter had learnt to wait until he discovered a menu that had the correct ‘feel’.

The last occasion he’d eaten foie gras was a week ago at a restaurant called the Chèvre d‘Or in Cabris. The menu had read, ‘Notre foie gras marbré aux abricots, gelée de Muscat, corolle de pousses de betterave,’ which loosely translated meant that their homemade foie gras was marbled with apricots and served with a Muscat jelly and beetroot shoots. When the plate arrived, it looked beautiful. There was a tiny circular slice of foie gras surrounded by a tracing of Muscat jelly. It was accompanied by a glass of Sauternes and a basket full of white toast – only one side of the bread had been toasted, and with the care of a mother putting a cherished child to bed, the triangles of toast had been tucked snugly under a white napkin. Unusually there was total silence from Peter as he ate, then when his plate was clean, he turned to us and declared the starter to be ‘sensational’.

Now, as we bumped up the track towards the farm, he was salivating again. To our right, we could see large pens full of ducks and a couple of donkeys loose in a field. In the yard in front of the farm, perhaps a hundred golden ducklings darted this way and that like a school of fish. A large mongrel lay in the shade watching this activity with a sleepy lack of interest, occasionally pawing at his nose to disrupt flies.

The farmhouse was a low wooden building that reminded me of the fondue restaurant in Aix where we’d initially come up with the idea for La Vie en Rosé. The sloping roof hung over the terrace, providing much-needed shade to a long communal dining table. At one end, a young French couple were already eating a starter of smoked duck breast and we took a seat next to them.

‘You must be the Iveys.’

We turned and saw a man, about the same age as Tanya and me, holding four glasses of pink champagne. He wore a loose-fitting beige suit; his hair was collar length and flecked blond by the sun. His nose and ears were too big to allow him to be classically handsome, but he had brilliant cheeky blue eyes and a wide, full mouth with which he was grinning impishly at us.

‘Well, you’re looking for a rosé bar, so pink champagne’s appropriate. My name’s Thierry, the property agent.’ He spoke in fluent but heavily accented English and, as we quickly learnt, had a penchant for English colloquialisms. ‘Down zee hatch,’ he said, taking a gulp of champagne.

‘Salut,’ we replied.

‘Unusual place,’ said Thierry, reading the menu. To begin with, of course, there was foie gras, but in a bewildering number of varieties — foie gras entier de canard, foie gras entier de canard mi-cuit and pâté de foie gras. This was then followed by one of two salads – smoked duck or duck liver – and then a choice from three main courses – civet de canard, canard à l’orange or magret de canard au poivre. ‘Looks like it’s duck for lunch, then,’ continued Thierry with a toothy grin, as he sipped on his champagne.

Even our resident foie gras expert, Peter, couldn’t decipher all the different varieties and so Thierry took over, explaining with delight how the whole process worked. ‘First you buy some male ducklings. Never female, they talk too much. Quack, quack, quack.’ He winked at Tanya. ‘You should hear my wife. You see those ducklings over there? Have you heard a quack yet?’ Tanya shook her head. ‘Told you so, all male. It takes them four months to feed them up to the right size and then it’s time for the table.’

According to Thierry, we should all be ordering the foie gras entier mi-cuit. This was the whole liver of the duck removed and chopped in two and then pasteurised. It was the freshest and best version of the delicacy. Next in quality was the foie gras entier, which was sterilised rather than pasteurised, allowing it to travel better. Then there was the pâté de foie gras — an inferior version in which the liver was combined with salt, starch and various other ingredients. ‘It’s what you get in most restaurants,’ confided Thierry.

We ordered, and began to discuss our search for a bar. Thierry gulped his champagne and declared that there was no need for anything as prosaic as a pen and paper – he would remember everything. As we went into more detail about the rosé bar, his smile grew larger, spreading right across his face. ‘You English are crazy, but it’s good, I like crazy. I am crazy as a coot too.’ He started waving his arms above his head and rolling his eyes in a bizarre imitation of a lunatic, or was it a coot?

Before we could ascertain which, the foie gras arrived. It was dusted with cracked peppercorns and served with a glass of golden Muscat, rough country bread and a pot of sweet apricot jam. All the trimmings of the restaurant in Cabris had been dispensed with – the bread toasted on one side, the beetroot shoots – but the food was still luxurious as well as hearty. Peter and Thierry heaped great chunks of the delicacy on to pieces of bread and munched contentedly away. ‘It’s a very interesting combination,’ said Peter between mouthfuls. ‘The cracked pepper contrasts really well with the sweet jelly. I’d never have thought it would work.’

Our plates were removed and quickly replaced by large salads of smoked duck. Thierry selected an oaked white wine to accompany the food and then began his sales pitch, explaining how he hoped to reduce the price of any property he found by at least 20 per cent and as a result his fee of 15 per cent was actually a bargain. Once again he rolled his eyes elaborately, gestured wildly with his arms, took gulps of wine and punctuated his sentences with big, toothy grins.

By the time we’d finished the salad I felt he was doing us a favour by accepting such a small percentage. Looking around the table, I could see that all of us were agreed that we should hire him – after all, where else were we going to find someone as crazy as us? But Thierry was briefly too carried away with his own genius to allow us to agree to his terms. As steaming plates of magret de canard au poivre arrived, he decided that he wanted to help us with our festival later that afternoon. ‘If I can’t get twenty per cent off the price of the foie gras you’re going to buy, then don’t hire me to find you a property,’ he said as he scooped a slice of dripping pink duck breast into his mouth, wiping the juice from his lips with his napkin, which he’d tucked into his shirt like a cravat.

