Provence Lotions and Potions on Sale

Compagnie de Provence is having a little sale of their body and bath products on the fashion discount site Swirl, now through Friday April 22. $40 items are now $27; $15 items are $9. Have a look but hurry...sale ends tomorrow. You have to join the site to shop (click here) but it's quick and free. 

Prepare for Takeoff and Landing Please

Flying from San Francisco to Paris recently on a Boeing 747-400, Nate Bolt  took 2,459 photos--that's one photo about every two miles for 11 hours--and turned them into this remarkable two-minute video. (If you click the link here rather than the arrow on the video above, you can watch the video full screen and also read some info from Nate about how he did it.)  To see Nate interviewed on the Today Show, click here. Bravo to Air France for saying yes to this endeavor and to Nate for making it happen!

A Few Announcements...

First, I wanted to call your attention to my new(ish) blog pages "Advertise on Provence Post," "Where to Stay" and "France Travel Experts." Click the tabs just above this post to open them. More pages will be coming soon but in the meantime, you might find helpful information there. Meanwhile, here are a few other fun things I wanted to share...

Provence Chef named Top Chef

Stéphanie Le Quellec, head chef at the Four Seasons Resort Provence at Terre Blanche (in the Var), has won First Place in the second season of the French TV cooking competition Top Chef. Her prize? 100,000€. Stéphanie,  28, received an overwhelming 76% of the vote in the finals at the Trianon Palace in Paris on April 5th, with a seasonal three-course meal that wowed both judges and guests. Her dishes? A starter of asparagus and morels; an Asian-style bass, lightly spiced with raw and cooked fennel; and an olive oil ice cream with crushed raspberries. “This experience was very intense to say the least, and it forced me to go beyond my limits in particular in terms of creativity," she says. "I tried to give always my best and worked really hard and today, I am so happy to have won.” Stéphanie is now back in her kitchen at the gorgeous Four Seasons, where she launches a new menu today, to coincide with the re-opening of the restaurant Faventia after its winter break. Stephanie has been at the hotel since 2006 and was promoted to head chef in 2010; this is the first time the menu features only her dishes. At this time, the only Top Chef dish available is a gazpacho of smoked mozzarella (from the run-up to the finals) but dishes from the winning menu may follow.


New Book Club Forming

Tricia Harris, an Englishwoman living in Paradou since 2007, is organizing an English language book club. She tells me "It's principally for the social aspects of it. I don’t see it as being too serious, more an excuse to have a glass of wine and a chat with other English-speakers. It would be a nice way for us all to meet some new people." Tricia sees the club meeting once a month, drawing people from within a 10 or 15 minute radius of St Rémy and rotating the host each session. Interested? Email her: tricia.inprovence@gmail.com

Vernissage This Weekend

The St. Remy-based ceramic sculptor Catriona Manoury and the painter Nissim (who lives near Les Baux) will be showing their work at the L'Atelier Gaston de Luppe (5 rue de la Bastille, Arles) from April 16 to May 15. The vernissage is Sat April 16 at 6 p.m. and all are welcome. For info: 04-88-65-50-80, caitrionaplatts-manoury.com or click here. Pictured: Catriona's Spiky White.

Pilates in Provence

Carlos Stelmach and Olivier Coste Renoult have a few spots left in their weeklong Pilates-themed getaway to be held in St. Rémy June 25 to July 2. You'll stay in an eight-bedroom home with a large pool, nestled among olive groves and pine trees in the hills just outside town. Days begin with viennoiseries, juice, coffee, and tea, followed by a Pilates session. Then the group heads off in a mini-bus for the day, visiting sites such as L'Isle Sur la Sorgue for the Sunday market, Fontaine de Vaucluse, Les Baux, Eygalières, the ruins of a Roman town, the abbey where Vincent Van Gogh stayed and kayaking at the Pont du Gard. You return home for another Pilates session, followed by an apéritif and Provençal dinner at home (most evenings). Pilates sessions are in English. For more info, click here or go to coeurdeprovence.eu. You can also see videos of some of the destinations on Facebook. Mention Provence Post and get a 5% discount.

