I jumped out of bed on our last morning in La Fabrique, having slept straight through my alarm, but I was packed and had inside of fifteen minutes. As we loaded the car, Pierre was nowhere in sight; he wouldn’t rise until later and I regretted not saying farewell the night before. As we said our goodbyes to Sonya, I...[ read more ]

I first visited Corsica a number of years ago and was struck by the sheer complexity of this island’s geographical profile. Affectionately referred to as the l’Île de Beauté  by the French, and famously “a mountain in the sea” by the German geographer, Friedrich Ratzel, Corsica is one of France’s (and formerly Italy’s) most spectacular departments, and the fourth largest island in...[ read more ]

We headed back over the hills toward Provence, passing through Montpelier and Nîmes again. Our goal was to visit a small producer who does a great ten dollar organically farmed wine that Ted said, “tastes alive,” which he had just a couple days earlier mentioned was nearly impossible for such a cheap bottle. So he wanted to see the operation...[ read more ]

I woke at seven thirty and had finished demolishing a fresh pile of baguettes by eight, when we hit the road. Our destination for the day was Domaine du Pas de L’Escalette, in the Languedoc, a major wine producing region in the south of France that stretches from Provence up to the Pyrenees Mountains, with Spain along one border. Many...[ read more ]

Andrea and I started our journey with a much-needed out of wine experience in Scotland on the Great Glen Way with our friends, Reuben, Bella and Benjamin Weininger. I admit that after seven months in Italy it was nice to be in a country where both of us were fluent in the local language; although sometimes Italians speaking Italian are...[ read more ]

On the night of our visit to Les Carrières de Lumières and Van Gogh’s asylum, dinner started at ten. By then I was starving and as luck would have it, it was yet another Provençal feast. There were as many oysters as I could eat, pulled from the Mediterranean, and they were delicious yet some of the saltiest I’d ever...[ read more ]

I went down to the kitchen on the morning at La Fabrique and there was a huge pile of baguettes that Sonya had brought from the baker’s long before I woke. It was a heaven of the best bread in the world and I wanted to just hug all the loaves to my chest like a cluster of little friends....[ read more ]

It was time to head south for Provence. We had a hundred and thirty-miles to go to reach the legendary La Fabrique, in Graveson, a place I’d heard Ted talk about for many years, and while it’s normally a two hour drive, it was the Friday before Easter, so we were looking at more like three. We quickly hit Los...[ read more ]

I was jolted awake in the morning by a banging on the iron gate of my ancient Airbnb, followed by more knocks on the front door. I got out of bed in just my boxer briefs and immediately saw three police officers in black fatigues just outside the window on the tiny porch. One glanced over at me, and I...[ read more ]

As evening approached, we were on our way to see Ted’s good friend Nico Rebut, a former sommelier of great talent and repute who has since become a very successful wine distributor in Paris. Each week, he makes the five-hour drive or train ride from the Alps to Paris, his primary market and where he also consults quite a few...[ read more ]