At Thierry’s suggestion, we opted for several large tins of the foie gras entier, which he advised would cope better with the heat on the beach than the mi-cuit version. He disappeared inside to conclude the deal and I looked at my still half-full plate. Despite my best intentions after a summer in France sharing a table with Peter, I’d gained two extra chins and a balloon of a belly. It was time for a diet.

Moments later Thierry returned. ‘Told you so,’ he said, skipping back on to the terrace. ‘Thirty-five per cent off. If you give me a couple of days, I’ll see if we can do the same with a property.’

 

 

Back in Juan-les-Pins, La Vie en Rosé opened at 3 p.m. We’d decided to trade as normal until six-ish and then once people were showered, changed and ready to leave the club, we would serve glasses of Rivesaltes Ambré with a small foie gras canapé. We’d priced this luxurious combination at €10, and Peter was adamant that it would prove a success. ‘Think about it – the pink-tinged sun setting over the bay, casting a gentle channel of light towards Cannes, and a wonderful amuse-bouche.’

Before the festival started, we had another busy afternoon to enjoy. The beach club was completely full, and we strolled among the sun loungers with our bottles of wine offering the recumbent clientele a taste of different wines. Taking rosé out on to the pontoon – with the glittering sea in the background, the gin palaces crossing the bay and the immaculate blue sky – I was struck by how ridiculous our lives had become. Children aspire to be footballers, actors, even astronauts, but even the most precocious young imagination would struggle to invent a job like ours. It was an escapist adult fantasy, and the pontoon, with its rows of yellow umbrellas bobbing amid the rolling waves, encapsulated the idea in a single image. La Vie en Rosé was real, but at times it seemed no more than an indulgent dream – surely at some stage we’d rub our eyes and wake up back in London.

Fortunately at La Pinède there was rarely an opportunity for such worries. An Irish family was having a late lunch in the restaurant, and once they’d finished eating – at about five o‘clock – the thought of a couple more hours in the sun proved too much. Instead they crossed to our rosé bar and with their well-lubricated and all-too-lyrical Irish tongues whiled away the rest of the afternoon. Handing his teenage son a couple of hundred euros to spend on parascending, Pascal and his wife, Siobhàn, started to work their way through our wines, chatting to us about their millions as they did so. Within half an hour we’d received a detailed breakdown of their property portfolio – the eight-bedroom château just outside Saint-Rémy, the holiday villa in Antibes and the Caribbean bolthole. ‘The thing about property, Jamie, is that it only goes up in value. Take the château in Saint-Rémy — we paid two million euros for it, and how much do you think it is worth now?’

I poured two more glasses and waited for the answer. ‘Over four million euros, Jamie.’ After an hour we’d officially become friends of the family, which meant that we were invited to stay in the château and that Siobhàn had no reservations talking to Tanya about the provenance of her diamonds – South African blue were the only ones she’d touch. At six, when the majority of the beach club had showered and changed, our two new best customers were still standing – although barely – at the bar. Their faces were puffy and red from the sun, and they’d tried rosé from about ten different vineyards before settling on several bottles of their favourite.

Meanwhile Peter had prepared for the foie gras festival – he’d returned to the hotel, washed, swept back his hair and put on a shirt, chinos and brogues. Then he’d prepared three trays full of foie gras-based nibbles according to a strict ratio of one for him and one for the clients. The Rivesaltes Ambré was on ice and all we awaited before we started trading was Claudine’s approval. She straightened the tablecloth, arranged the amuses-bouches into a more orderly fashion and then gave a little nod. I think her only regret was that she couldn’t remove our Irish customers, or at least make them stand up straight.

To Peter’s beaming delight, a large number of the clients of La Pinède had waited to enjoy the party. The sun was falling from the sky, and just as Peter had predicted, people’s faces were bathed in a warm amber glow that precisely matched the colour of the wine.

As people lined up for a taste, there was plenty of quibbling about whether Rivesaltes Ambré was or was not a rosé, and Peter’s thesis on the subject developed all too rapidly: ‘All grape juice is white, and all rosés — apart from champagne – take their colour from the red pigment in the skin of the grape,’ boomed Peter with authority. ‘Well, it’s the same with Rivesaltes – the juice of the grapes is white and it takes its colour from the pigment left in the barrel by a previous fermentation of red wine. It must be a rosé.’

I opened my notebook to keep track of sales and began to pour the Rivesaltes. As I did so, a heavy drop of rain thudded into the paper, smudging the ink into a wet circle. Glancing skywards, I ripped out the page and started again. There were two more warning thuds and then a volley of bulbous drops shot down from the sky, leaving dents in the sand. Out at sea, the sky was still clear, but a heavy bank of clouds had crept towards the coast from the mountains. One half of the beach was still illuminated by the sun, but the other half was suddenly cast into shadow. Our customers looked nervously upwards, watching the inexorable progress of the weather front. As yet we were on the very fringes of the storm, but barring a sudden change in the wind direction, it would be upon us in minutes.

Tanya and I began handing round glasses of Rivesaltes Ambré, but there were few takers. The entire beach fell into shade and rain exploded into the sand, creating a miniature battlefield. Siobhàn and Pascal still clung to the bar, but as lightning flashed across the sky, even they retreated. Only Peter remained motionless, staring at the heavens. Water dripped from his hair and glasses on to his soaking shirt, which was now matted against his chest.

‘Come on, there’s always tomorrow,’ said Tanya, leading him to shelter.