4/26/2004. A sun-drenched weekend in Collioure

When Denis was a child, his family had a vacation home in the town of Banyuls-sur-mer, yet he hadn't been back there since. This part of the French Catalan coast just east of Perpignan and only a handful of kilometers from the Spanish frontier, is much less frequented than the Cote d'Azur, and is well worth discovering if you prefer to avoid crowds.

Denis really missed his true calling in becoming a radiologist. He should have been a G.O.--"Gentil Organisateur" as the activities leaders are called in Club Med speak. (In case you're wondering, I have never and will never set foot in a Club Med.) He is a past master at organizing trips, from our short weekend getaways to the August mega-vacations we take with his two boys. I am not allowed to participate in the trip planning, nor am I usually informed in advance of the program. "You'll see," Denis likes to say. It's one of his ways of surprising and delighting me.

I was both by the end of our weekend. All I had really known about this part of southwestern France was that it was where Banyuls wine is made. Banyuls is a sweet wine taken as an aperitif, enjoyed with foie gras, or taken as a digestif with dessert, especially those made with chocolate. It is rich with aromas of spice and dried fruit. What I found was not only the wine, but the incredible, almost sheer hillsides where the grapes are grown, as well as shimmering blue ports, and as always in France, a lot of history.

Banyuls is only about 45 minutes by car from Perpignan. We were blessed with a brilliant blue sky as we wandered around the small steep streets, and Denis rediscovered the house where he had come as a child, now much renovated. The houses here and elsewhere in the region are constructed from the dark umber stone which is everywhere apparent on the steep hillsides.



Having worked up an appetite from our explorations, we stopped for lunch at Al Fanal, a hotel and restaurant with a wonderful view onto the brilliant blue port of Banyuls. We were given a warm welcome by Monsieur Laurent Sagols, the owner, and shown to a table looking directly out onto the spectacular sunny water. Monsieur Sagols inspired our confidence immediately, so we took his advice and ordered the menu Catalan, letting him guide our choices for each course.




This part of France, known as La Côte Vermeil, or the vermillion coast (for its deep red rocky soil), is almost as famous for its anchovies as for its Banyuls wine. So we began with the beautiful salad of roasted peppers and marinated French anchovies you see above, artfully arranged to resemble a sunrise (or sunset, depending on your mood). Delicious! We washed it down with glasses of a vin Rancio, a very tart, extremely aged regional wine whose acidity stops just short of tasting like a very fine sherry vinegar, infused with the oak in which it has mellowed. It is the perfect companion to the forthright flavor of anchovies.

After our beautiful anchovies, which were almost too pretty to eat, we continued with a Romesco of local rock fish. This is the local Catalan version of bouillabaisse, a deeply flavorful stew of small local fish which you never see in the fish markets of Paris. Dessert was a Bras de Gitano, or "gypsy's arm," another local specialty consisting of a light sponge cake rolled with a delicate cream perfumed with oranges and served in a pool of crème anglaise.



We spent the afternoon exploring the rocky vineyard-covered hills of the region. Since antiquity, Grenache grapes have been cultivated on these almost sheer slopes of schist, which soak up the heat of the sun more than 300 days per year. Because of the steep gradient, all of the work in these vineyards is done by hand, including harvest. No tractor could begin to negotiate these slopes.

When we were there, the meticulously pruned vines were just beginning to break bud. Planted intermittently among the vines are peach trees. These are the famous pêches de vigne (flowering right), which are planted as indicators of impending disease problems among the grapes. As they are even more susceptible than the vines to the same diseases, they alert the vignerons that problems are imminent when they show signs of disease.

However, for me, the best thing about pêches de vigne are their fruits: small, white, but deeply blushed red right to their pits, and of a perfume that you have to experience to believe. Never pass up the opportunity to taste anything--sorbet, preserves, liqueur--made from these exquisite fruits, which are only a byproduct, so to speak, of the wine grapes, and so are only found locally or in very limited amounts in the best Paris greengrocers in late summer and early fall.