Artist Seeks Work Space

Cabinet-maker Lenny Heitov is looking for studio/work space in St. Remy, minimum space of 50 square meters, to rent or buy. He's willing to renovate/upgrade at his expense and prefers to be within centre ville. Contact him: 04 90 90 50 69 or 06 43 31 99 32 or lenzoil@comcast.net

New Culinary Tours in Paris and Provence

Diane Shaskin and Mark Craft introduced a generation of Canadians to organic food.  Now the founders of Planet Organic Markets (think Whole Foods, but in Canada) are carrying on their love of food and cooking with their culinary tours of Paris and Provence, brand new this season. Diane gave me a taste: “We'll bake baguettes with a Parisian boulanger, take a private cooking class at the Ritz, make bouillabaisse with a chef in Avignon and enjoy a wine-tasting picnic in the Côtes-du-Rhône." The couple is offering four week-long Paris trips (beginning in late June) and two week-long Provence trips (both in September). For more info: paristoprovence.ca 

Last Minute Rental Discount  Natalie Milani is offering some great prices on rental of her renovated 19th-century "maison de village" in Maillane, near St. Remy. Pick any week in May, 2011 and she'll knock 25% off the regular price: you pay €1,155 per week. The three-story house has four bedrooms (to sleep 8), a cozy living room, family room with plasma TV, gourmet kitchen, dining room, two washer/dryers, a pool with sunbeds, a BBQ and outdoor eating area. For pix and info, click here or email: natalie@lagouttedor-provence.com  B&B for the Festival d'Avignon Michelle Victor has a large bedroom with private bath to rent in her gracious home in Villeneuve-les-Avignon, just across the Rhone from Avignon, for July 1st to 14th, 2011, which coincides with the Festival d'Avignon, which runs from July 6 to 26. The price is 1,000€ total for two people, including breakfast daily. Michelle says that since the master bedroom and bath are upstairs, guests will have privacy on the main floor. Villeneuve is a small, historic village where the Pope's cardinals once lived. The house is in a quiet neighborhood, with a large garden and patio/terrace. It's about ten minutes by car to Avignon and 15 minutes to the TGV (high-speed train) station. Buses and small boats run back and forth to Avignon, Michelle says. For photos and info: cabinetvictor@orange.fr

Need a Job?

I just came across one of those "help wanted" ads you can't help but be intrigued by...

We are currently seeking an experienced and exceptional estate manager to manage a magnificent private estate in southern France for one of the world's wealthiest families...

The estate is set amongst extensive grounds and consists of six properties, two swimming pools and a mini-golf complex. The successful candidate will be responsible for all aspects of running the estate, including the management of the various catering, cleaning and gardening staff...This really is a truly amazing opportunity for an individual or a couple to go and live and work on one of the most exclusive estates in the world for one of the most prolific and by all accounts nicest dynasties in the world....

Read the rest of the ad and get info on how to apply here.

Provence Book Giveaway

This novel, just published, looks like one I'm going to have to read. Not that I'm brokenhearted or anything but how can anyone resist a story set in the place they live and love? Plus, I'm told the plot contains many things dear to my heart, including shocking confessions, nosy neighbors, enigmatic Frenchmen, old houses in small French villages, lavender, vineyards, warm winds and pistou! Have any of you read it yet?  My lovely friends at Bantam Books/Random House have offered to send a gift copy to one lucky Provence Post reader. Simply leave a short comment by clicking "comments" below, tell us what Provence means to you and we'll pick a winner within a week or so. The rest of you brokenhearted folks will have to order the book on Amazon here.  

Get in Touch with Your Inner Gypsy

Deep in the heart of the Luberon, one of Provence's loveliest regions, you'll find a hotel that rivals the finest auberges and inns worldwide. Created in and around an 18th-century farmhouse, La Bastide de Marie is snuggled within its own 18-acre vineyard, with 14 guest rooms (all with views of the vines), one freestanding villa, two swimming pools, an elegant indoor/outdoor restaurant and stunning scenery. Once you announce yourself and amble through the heavy swinging gates, you're cocooned in total luxury. French Country antiques abound, enormous vases overflow with fresh-cut flowers, Picassos hang on the walls.  Owners Jocelyn and Jean-Louis Sibuet (who also operate hotels in Paris, Megeve, Lyon and Ramatuelle/St. Tropez) and their lovely staff cater to your every whim. Keep your windows open and you’ll be lulled to sleep by chirping cigalles, the sweet background music that signals summer in Provence. 

And now there's another reason to visit La Bastide de Marie: a brand-new one-bedroom green-and-white Gypsy-style caravan (or roulotte), fitted out in complete luxury and available by the night. The caravan is being officially unveiled this month. 

The 17-square-meter (183-square-foot) roulotte was designed, Jocelyn says, as a rural boudoir. "From the outside you'd never guess what it holds," she told me.  "This room for wanderers has been especially laid out to recreate the fairytale atmosphere of gypsy nights. It’s a little wooden dwelling that inspires thoughts of travel, a bit of Bohemian chic in the heart of the vineyard!”

