Passadoc Gazette - No 165

The weekly 165

March 20!

March 20... and spring finally arrives, because it was hoped for months in the gray of some days of autumn or winter. As if he had read the calendar, the sun is everywhere!

If March is the first once among the Romans – as Antoine Furetière recalls* – Ancient Greece has only three seasons: spring, summer (season of harvests) and winter (bad season), imperfectly defined; From the 7th B.C., appears the autumn season itself.

It's only under Charles IX. the month of January (edited in year 1564). If we had any doubt, Richelet.** says Mars, This is the season of the year when everything enters in love, immediately following the winter and starting the twenty-first month (French Dictionary published in 1680).

When spring arrives, the poets give to heart joy! Thus Alfred de Musset :
From the poor month of March one must not be misunderstood;
Although the plowman fears him,
The universe is reborn there; It is true that the wind,
The rain and the sun are fighting the empire.
What to do? In the time of flowers, the world is a child;
It's her first tear and her first smile.

Hugo in a poem entitled Spring writes:
It seems that everything laughs, and that the green trees
Are happy to be together and say verses.

Under which tree Theophile Gauthier When he is surprised:
Look at the branches
How white they are!
It snows flowers.

As for the delicious Mauritius Lent – the favourite poet of schoolchildren – he goes on a walk:
Wind hair
Fighting drum,
Let's go,
Meet the spring.

Can't forget Brasses !
For the twenty-year-old heart lay where the eye lay,
The first cotillon you came to impose,
The humblest shepherdess is a piece of king.
There was a lack of marquise, we knew the soubrette,
There was no flower of lilies.
In spring Cupid makes arrows of all wood...

All you need is a song...

Jeanne Monin

* Antoine Furetière, lexicologist – 1619/1688. Three centuries after its publication of its dictionary repeatedly reissued always makes reference... The Curtain Are we commonly called, as they say? The Larousse or The Robert.
** César-Pierre Richelet, grammairian and lexicographer – 1626-1698.

The Echoes of the Week
The wicker baskets
Small tour to the market
The Kiss of City Hall
On the Canal du Midi
Do you like rosé?
On a Tarn road
Windmills Neshtafan
Passadoc

The wicker baskets

To make a wicker basket, you have to... a wicker! tools... and a lot of know-how. These are beautiful!

Claude Boyer
When I was a child, we went to a friend of my parents' in Tetto Bandito, a hamlet in Italy, after Roccaione on the road to the thermal baths of Valdieri, he was a vannier. I was admiring his dexterity.

In his yard, he was drying the bone that he would harvest with his moped and small trailer. He lived in a single room packed with his creations which he sold on the markets of the region where he always went with his trailer loaded with baskets, loaves for bread, fruit cuts, under-shelf.

His stacking was by miracle with great string reinforcement. He continued his activity until his death, at over 80 years of age. I liked the Signor Carlo... When we went to see him he was preparing a polenta because I loved it!

Marie-Dominique Germain
Potato baskets... every year I bought from the kermesse
the parish priest of Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée in early August. All memories!

And some Passadocians ask, who is this vannier?
Dalies Gues
– I think it's Sea Dautier...
Jean-michel Guibert :
- Victor Champoussin, I think.

Small tour to the market

François Abbe
We're back at the market! More specifically, on the The BeaussetIn the Var.

Christiane Thomas (Roquebrune) explained that at the end of 19th century:

– With the arrival of the ready to wear, it was the end of the Provencal costumes.

In other places, this was not the case.

Myriam Quiniou – Breton journalist who came to immortalize the conference Women of Provence"at the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions in Draguignan – gave us the difference: her bigouden grandmother had only one costume she wore every day of the year...

The Kiss of the Town Hall

The Kiss of City Hall... famous photo of Robert Doisneau.

Finding the charming lovers, Doise offers them 500 francs to take up the pose before her goal. The young woman, it is Françoise Bornet who will try a career of actress and will give the replica to a few greats of the cinema (Gabin, Fernandel, ...) without ever entering the profession. She died recently (December 2023), at the age of 93.

In Passadoc – recognized association of general interest for almost 5 years – We make anti-Doisneau! Here, we are interested in the authentic heritage. Passadoc's president and co-founder, André Abbe, has 100,000 photos. Easy to power the Passadoc page!

In these sometimes difficult times, memories are a powerful remedy. "Passadoc, better than drugs!" says our friend Claude Boyer.

On the Canal du Midi

François Abbe
Children have breakfast on a barge floating on the picturesque Canal du Midi. This iconic waterway, extending from the west of Provence to Spain, offers a serene setting.

The Canal du Midi is always full of charm. Even 44 years after taking this photo, children still enjoy boat cruises on the canal, a timeless happiness.