The grenache vines of the Roussillon, as this region is called (not to be confused with the town of Rousillon in Provence), appear to grow right out of solid rock. One is hard pressed to discern much soil on these slopes. Rigorously pruned each year, and growing in the rather arid climate of the region (remember, sun for more than 300 days per year), the vines resemble bonsais and indeed, have much in common with a bonsai tree. They grow in limited medium (not much soil), without much water, and are meticulously pruned. A vine like the one above is nearly a hundred years old, although it stands not even a meter high.

The particular combination of sun and stone yields grapes that have a very high sugar content and an intense perfume particular to the region. These grapes yield wines that are rich in the taste of le terroir, the locality of climate and soil. Denis and I stopped at the cooperative Celliers des Templiers for a tour of Banyuls production. I highly recommend this tour, even if you're not an oenophile. It is worthwhile if only to see the enormous building where the enormous 30-meter oak casks stand upright. The dim light and the awesome presence of these casks makes you feel as if you are in a cathedral.

And of course, at the end of the tour there's the dégustation. I'm not sure how it happened, but after tasting a half dozen different Banyuls, some delicious reds of Collioure, and a striking rosé with a 'nose' of fragrant strawberries, Denis and I ended up ordering enough wine to last us for years--all to be conveniently delivered by truck to our doorstep in Paris.



We spent the tail end of the afternoon in the breathtakingly beautiful town of Collioure (main photo above), with its serene blue bay and ancient stone buildings. The iridescent light in this village along with the luminous colors of its buildings and bay inspired countless painters. Collioure is considered the birthplace of Fauvisme, which began with the works of Derain and Matisse during the time they spent in Collioure. Fauve paintings are marked by their clear luminous colors, in particular a certain green.

One of the delightful things about Collioure is that as you stroll through the village, you can follow its artistic history thanks to posters of paintings that are afixed in the very spots that they represent. It is a wonderful intuitive way to explore the rich artistic history of the town. In addition to Matisse and Derain, Picasso, Dali, and others were inspired by the fabulous colors of the place. And the wonderful thing is that not much has changed in Collioure since they were there. The Relais des Trois Mas, the hotel where we stayed, even has rooms themed after the painters that worked in Collioure, with each room named after a different artist.



The nature-lover in me was rewarded by this sunny weekend as well. As we drove through the countryside, I saw many resplendent wildflowers, and as usual drove the patient Denis almost to distraction with my cries of "Arrete la voiture! Il y a une belle fleur..." (Stop the car! There's a beautiful flower...") Poor Denis, he's used to having to stop every few hundred feet to let me leap from the car with my camera.

On the last part of our action-packed weekend, we headed into the adjacent eastern Pyrenees, a region of pristine and rugged beauty. Our last night, we spent in a beautiful hotel at Molitg-les-Bains (don't ask me how to pronounce 'Molitg'; Denis didn't know either). Given the view below from our bedroom window, I think you'll have to agree with me that my G.O. is really the best.



Hotel El Llagut and Restaurant Al Fanal
Avenue du Fontaulé, 66650 Banyuls-sur-Mer
Tel: (+33) (0)4 68 88 00 81
Fax: (+33) (0)4 68 88 13 37
www.al-fanal.com

Relais des Trois Mas
Route de Port-Vendres
66190 Collioure
Tel: (+33) (0)4 68 82 05 07
Fax: (+33) (0)4 68 82 38 08

Celliers des Templiers
Route de Mas Reig
66652 Banyuls-sur-Mer
Tel: (+33) (0)4 68 98 36 70
Fax: (+33) (0)4 68 98 36 91

Thermes de Molitg
66500 Molitg-les-Bains
Tel: (+33) (0)4 68 05 00 50
Fax: (+33) (0)4 68 05 02 91

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