The caravan sleeps two. The rate of 450€ per night (490€ in high season) includes breakfast, afternoon tea and lunch or dinner with wine from the adjacent Domaine de Marie vineyard.

For info on La Bastide de Marie and the caravan, click here. 

For info on other Sibuet Hotels, click here.

Photos (click to enlarge): The Gypsy-style caravan at La Bastide de Marie welcomes its first guests this month. Caravan interior. Setting up for lunch. One of 14 guestrooms in the main building. Bastide de Marie and its surrounding vineyards. Photos: La Bastide de Marie / Rights reserved.

Gifts for Your Favorite Francophile

How cute is this pillow? Before you look at the price, keep in mind it's entirely hand embroidered. The light cotton cover buttons off for cleaning and it's accented with black velvet piping.  Other countries--America, Ireland, Italy--and all sorts of popular U.S. vacation destinations are available in the series too. Check them out on the Whispering Pines website here. What's that you say? $149 for a pillow is trop cher? Then try Uncommon Goods, where silk-screened cotton dishtowels, based on the same map-of-France theme, are just $20 each. And GlassesandPillows.com has 15-ounce dishwasher-safe drinking glasses with a similar pattern for $13 each. 

1,000 Restaurants in Michelin Spring Promo

Yesterday Michelin launched its springtime promotion called Printemps du Guide Michelin. Until June 21, approximately 1,000 restaurants in France will be offering specially priced menus, events such as gourmet workshops and cooking classes and discounts on both fixed-price menus and à la carte dishes. The specials are available to anyone who presents the Pass Printemps.  

Many restaurants have also added surprises for customers such as signed menus, a free glass of Champagne or the chance to dine in the kitchen.

The list of participating restaurants and their offers are posted here. Meanwhile, there are two ways to get the Pass.

The Pass Privilège is inserted into copies of the 2011 Michelin Red Guide to France, commonly known as the Guide Rouge.  This pass is also available via the “Restaurants du Guide Michelin France 2011” iPhone app and the Nokia OviCartes app. The Pass Privilège is good until June 21.

Or, you can get a Pass Découverte, valid until April 21, by downloading it free here. 

The Pass Découverte is also inserted in the Paris, Lille, Marseille/Aix and Lyon editions of A Nous magazine and is available in more than 400 tourist offices throughout France

Both Passes--Découverte and Privilège--are valid for two people and can be used and reused in all participating restaurants. To get the special, simply show the pass upon arrival at the restaurant.

Reservations are required for gourmet workshops and recommended for all other Printemps specials.

Another new addition to the program this year is a smart phone application that enables users to locate nearby restaurants. Meanwhile if you use the pass and have a great experience, please let us know! For more info: printempsduguidemichelin.fr.

An Expert's Tour of Top Rhône Wineries

Philip and Jude Reddaway run a wine-tour company called La Madèlene Rhone Wine Holidays, based in a renovated 12^th-century priory just outside Malaucène, between Mont Ventoux and the Dentelles de Montmirail in the Haut-Vaucluse. (Lonely Planet recently picked La Madelène as one of the four top places to stay around Avignon.) The Reddaway’s most-popular offering is a three-day Southern Rhône tour, with lodging, meals, wine pairings, wine education and visits to some of the region’s top domaines. They also offer one-day excursions, custom tours, chambre d’hôte overnight stays and specialty tours such as “Truffles and Wine” (Nov 30 to Dec 3, 2011). Because Philip knows where all the best wines and winemakers in the region are hiding, I asked him to share a few of his favorites with us. With one exception, all of these domaines welcome drop-in visitors during traditional tasting-room hours. Still, Philip cautions, it’s best to call ahead. To contact Philip directly, use: rhonewineholidays@googlemail.com.

I like to start by taking guests up into the Dentelles range to visit Domaine Mourchon. At around 400 meters, this Scottish-owned estate is regarded as probably the best producer in the Côtes du Rhone Villages Seguret AOC after only 12 years of production. Their Napa-style winery, perched on the side of the hill, is complemented by their respect for traditional wine making--wood is used sparingly. These are robust, sweetly ripe, herbal, mainly Grenache- based wines that shout “terroir.” The delightful owners, Walter and Ronnie McKinley, along with their daughter Kate and her partner Hugo, are extremely generous with their time and expertise.