Jean Yves Dumay
Unfortunately the majestic plane trees are no longer there to shade the canal... A mushroom attacked them and for the majority they were cut! On the side canal of the Garonne they are still present.

Do you like rosé?

On the table at the Roquebrune-sur-Argens (Var) fair in 1984, no rosé! Where'd he go?

Today, 89% of the AOC Côte de Provence wines produced are... Roses! This info comes from the site « Wine Wine ». That sounds a little high to me...

Jean-Philippe Tinois
It is so complicated to make the rosé now, picked in the morning or rather at night, in refrigerated vats, kept in an atmosphere of nitrogen, fermented with standardized yeasts other than those on natural clusters, fermentation stopped by sulphites that the most conscientious use at least.

I wonder if it still seems to be a product of a natural process. That says that manufacturing matters as long as we get drunk!

Dañiel Olivier
At the debuta deis annadas 80s, èran lei roges quaran produchs has May 80% in Còstas de Provença...

[In the early 1980s it was still more than 80% red that were produced in the AOC...]

Giselle Penat-Lorde

The rosy wine... a little bit of history...

Mesopotamia was the cradle of rosé wine some 3000 years before Jesus Christ. But it is the convocation of Dionysos by the ancient Greeks that refers to a practice of mixing water and wine.

It was the Greeks (a little wink, passing to my ancestors, the Phoceans who founded Massalia/Marseille!) who brought the vine to southern France, colonizing the Mediterranean coast 600 years before our era.

The wine that the Greeks produced at the time was very clear: the grapes were trodden, the juice collected was immediately fermented without the must remaining in contact with the juice. The so-called cuvaison stage was not realized and the wine could not be well coloured. It was therefore a clear wine, to which was frequently added resin, spices and even honey for the « stabilise ». Then it is difficult to define its color. Winemaking was far from the winemaking practiced today by our wine growers!

No revolution in the art of winemaking with the arrival of the Romans: with the development of the Roman empire, the wine culture will spread to the Mediterranean basin but also in Gaul to remote areas. Vinification was carried out on black grapes but without cuvée, so a moulding and fermentation without must. We can say that we made rosé without knowing it, but especially without mastering its color!

In the Middle Ages, the Church will perpetuate this culture and market it. It is then all Europe that will develop this culture since the different religious orders use this clear wine which will be known as the claret, then clear.

In the 13th century, Bordeaux winemakers will trade with the Nordic countries as well as with England. The vast majority of the wine produced was clairt, a wine between red and rosé, because there was still a little red produced thanks to a longer maceration. The English love it.

He is probably an Irishman, Jofroi of Waterford, who cites the term rosé wine for the first time, around the year 1300.

The clairt is therefore the most used wine, its production increases in the seventeenth century. It is highly appreciated not only in England, but throughout Northern Europe. The numerous Dutch painters will represent carafes and glasses that mostly contain light wine.

The vinification used is bleeding, i.e. short maceration. Then you have to extract some of the must that will be used to vinify red wine. The tanic and dye elements therefore do not stay in contact with the juice for long and therefore the wine is clear. There was also a mixture of white and black grapes.

It would appear that the consumption of clear wine at that time accounted for about 80% of the wine consumed.

The term rosé wine, however, appears in the French dictionary only in 1680. In 1682 a rosé wine for the court of Louis XIV was produced in the vineyard of Argenteuil. Other regions will follow suit.

But it is also at that time that the demand for wine is oriented towards a more colourful and tanic wine. Red wine already existed.

It was more intended for manual workers who needed strength to work. They will be called black or vermel wines and then red.

Clear wine will leave room for red wine from the 18th century.

The attack of the phylloxera will also lead to the development of very colorful grape varieties. Rosé wine will only represent 10% of the wine market.

As for Provence, it will be necessary to wait until the 20th century, paid holidays, tourists and the desire to moisturize with lighter wines for rosé to develop again. This was done in stages, because until the 1980s/90s the rosé had a reputation for causing headaches and sour stomachs.

For a long time, the wines of Provence were not frankly a success, (a wine that did not travel or very badly, it was said!) but the work and the will of the winegrowers allowed to produce increasingly qualitative rosy wines.

New grape varieties, new winemaking methods, more demanding and more technical, make it possible to improve wine, while conservation methods allow it to be stored longer, and even exported, without losing quality. Hence the rather overwhelming rise and the growing success of our rosés.

At the end of the 19th century, the term « Côtes de Provence » is created.

We must wait until 1951 for experts to trace the contours of the Côtes de Provence. The appellation AOC Côtes de Provence is defined by decree in 1977. It is divided into three departments: Bouches-du-Rhône, the Var and an incursion into the Alpes Maritimes.

