A fungus among us

I saw these little mushrooms on a path in Champagne. If I've identified them correctly, they are called coprins chevelus (coprinus comatus). This according to my Larousse pocket mushroom guide. They are supposedly edible when young, although I will never know.

Champignons en Champagne.

There are all manner of mushrooms sprouting in our back yard right now. We've had some rain, but even before that the mushrooms have been coming up. They're all different varieties (although I haven't attempted to identify them) depending on where they're growing. Some grow in shady spots, others in less shady spots. Some grow under conifers, others near fruit trees. Some, according to friends and neighbors who know, are even edible. Although, once again, I will never eat them.

I'm just not going to take any chances. I'll buy my mushrooms commercially.

Like the circles that you find

These may not be the windmills of your mind, but they are becoming a common sight all around France. Between the Loire Valley and Paris there is a wind farm that you can see from the autoroute or the train in the vast flatness of the Beauce region. These éoliennes are in Champagne just east of the Côte des blancs vineyards.

You can get an idea of the scale if you look at the tractor in the center left of the photo.

Today our plumber is coming to fix a mess I made last Sunday. I've been noticing a gradual drop in water pressure in the shower over the last few months. When this happens in the kitchen and bathroom sinks, I remove the aerators from the faucets and clean them in hot vinegar to dissolve the calcium deposits blocking the water flow (we have moderately hard water). I thought maybe the filters on the shower faucet needed to be cleaned, so I removed the faucet control.

I turned the water supply off and removed the faucet connections with a wrench. The hot water connector came off fine, but when I turned the cold water connector, I noticed that the pipe itself was turning. Eventually the nut came off and I was able to clean the filters (they weren't very clogged at all -- I'll get to that later) and re-install the faucet unit. When I turned the water back on, there was only hot water. No cold.

Without going into all the detective work I did, I finally wondered if when the pipe was turning, it was twisting the flexible water hose behind the shower wall. I got a ladder and climbed up to the top of the shower stall and looked back behind it with a flashlight, pressing my face up against the wall so I could peer down into the narrow space between the wall and the shower with one eye. Sure enough, the hose was kinked. No cold water could get through.

I tried, with Ken's help, to twist it back with no success. The only solution is to unbolt the shower stall from the wall and move it away from the wall. Since I had no idea how to deal with the drain connection, we decided to call the plumber who originally installed the shower. He came by on Monday afternoon and we told him what happened. He said it's not a big deal (we shall see) and he would come on Thursday morning (today) to disconnect the drain, move the shower stall, and replace the kinked water hose.

We also talked about the pressure issue and the fact that about once a month when I clean the calcium deposits from the aerators, there is a bunch of what look like sand grains in the faucet filters. He asked me if, when I turn on the water, there is good pressure for a second or two then it dwindles. Bingo! That's exactly what happens. He thinks that the sand grains and the pressure issue means that the water heater needs to be cleaned out, so he's doing that, too. He's familiar with the make of our heater and says it's not a big deal to do.

We didn't get the heater new, it was given to us by friends who remodeled a nearby house. The unit was relatively new, but sat unused for some time before our friends bought the house. The plumber who installed it for us a bit less than two years ago added a pressure regulator right after our water meter, before the heating tank. For some reason, that is supposed to prevent harm to the heater. Our regular plumber said the regulator is an Italian model and it's not adjustable. He wants to put a French model on so that we can adjust the pressure to where we want it. I think he's going to do that today, too, but I'm not sure.

I'll let you know how it all goes. In the meantime, we've been using the small shower stall in the utility room. That's what we call the dog's shower since it's where she gets rinsed off after her daily walks.

Did you say boozy?

No. I said Bouzy. It's pronounced basically the same,* by the way. But Bouzy is the name of the town where our rental house was located. You can see it below, from up on the slopes of the vineyards. The church steeple you see is the one with all the bells.

The town of Bouzy in Champagne, on the southeastern flank of the Montagne de Reims.

The town felt kind of sleepy, but it wasn't really. Each morning we'd hear trucks and tractors as they made their way from garages to the vineyards, or transporting bottles (probably empty) to winemakers, or even transporting wine to market. The bakery bustled and there was some light traffic in town during the morning and evening commute periods.

The town's only grocery was closed for remodeling, so we had to go to the next town over to buy groceries. That town was a little bigger and it felt like it had a little more going on.


* Except that the stress is on the second syllable: [boo-ZEE].

