Christmas spirit

More sparkles in large.

In 1999, Jean-Noël Bousquet of Château Grand Moulin, a respected wine maker in Luc-sur-Orbieu, had just renovated his winery at massive expense. On the night of 12-13 November the river Orbieu blasted through the massive doors of the barn and swept everything away, including huge new stainless steel vats like the ones in this photo, which were no doubt instrumental in the destruction of the bridge in Luc as they tumbled down the river and crashed into it.

A lot of water has flowed under the (new) bridge since then (sorry!!). He had to start again from zero. I remember going to visit him months after the flood, to talk about a website; we sat in his empty office on plastic picnic chairs that still showed a tidemark of mud. He decided not to risk staying where he was and instead moved the winery to a massive barn on the outskirts of Lézignan. Since then the business has gone from strength to strength. For a private winery, as opposed to a coop, this place is huge. And state-of-the-art, as you can see. For the last few years he's held a Christmas fair of artisanal designer goods there, which I thought might be a good photo opportunity, and it was. No, I didn't buy anything! Fans of vintage cars can click right from here for some treats.

My own preparations for Christmas have been sadly lacking. I basically haven't done anything. But this weekend I finally got around to making some mincemeat with the massive amount of dried fruit we seem to have accumulated and a packet of suet that's been in the cupboard since last Christmas. I just use what we have -- this time figs, apricots, cranberries, sultanas, prunes, candied orange and lemon rind, and a few flaked almonds. Plus a glug of Armagnac and some Calvados. It smells good anyway.

More Christmas cheer: in the second round of the regional election, the left list got 110 votes out of 161, and the FN vote actually went down by 4, to 43. But our village of irréductibles  is completely unrepresentative, so I can't tell you what the overall result will be like. We do have hopes that our region will remain on the left though.

Update: and exit polls/preliminary results confirm it! Yippee :) It's totally possible that the FN won't win any regions.