My Life in Languedoc. A Memoir in Chapters.

This is a story of how a love of wine gave me a new life in the Other South of France.

#1 The Minervois.

It was April 1st 2009 when I left England and drove south to the rental cottage I’d found when I’d stuck a pin in a map of Languedoc. I was heading to France with a dream of starting a wine tour business. Two days later I entered the Minervois, a district just north of Carcassonne and stretching eastwards from there. I was driving my beloved Audi cabriolet Fifi, who was ten years old at that time. It was a sunny day but breezy and too cold to put the roof down. She and I had done a lot of exploring together but this was the most exciting adventure yet.

As I bowled along the narrow lanes in search of what would be my home for the next six months, I felt my heart fill with joy at the prospect of living surrounded by vineyards in the depths of rural France. OK, so I couldn’t speak French and knew only one person living here, but I wasn’t going to let little things like that get in the way of my dream. After all I knew about wine, I’d been teaching the subject for quite a while and was confident in my knowledge. What I didn’t expect was that this experience would expand my understanding of wine at least a thousand fold.

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