The Côtes-de-Provence today represents nearly 20,000 ha, nearly 1 million hectolitres, 133 million bottle equivalents and 500 companies (372 estates, 38 cooperatives, about 100 trading) producing nearly 90% rosé.

They were 43 communes in 1951 recognized in VDQS (high quality wine), 84 in 77 (and 3000 winemakers), when the appellation became AOC and soon a hundred after the revision of the geographical area which should rank 13 to 17 communes notably towards Toulon, Marseille, La Gardanne, Fayence... Then will remain to be refined with the partial selection...

Maelström with flashbacks, reading memories, Latin translations, wine history through the ages, wine magazines, family history, visits to various vineyards, TV documentaries, etc.

Lots of stuff piled up on the hard drive and in the « cloud », which are up to the surface!

I've always been interested in wine, how to combine wines and dishes well, without being a specialist, even if at good school with Guy and Claude, and I've been drinking for a long time.

My paternal grandfather made his wine in the 1935/40s before returning to the Roquebrune-sur-Argens cooperative. What was supposed to be a terrible picket, certainly good red stripper, which had not, however, poisoned the German occupation troops, during their raid on the cellar ...

On a Tarn road

André Abbe
Geography, history and republican administration force the people to make choices.

I am Provencal, Varian, French; I must be Azurean... Not sure... Because I never knew where the French Riviera started.

I can be too. « pecanian » and even « Southern » as our region now bears the ridiculous name of « South ».

The inhabitants of Laval-du-Tarn, in Occitan The Val de TarnDo they first feel Lozerians, Gévaudanais or Sauveterrians before being French, Occitans after being Languedocians?

During my last visit to Laval (photo), the village was crossed by a flock of sheep... and a national road. Today the road has become departmental, I hope the sheep are still there!

The Neshtafan Mills

André Abbe
Alphonse Daudet had spread the publication of the news constituting his Letters from my mill over 15 years. In 1873 was the most important publication in the Parisian press. 2024... 1873... More than 150 years already!

Let's jump into a little less distant past with this picture taken in 1969: mills much different from that of Daudet. The wings of the Fontvieille mill revolve around a horizontal axis, those of the Neshtafan mills in the Khorassan, revolve around a vertical axis.

I am very attached to this photo, one of the few taken in Iran that I have left. UNESCO had bought some but most of them were lost by mail or kept by persons to whom I had had the imprudence to entrust them.

I didn't ask the three kids on their donkey to come and pose for me. They were there as we arrived in front of the mills aligned with the high Neshtafan, not far from the Afghan border.

Jeanne Monin
Puisque André évoque Daudet, arrêtons-nous sur un récit qui figure dans certaines éditions des Letters from my mill : Les sauterelles.
L’écrivain raconte :

« Encore un souvenir d’Algérie, et puis nous reviendrons au Moulin…

La nuit de mon arrivée dans cette ferme du Sahel, je ne pouvais pas dormir. Le pays nouveau, l’agitation du voyage, les aboiements des chacals, puis une chaleur énervante, oppressante, un étouffement complet, comme si les mailles de la moustiquaire n’avaient pas laissé passer un souffle d’air… Quand j’ouvris ma fenêtre, au petit jour, une brume d’été lourde, lentement remuée, frangée aux bords de noir et de rose, flottait dans l’air comme un nuage de poudre sur un champ de bataille.

« Bataille »… C’en est une… dans la journée, l’ennemi arrive et le combat va s’engager…

Tout à coup, à la porte-fenêtre fermée pour nous garantir de la chaleur du jardin en fournaise, de grands cris retentirent : « Les criquets ! les criquets ! »

[…]

À perte de vue, les champs étaient couverts de criquets, de criquets énormes, gros comme le doigt.

Alors le massacre commença.

[… dernier paragraphe ]

Le lendemain, quand j’ouvris ma fenêtre comme la veille, les sauterelles étaient parties ; mais quelle ruine elles avaient laissée derrière elles ! Plus une fleur, plus un brin d’herbe : tout était noir, rongé, calciné.

François Abbe
Nous avons une nouvelle invitée, c’est Gwendolyn, qui nous rejoint depuis l’Afrique du Sud ! Elle est bénévole pour notre association (Abbe Photo, à but non lucratif) avec une mission particulière : partager certaines des photos et vidéos préférées capturées par mon père, André Abbe !

Si, vous aussi, vous avez des textes, des photos à partager, c’est facile !

These are cited in The Gazette :
André Abbe
François Abbe
Claude Boyer
Jean Yves Dumay
Marie-Dominique Guibert
Jeanne Monin
Dañiel Olivier
Giselle Penat-Lorde
Editor in Chief
Jeanne Monin