Muscadet de Sevre et Maine

17 august

After so many years of refusing to do the tourist thing in Bretagne, few weeks ago we couldn’t hold for longer. Somewhere between Cancale and St Malo a field, a camper as a counter and few spreaded containers. One of us spotted the banner “Degustation” and a bigger one “Muscadet”. We visited in a rainy midday. At the entrance of the field, a fence and a cardboard with “back in ten minutes”. Plastic chairs leaning on the camper, a folded table with a folded umbrella, still flapping at the wind. We went back the next day.  

Some sun and no wind. The chairs occupied by men of undefined age, the table by glasses of clear wine and dry sausage. Not a look at our car parking by their side, but their own morose and ongoing conversation. I have been made aware of my being foreigner by the looks of the locals at my arrival, many times in many places. Mostly never hostile, frequently looks of slight curiosity, or amusement at yet another visitor that will leave some money behind, or not. This time there was nothing at all, not even a stare in our direction. 

We tend to see the places we visit as picturesque, as paintings that are displayed for our amusement, for our holiday’s curiosity. Some of us would even believe to have learned of the ample world by visiting places in their holidays, by seeing the sights and the landscape. But I was the landscape, the decoration on the daily wall, of these men, friends of a lifetime having a quiet drink in their shop, not giving more attention to the source of their income than the attention that I would give to a frying pan in my kitchen. What else should I be for them, but a background, a moving picture to replace the one just gone? I portraited them being there, in between the hard work of their own farms, or perhaps after the hard work of a lifetime, now retired and enjoying the poverty and the peace of a pension in a countryside known for a whole life, and they did not let me know how their portrait of me was. 

A movement in the camper, and a youngster with a mane of loose hair and a pointed beard welcomed us and cleaned and filled glasses straight away. Savvy in the movements of today’s wine fashions, we were offered natural ones, experiments made by him, his uncle and even some friends living the dream in the south of Spain, without forgetting to let us sip and appreciate the nuances of the more traditional Muscadet de Sevre et Maine his family made. We laugh at his impersonation of the comittee that certified their wine, those arrogant elders of the big city. Our conversation went on and on, as we asked on the vagaries of soils and winds in the making of a proper muscadet, the proper amounts of sand and clay, the layer of silt washed in sea winds. He could also told us how his uncle, the owner of the land up the Loire Valley where this wine was made, ended up selling it in a small field in Bretagne. “He likes the place” was said to us. “After all, he used to come here every summer looking for the workers that would harvest his grapes, and he got to like the place”. The men drinking together went away, after asking for their sausages to be covered and preserved for their drink of tomorrow. 

Somewhere else I bought a hand made oyster knife. A short and blunt blade with a thick wooden handle, fits in my hand with the easiness of a well used farmer’s tool. There is no elegance in it, but the rough strength that will preserve it long after I am gone.