For those with a sweet tooth, a visit to the caveau of Domaine des Bernardins in the village of Beaumes de Venise is essential. The Hall/Castaud family has been making wine here for five generations and theirs was the first to be awarded AOC status in 1943. While they make very quaffable reds, it’s the magnificent sweet Muscats that receive ecstatic feedback from our guests and get them reaching for their wallets. The classic Muscat is a deeper red/orange hue than a standard Beaumes de Venise, arising from a blend of 20% black Muscat grapes along with the usual white “Muscat a petit grain.” The result is an indulgent wine redolent of candy peel and orange flower water, unctuously sweet but with just enough acidity to keep it fresh. On a typical visit you will usually find son of the household Romain Hall, who will quietly but authoritatively talk you through the science (“mutage’) of how a Vin doux Naturel is made.

My next choice would be Domaine Goubert in the village of Gigondas. Here the Cartier family developed something of a maverick reputation from the 1970s onward; when everyone else was maturing wine in those vast old barrels called foudres, Jean-Pierre Cartier was using small Burgundian oak barriques. I’m not always a huge fan of new oak married with Rhône varietals but Jean-Pierre’s "Cuvée Florence”  is a masterpiece of winemaking. We often buy magnums for our alfresco dinners at La Madèlene, recently the 2003, and use the bottle itself as a striking centerpiece. If we’re lucky, the eponymous Florence (daughter and only child of the house), hosts our visit. The village of Gigondas is full of other great addresses, notably Château St. Cosme and Domaine la Bouissière.

Choosing a favourite Châteauneuf winery is the hardest as we visit so many and all are so good. But visits to Domaine de la Solitude are always special. The Lançon family ancestors were part of the Avignon Pope’s court, a lineage reflected in the name of their top cuvée, Barberini.  Whites and reds here can hit the highest notes: a 1978 classic cuvée I tasted last year was probably my finest tasting moment in the appellation. But it’s not just the wines that make for a sensational visit: in Châteauneuf, most vignerons grow grapes on small parcels of land throughout the AOC but the Lançon's family vines actually all surround the house. And there are parcels that include pre-phylloxera ancient vines. The private tasting room is a delight, book lined with oil paintings of the family and a framed legion d’honneur medal earned by a Lançon at the Battle of Waterloo. Heir apparent winemaker Florent Lançon delights in hosting grand tastings in this room, his good English peppered with some course Aussie expressions picked up whilst doing a winemaking “stage” there a few years back. In Châteauneuf, I also love to take guests to La Nerthe, Pegau, Nalys, Vatican, Roger Sabon and so many more!

Visiting my friend Philippe Gimel of Saint Jean du Barroux is not an easy exercise as he’s so hard to track down: he works out of an office in Caromb, his vineyard near Le Barroux and a cave in the corner of a cherry processing shed in Malaucène. Philippe is a genuine garagist (someone who makes very high quality wines in small batches), rendering powerful exotic wines of unusual quality from the humble Ventoux appellation. Thanks to Philippe’s energy, passion and über-smart marketing (he’s the only winemaker I know with his Facebook and Twitter details prominently shown on his label), these are fast becoming cult wines in such disparate places as California, Denmark and Hong Kong. I have not taken a guest to his humble shed who has not stumbled out two hours later after a marathon tasting, utterly charmed by both man and wine. If you can find him, Philippe is definitely one to watch! To reach Philippe, call 04-90-70-84-74.


Top photo: When you sign on for a tour, you'll stay at La Madelène, just outside the village of Malaucène. Bottom photo: a typical Provencale vineyard photographed by Patrick Morand. 

Poppy Time!

You've seen them in photos and paintings: those shimmering fields full of glorious red poppies in Provence. (They're so gorgeous they actually stop traffic; people see them, pull over and spring from their cars, cameras and sketchbooks in hand.) Well here's your chance to experience them firsthand, with a well-known, fully bilingual artist/instructor as your guide. Oregon-based watercolor painter Jacqueline Newbold has two spaces left  in her spring "Paint the South of France" workshop, May 9th to 19th, and it's timed perfectly to coincide with the blooming of the coquelicot. Not so into poppies? No worries--the itinerary features many of the most-popular sites in the region such as the 11th-century clinic where Van Gogh painted 143 canvasses, the ancient hilltop village of Les Baux, the Luberon region, Isle sur le Sorgue, vineyards, markets and more. All skill and experience levels are welcome. The price ($2,650) includes 10 nights lodging at the Hotel du Soleil in St. Remy, breakfasts and lunches, watercolor demos, mixed media and watercolor journaling techniques, critiques and local transportation.  Jacqueline's website is here and all the trip info is here. To learn more and see more of her work, here's her blog, here's her Esty shop and here's her email. 

Painting: Newbold's "Coquelicots de Provence" (watercolor, 20” x 24”)