The house we rented

The gîte we rented in Champagne was in the middle of the town of Bouzy, but the property was large enough to have a good courtyard and green space. It had a gate that closed us off from the street and Callie could be out in the yard with no worries. We didn't feel cramped at all. I noticed that wherever we were in the house or on the property, we had complete privacy; there were no windows facing us at all.

Our home away from home in Champagne, along with the car we rented for the trip.

The people who own the house live right across the street. They are winemakers and have their own label. Their son, who lives next door to them, was really nice and took Ken and me on a tour of their cellar and property, and gave us a wine tasting. His wine is good and we bought some. He told us that they don't make their own wine any more, so all that we were seeing was actually no longer in service. He delivers their grapes to a cooperative where the wine is made and labelled for them.

The house was nice and comfortable enough. The only weird thing was that the town's church, whose steeple we could see out the windows, was equipped with a carillon. Every quarter hour, from seven in the morning until ten at night, the bells would ring. The tune at the top of the hour sounded like the nursery rhyme "Three Blind Mice." The tune was followed by one chime for each hour (ten at ten p.m.!). After that, a single chime for the quarter, two for the half, and three for the three-quarter hour.

Vineyard views in Champagne

It was October and the vines still had leaves. The harvesting was done, but I still saw a lot of people working in the vineyards. What were they doing? I'm not sure, but probably some kind of vineyard maintenance. I think it was too early to be pruning.

A pinot noir patchwork. Looking roughly west, toward Paris.

The vineyards in the first photo are pinot noir grapes on the south-facing slopes of the Montagne de Reims, just outside the town where our rental house was.

Looking northward. I like the grass under the vines.

The vines in the second photo are also pinot noir grapes, but this time on the north-facing slopes of the mountain near Verzenay.

Le Pressoir d'Oger, Château Malakoff.

The third photo was taken looking roughly east from the slopes of the Côtes des blancs, where the grapes are chardonnay. That's a cemetery in the foreground and a grape pressing facility at the top.

More chardonnay. These grapes face the morning sun.

And finally, another look at the chardonnay vineyards on the Côtes des blancs, this time looking up the hill toward the forest at the top. I like the way the vines are planted at different angles to optimize drainage.

I started to think about the differences between the Champagne vineyards and those around where we live in the Touraine. The feel is certainly different. Our local vineyards tend to be smaller parcels surrounded by woods. The Champagne vineyards seem to be vast, mostly uninterrupted seas of vines. The Touraine wine industry feels smaller, more individualized, with small growers making their own wine (there are many cooperatives around, too). Champagne felt much more corporate, with outposts of big wine houses (with familiar names) for pressing and fermenting mingled in with the smaller producers.

By the numbers, if my conversions and calculations are correct, Champagne's vines cover nearly 82,000 acres compared with Touraine's more modest 14,000 acres. And Champagne produces about 352 million bottles a year, whereas Touraine's annual production is only about 37 million bottles. While these numbers may not be completely accurate due to my less-than-rigorous research, they do reflect the huge difference in scale between the two wine regions.

Pintade à la broche

This is une pintade (a guinea hen) that we recently roasted in the oven. One of the features of many French ovens is a built in rotisserie. It's a very nice option to have when roasting, especially a bird, because of the self-basting.

Roasted guinea hen still on the spit.

If I remember correctly, Ken put a dish of peeled potatoes under the bird to roast in the drippings. Nothing is wasted. And it was delicious, to boot!

We're starting to think about what kind of bird we want to roast for Christmas dinner. I think we've narrowed it down to either a turkey, a guinea fowl capon, or a local black-feathered chicken called a géline de Touraine. The géline is an older breed of farm chicken that died out, but it's been "reconstituted" through the crossing of the black Croad Langshan and the Bress Gauloise Noir breeds. The poultry vendor at our local farmers' market has them, but you have to order them in advance. They cost more than a standard chicken or guinea hen, but the gélines are arguably the best chickens I have ever tasted; worth the price for a special occasion.

They've gone too phare

There is a phare (lighthouse) on the flanks of the Montagne de Reims. The closest serious body of water, the English Channel, is about 225 kilometers (140 miles) away. So what's the deal? From what I read, the lighthouse was built as a publicity stunt back in 1909 by a certain avant-garde champagne merchant named Joseph Goulet.

Le Phare de Verzenay and its museum, with the town down below.

The lighthouse was quite an attraction in its day, but fell into disrepair after the first world war. It was rehabilitated in the late 1990s and is now home to a wine museum. We didn't visit, but we did drive by.