A Visit To The Var

My
errand seemed supremely boring. I had no interest in Draguignan, a
provincial outpost known for its army base, and the road from Aix to
Draguignan is mostly expressway that I had driven hundreds of times.
Nor was I looking forward to a day in the car, for I was traveling in
late August and Provence had had more than five months of daily
temperatures rising into the high nineties, and sometimes over 100. Our
region had not had a single drop of rain since early April (!); like
everyone else here, I was a little shell-shocked by the summer heat,
which had killed more than 12,000 people (mostly elderly), and by the
unprecedented drought, which had produced horrendous forest fires, many
in the area through which I would be traveling. I was not afraid of
being trapped in a fire–cars are not allowed into dangerous areas–but
I did expect to be hot and uncomfortable, even in an air-conditioned
car.

Accompanied by my friend Patsy, I set forth on a morning
that fortunately had dawned cool and pleasant–the first such day in
nearly five months. We eventually did drive through the broad valley at
the foot of a mountain range called the Maures, which had been the site
of terrible forest fires all summer. From the expressway we saw smoke
and helicopters dumping water; we learned that evening that the smoke
had been part of a huge conflagration that had killed three firemen.

Fortunately
the expressway was at a safe distance from the fires and we arrived in
Draguingan late in the morning. By the time we had selected and loaded
our tiles, it was, as it always seems to be in Provence, time to eat,
and we paused at the local Chamber of Commerce (called the Syndicat
d’Initiative in France and usually staffed by friendly and
knowledgeable locals) for a restaurant recommendation. From the
Chamber’s suggestions, we picked the Brasserie de Commerce, a large
place in the middle of town with an outdoor terrace and a bustling
crowd of local, mostly working class, customers.

Crowded
restaurants, in my experience, are often good restaurants. I was also
encouraged to see many of the tables occupied by people whose relaxed
waistlines suggested that they took eating seriously. My father had
told me many years ago to seek out restaurants frequented by fatties; I
have rarely gone wrong following his advice.

In fact the
Brasserie de Commerce was packed with people both fat and thin, and
they were all chowing down enthusiastically. The two chubby ladies on
our right were having blanquette de veau, an elegant veal stew; the
young couple on our left were wolfing down that standard French
luncheon, steak and fries (French, not freedom); around us the staff
was rushing to and fro with platters of salads, meats, fish and fancy
desserts.

Our lunch began with a flawless salad of super-fresh
lettuce, roasted red peppers and anchovies–a salad so huge that one
order was generously enough for two people. (The salad was served with
anchovy paste on toast: I liked that refinement.) We then had a
Mediterranean fish, grilled to perfection; and as the ladies at the
next table had shrugged their shoulders indifferently after tasting the
tarte au citron, we went directly to coffee.

“Not bad,” I said
as I glanced at the check. “Simple, uncomplicated food, cheerfully
served in a pleasant place with a bottle of wine, all for $20 per
person. And today is Monday, when almost everything is closed. Think of
what we might find if we came on a regular day!”

That bottle of
wine–a local rosé–had been perfect for our luncheon, but there’s a
downside to wine at lunch in the summertime: we both needed a nap. We
soon realized that the restaurant faced on a shady little park.
Towering palms, live oaks, Mediterranean conifers and plane trees
created an oasis of cool in the middle of the city; when we spotted a
comfortable bench nestled protectively under a drooping conifer, we
sank happily into its embrace.

If you live in the South of
France, medieval hill-towns are as thick on the ground as mushrooms
after a rain. We had seen many of the hill-towns around Aix, but the
area around Draguignan was a part of Provence we had never explored.
After our nap we drove north from the city, passing through the
spectacular canyon of the Nartuby River, a narrow, twisty gorge with
vertical rock walls and a vertiginous road; we came out on a kind of
high plateau. The tourist brochure provided by the Syndicat
d’Initiative had extolled the canyon and the hill towns beyond it; as
we emerged from the canyon we spotted a dramatic medieval skyline, all
stone towers and red-tiled roofs, and took a sharp turn left.

In
a sense, Châteaudouble is “just another 12th century Provencal hill
town.” Like many other villages, it has narrow, twisty streets, stone
houses, a scattering of gnarled, tottery old men and shops that sell
“provencal” items to tourists.

But Châteaudouble actually seems
less overwhelmed by tourism than many of the towns near Aix. In
addition, it is situated spectacularly on top of a hill facing a long,
long view. Or, to quote our tourist brochure:

A drop of 150
meters give you the feeling to fly over the river, the canyon and even
the forests covering the neighboring plateaux.

Châteaudouble has
several restaurants facing that canyon. We noted two that looked
particularly appealing, Le Château (04.98.05.14.14), and Restaurant de
la Tour (04.94.70.93.08), and discovered that both were
well-recommended by our guidebooks. Next time we’re in the area, we’ll
give one of those restaurants a try. After all, even if the food is
merely good, who could resist the chance to have “the feeling to fly
over the river?”

On the way back to Draguignan we stopped at a
local fruit stand. As we were traveling in August and this is
fruit-growing country, we found succulent local peaches and plums; we
also bought homemade fruit jam from the elderly, coquettish lady who
had made it. And in a paroxysm of self-indulgence, we added a tiny jar
of truffles, collected and bottled last winter by the lady and her
red-faced, grumbly husband. (“They’re not for every day,” she said with
a wicked, wrinkled smile. “They’re just for a special meal. But isn’t
it fun to have truffles every once in a while?”)

