Provence in the Sun

Our last day in Provence was 95 degrees—hot and sun soaked. We spent the entire morning lounging and splashing by the pool, reading books, and enjoying that perfect summer feeling of watermelon and sunshine poolside. The chickens pecked around too. For lunch we had sandwiches and what was left of the fruit stand peaches, nectarines and melon we’d been eating as fast as we bought them (the stands were everywhere, we pulled over at every reasonable opportunity, and the kids gobbled their way through mountains of stone fruit all week).

After lunch we drove 15 minutes through scrubby orchards and sunflower fields to Domaine de La Vallongue (Route de Mouriès RD 24, 13810 Eygalières, France) near St. Remy de Provence. I don’t need to visit every vineyard in the region, but I do like to try to visit one. This one was recommended by our host and it was exactly what you hope for when you picture wineries in the South of France. We tasted whites, rosés, reds, and dessert wines, and bought a couple to add to the dozen or so $2 regional wines we picked up at the grocery store (always the best place for souvenirs!).

The winery also offered an olive oil tasting of oils all made from olives grown on the property. The young olive oils catch in your throat and are ideal to finish off fish just before serving. Heavier oils blend nicely with their balsamic vinegar for a salad dressing. We got some of those too, plus olives, onion crackers and more lavender honey. “This was expensive,” said Chris on his way back to the car, weighted down with a box of edible stuff I was really excited about. It certainly wasn’t the grocery store.

Here’s sometime stupid we did. You know how it was 95 degrees that day? Well the day before, we’d failed to unload all the cheap wine out of the car. A $4 rosé that I bought because it had lavender fields on the label overheated and launched out its cork, unloading rosé all over our jackets and the mat in the back of the car. We should have seen that coming, we agreed, rolling our eyes at ourselves. We did not make this mistake with the fancy wines.

Instead we went straight back to the farm where we stayed and the kids immediately hopped back in the pool. We ended our week in Provence with a poolside charcuterie board of local meats, cheeses, olives, fruit and baguettes, toasting the sunset with a chilled rosé and swimming into the evening, never thinking about tomorrow.