A Bit of a French Brew

Moving to France I think many friends thought we’d be surrounded by vineyards. That’s not exactly the case. When we look across the lane to the side of the house all we see are sheep. We’d need to travel about an hour to the nearest wine regions of the Loire or the Haute Vienne.

With all this viticulture is easy to forget that the French have a thriving brewing industry too. Admittedly you’d be hard pressed to find, at least in this part of France, the real ale and micro-breweries now so popular back in the UK, but yesterday I spent a rainy April afternoon learning about the process and, more importantly, tasting the local brew.

Based in a former diary in the picturesque village of Coulon here in the Deux-Sèvres department is the Brasserie du Marais Poitevin. Using locally sourced wild hops and organically grown grain the brasserie supplies a range of beers to suit to most discerning palate: wheat beers, lagers and what we English would recognise as a good old bitter (la brune or l'ambrée).

On visits back to the UK I usually bring back a few bottle of bitter – one of the things I do miss is a pint down at my local. At least now I know I can top up on supplies locally. Cheers!  

Cool Britannia

This year the UK may have suffered cutbacks, riots and phone hacking but here over the Channel anything British is still seen as cool and trendy. Admittedly this vision of cool Britannia seems to be distilled into one of red London Routemaster buses and telephone boxes, both of which have all but disappeared from British streets.  

Everytime one of the promotional leaflets drops into our postbox I’m amazed by the amount of goods plastered with Union Jacks and the aforementioned buses and boxes on offer to the French buyer. Indeed just down the road in Parthenay you can buy a complete original telephone box, for sale at Comptoir des Loges, a large ironmongery and agricultural supplies outlet.  

Of course the UK is not immune from this representation of cultural icons- how many times have you seen goods fashioned to represent French rustic charm or Paris café chic? The irony is they’re all probably made in China, or “fabriqué en Chine” as we’d say over here.

A Pressing Engagement

As Jesse off of The Fast Show might have said “today I mostly be pressing apples”.  At least that is how I spent last Saturday morning. Whilst the rest of France was gearing up to watch the rugby semi-final I was out helping our friends press and bottle their apples in nearby Secondigny. Read about this over on Val’s Poitou Property Services blog.