The hills west
of Draguignan are covered with vineyards. We seemed to be drifting
towards home in no particular hurry, and as we had recently tasted and
enjoyed several wines from the Var, I asked Patsy if she was up for a
little wine tasting. Her delighted grin put us on the road to our next
event.

Modern French wine technology has made it possible to
produce good, and sometimes excellent, wines in regions that previously
produced only vin ordinaire–regions like the Var, which is now
producing dozens of small wines, both red and rosé, that are bursting
with flavor and personality. (The rosés of Provence, which are almost
wholly unknown to Americans, are always light and can be wonderfully
fruity. They are drunk chilled and are much favored as a summer wine.
They are never kept longer than one year and are usually available in
local restaurants in carafes.)

In recent years French vintners
have taken yet another leap into modern technology. They have begun to
“bottle”, if that is the term, their wines in a contraption they call
“Le Bag in Box.”

Americans have known about Bag in Box for many
years. We tend to associate it with low-grade jug wines from
California. But in France, many excellent wines are now sold in Bag in
Box. Like many of our friends, we regularly drink Bag in Box as our vin
de table; we feel very well served indeed.

The easiest place to
buy Bag in Box is at one of the wine cooperatives found in almost every
town in the wine-producing regions of France. The cooperatives provide
a retail showcase for local vintners; they also produce and sell bulk
wine which is not entitled to a specific “AOC”–-an appelation d’origine
controlée. The locals come with their gallon jugs and get a fill-up
from a device that looks like a gas pump; then they go home and
transfer the contents of the jug into regular bottles, and thus buy
their wine at about half the cost of wine in bottles. Tourists,
including people from elsewhere in France, simply buy Bag in Box.

At
the wine cooperative of the village of Lorgues about 20 km west of
Dragiguinan, the young lady in charge gave us a taste of three or four
excellent wines. We bought two 10-liter Bag in Box of the local red. A
10-liter Bag in Box from Lorgues costs $17, or $1.70 per liter. A
regular bottle of wine bought in a store in France or the US
conventionally holds 3/4 of a liter. At $17 for 10 liters, therefore,
we were paying about $1.38 per bottle for our wine.

Our wine was
thus not expensive–-indeed, by American standards it was dirt-cheap.
But this wine was delicious: very light and fruity, a wine to be drunk
slightly chilled, perhaps similar to a first-class Beaujolais, although
not so grapey. (Beaujolais is viewed in France as a “tourist wine:”
unpleasantly young, too grapey, too raw. Our new Bag in Box is much
nicer than Beaujolais–-and it costs less than designer water in the
United States.)

The luck of the drifter must have been with us
on that lovely Monday, because we left the wine cooperative and on a
whim drove into the village of Lorgues. All of the hill towns in
Provence are charming, but some are distinctly more charming than
others. On the scale of more-or-less charming, Lorgues is a flat-out
10. Set on a gentle hillside, its life centers on a single main street,
which is shaded by ancient, enormous plane trees. One end of the street
is anchored by a tiny little square, in the center of which is the
largest plane tree of all, a giant that is at least 20 feet in diameter
and, even poillarded, easily reaches the tops of the four-storey houses
on the square. Surrounding this lovely tree are houses painted in
bright Provencal colors, plus a few cafes whose tables spill relaxedly
out onto the sidewalk. On the day of our visit, the little square was
populated by a few late afternoon shoppers chatting lazily with the man
selling produce; two ladies with baby buggies, furiously smoking their
cigarettes and exchanging what seemed to be delicious gossip; an old
man with a cane and cotton slippers sitting on a low wall; three drowzy
cats and a teenager doing wheelies with his bike.

Late on a
summer afternoon, when the streets are splattered with dappled sunlight
and the sky is brilliant blue; when the day’s business is slowly
drawing to a close and the heat has receded; when the ambiance
throughout the town is relaxed and intimate–-Lorgues is heaven.

Lorgues
is one of the loveliest villages in Provence. It is another of those
little jewels in the Var, of which there are many, that have been
almost completely overlooked by the world of commercial tourism. We
were delighted to find it; we enthusiastically look forward to
returning soon for the morning market, which in Lorgues is held every
Tuesday. (And after the market we can try out one of the restaurants in
Châteaudouble!)

If you live in Boston or New York or Washington
and have to run an errand in a distant place, you have a pretty good
chance of spending an annoying, or simply a tedious, day.

But
if you live in Provence and have to run an errand, you may end up with
an excellent lunch, a nap in a beautiful park, a conversation with an
elderly couple who collect and bottle truffles, a drive through a
dramatic canyon, a walk through a handful of spectacular medieval
villages, a wine tasting and the discovery of an enchanting little
village, all within an hour of home.

I love living in Provence.
And I loved visiting the Dracenie, the area around Draguignan. The
local tourist board expressed my feelings perfectly when they wrote:

The
Dracenie welcomes you and you feel immediately better. The garrigue and
scrubland perfumes inside hills, the Canyon coolness, the olive oil
savour, the vegetables flavor, the wine’s spirit, everything here calls
up the happiness.

Vive La France.