Castles and Carnaval

Every year for Valentine's Day Kerry and I have celebrated with a trip to one of my favorite towns in Texas, Fredricksburg, for a weekend of winery hopping, boutique shopping, and relaxing in the cool February Texas sun.  In the Texas hill country, February is the time of year where you can wear a sweater, jeans, and sunglasses and sit outside on a sunny porch, and it's perfect.  So this year as Valentine's Day approached, I thought I would continue our tradition of wine tasting in the countryside, only this time, in France!

Montpellier is completely surrounded by vineyards; I mean it, they are EVERYWHERE.  No matter which direction you go when you leave the city, you will see vineyards planted for miles and miles.  This means I had a lot of research ahead of me and a tough decision to make - where to go?!  So to help narrow down the selections and maximize the site-seeing for our short weekend away, I opted to combine our wine weekend with another major French tourist spot, the city of Carcassonne.  Carcassonne, unknown to me before our arrival here in France, is an entire city built inside a castle dating back to the 13th century.  How cool is that?!?  But I'm getting ahead of myself... Back to the wine tasting.  Like I said, there are vineyards, large and small, all over the place around here.  So finding a few places to stop at and try some yummy French wine should be easy right?  No!  You see, unlike the wineries and vineyards in Texas, and Napa too so I've heard (although never been) the wine business in this particular region of France is much less integrated with the tourist industry.  In short, this means that many vineyards are not interested in visitors, only seriously commercial buyers, and the ones that do "welcome" visitors, only do so at very particular hours of the day, and most likely have no interest in speaking English or putting up with our very pathetic French.  And since I had narrowed down our region to the Carcassonne area, this left us with very few wine tasting options.  Fortunately, we also had a castle to visit so this was not such a big problem.

We left Montpellier mid-morning on Friday and made the reasonable hour and a half drive to Carcassonne.  Our first stop was lunch and wine tasting at Chateau Pennautier, an old chateau steeped in history from the 1500's.  We enjoyed a very traditional French lunch (cassoulet and duck confit) by the fireplace, and then ended up asking to taste some wine since they were clearly not busy and the tasting room didn't "officially" open for another two hours.  At most wineries here, it seems the tastings are free, but it is expected you will buy a bottle or two, unlike in Texas where you pay a small fee to taste 5 or so wines and then feel obligation free if you don't like any of them.  I was also hoping to tour the inside of the chateau, but they generally only offer tours in July and August, which is when all of France shuts down except for the tourist business, because all of France is on vacation!  So we settled on a walk around the chateau's gardens.

Friday evening we had booked dinner and a night at O'Vineyards, a vineyard and bed & breakfast unique to the region for one simple reason - it's run by an American!  This alone was pretty much all the convincing I needed; hours of easy, normal, American English conversation, with wine included, sign me up!  The B&B stay also included a tour of the wine-making facilities and a tasting of about 10 different wines, many of which were offered in endless quantities throughout the remainder of the evening.  While we have toured many vineyards, wine cellars, and tank rooms before, this was the first time I've had the chance to see it from the grape's perspective.  Yep, that's me, inside a giant wine tank.

We were joined for dinner by another French couple, friends of the owners at O'Vineyards.  While they spoke some English, it was quite limited, and thus to our surprise, dinner was almost entirely in French!  Don't be fooled though, we do NOT speak French.  Even after 5 months, I'm still too scared to pick up the phone and make a dinner reservation, we'll just get take out pizza thank you very much.  Five courses and a lot of horrible but very politely tolerated French conversation attempts later, we were stuffed to the brim with food and wine, so to bed it was.    

This was the view from our room when we woke up.  While I'm not sure I could ever give up my city lifestyle, I really could get used to this...

However, we couldn't sit around all day admiring the view, we had a castle waiting!  Carcassonne is actually two cities in one: the lower city, which accounts for about 99% of the area and population - all the streets, grocery markets, and other such normal life things, and the upper cite - the castle itself.  The castle was built over a span of about 200 years, and at the time was the most advanced military defense structure in all of Europe.  And after our hour long audio guide tour, I'll admit, with hundreds of soldiers on guard, views as far as the eye can see in every direction, two moats, and miles of stone walls, I'd feel pretty safe there.  Inside the castle walls, it is easy to imagine you have stepped back in time a few hundred years.  Shops and restaurants on every corner play up the medieval theme superbly; it reminded me of a theme park, except without roller coasters.  One thing we didn't have a chance to do on this trip was get away from the castle and see it at night, when the lights come on and the view of the castle goes from remarkable to truly magical.  In fact, this particular castle is rumored to have been Walt Disney's inspiration when creating Sleeping Beauty's castle.  See a resemblance?

Photo from Wikipedia - because I'm not that good of a photographer

Photo from disney website - because we haven't been to Disney Land yet

While I had hardly had my fill of castle time, we needed to get moving to make our 3:00 tasting appointment in Limoux.  Limoux is a small town about 30 minutes south of Carcassonne, regionally famous for their sparkling wine, Blanquette.  The story here is that in the early 1500's, a group of winemakers in Limoux discovered the method for creating sparkling wine, by accident of course, like all great inventions.  A few decades later, the boisterous Dom Peringon passed through, saw what they were doing, then took the teachings up to the Champagne region where he very successfully produced and marketed it, and happily took credit for the invention.  And while the historical facts are still a bit fuzzy, it does indeed seem that most experts will admit to a presence of sparkling wine in Limoux first, although the fame still goes to Dom.  We stopped at the most notable (and thus, English speaking) of the tasting rooms in Limoux, Sieur d'Arques, for a few samples.  To me, they all just tasted like sparkling wine.  The big advantage here is that the stuff from Limoux is about 1/3 of the price of the stuff from Champagne, so you can guess which one I'll be purchasing in the future.

We also happened to be visiting Limoux during Carnaval season.  They boast the world's longest running carnaval, 10 weeks straight, from January to March.  Every Saturday and Sunday, three times a day, a bande (their term for a selective club of people) parades around the main town square for about two hours.  There is live music, dancing, food vendors, and LOTS of costumes.  Their carnaval might be small, but they make up for it in spirit and tradition.  Each aspect of the parades is very strictly regulated by traditional rules: costumes must measure up to certain criteria, all dancing is perfectly choreographed and performed only with legs and arms, no body movements allowed, and the entire festivity occurs in the ancient language of Occitan.  Spectators of all ages are encouraged to participate, but costumes are required.  For anyone participating in a parade (except for the musicians) a full face mask must be worn to assure anonymity.  There is an absurd amount of confetti thrown; I kept finding it scattered throughout our apartment for weeks after we returned.

Unlike many larger carnaval celebrations throughout the world, the Limoux Carnaval is not about a big party.  It's centuries worth of tradition carried on and honored by each new generation in this small town.  They do this for themselves, not for the show.  That said, it is great family fun and each parade always has a good turnout.  The daytime parades are festive and fun, but nighttime is when things really get interesting.  The bandes are led through the square by specially crafted torches, and the atmosphere bounces between lighthearted and mysterious.  In a town of only 10,000 people, where everyone really does know everyone else, there is a peculiar feeling in pure anonymity, especially when it's accompanied by torchlight.  In a group of 12 identically dressed people, there is no accountability for what an individual might say or do.  But in the end, it's all in good fun - isn't it?

Happy Carnaval!