A Summer In Gascony

by Martin Calder

  Jacques-Henri shrugged his shoulders mysteriously.

  ‘Legend has it they were the descendants of lepers,’ he continued. ‘In those days people believed that leprosy was hereditary and highly contagious. They had a terrible fear of the disease. The Cagots became a caste of untouchables. They were forbidden to walk barefoot in public places, as poor people often did then, and they even had a separate drinking water fountain. Every town had its Cagot quarter, a sort of ghetto known as la Cagotérie. Near smaller villages the Cagots lived in isolated hamlets, often in the woods. It was thought that wood did not transmit disease, and so the Cagots were constrained to work with wood, as cutters, joiners, carpenters and carvers. They were made to wear a goose’s foot pinned to their tunics to mark them out.’

  ‘Why a goose’s foot?’ I asked.

  ‘Because people said the Cagots had webbed feet,’ he replied, ‘and so the goose’s foot was a warning.’

  ‘No humiliation was spared them?’ I suggested.

  ‘In some towns they had to signal their approach by shaking a rattle,’ Jacques-Henri went on. ‘Churches usually had a separate side door for the Cagots, known as la porte des maudits, the door of the cursed ones. It was low, forcing them to stoop as they went in. Entering through the same door as the Cagots was considered bad luck, so running through the Cagot door was just the sort of stunt children would do for a dare. Once inside the church, the Cagots had to sit at the back, where they had their own holy water font, also marked with a goose foot. The law stated that they could marry only among themselves, cagot and cagotte. They had no family names, only their given name followed by their collective name, Cagot. They were baptised after nightfall.

  ‘Country people believed that just touching a Cagot could burn your skin. When people travelled to a village they didn’t know, an easy way to recognize the Cagots was to look for their earlobes – anyone without earlobes, or with lobes joining the cheek, was quite likely to be a Cagot.’

  Jacques-Henri pointed to his own earlobes. ‘You see, I’ve got mine,’ he said.

  I laughed and agreed that with earlobes like that, he was definitely not a Cagot.

  ‘There are no more Cagots,’ he concluded. ‘With the Revolution, everyone became a citizen. Those cottages you saw in the woods have been in ruins for as long as I can remember.’

  This was all Jacques-Henri could tell me. The origins of the Cagots are a mystery. They were sometimes referred to as Crestias, Christians, possibly because lepers were known in mediaeval times as pauperes Christi. Leprosy is only one explanation among several of how they became a caste of pariahs. By the late Middle Ages there were thousands of them, spread out in small communities across Gascony, too many to have been only the descendants of lepers. Another explanation is that some were descended from soldiers in the retreating Saracen army, defeated at Poitiers. They may have been joined by later waves of Muslim refugees fleeing the Reconquista in Spain. Presumably at some time they converted to Christianity.

  Some Cagots may have been Cathars, fleeing the carnage in the Languedoc when their beliefs in spiritual purity had them branded as heretics by the Pope and led to crusades against them. It is equally possible that a number of Jews joined the Cagots, at one time or another, to escape persecution.

  In some descriptions of the Cagots they were short and sturdy with olive skin, in others they were tall, fair-haired and blue-eyed. The contradictory descriptions suggest no single ethnic origin. The fair-haired, blue-eyed Cagots can be explained as the descendants of the Visigoths, defeated by the Franks at the beginning of the sixth century. The Visigoths were more than a marauding army, they were a whole nation, and when their leaders and military classes fled over the Pyrenees, taking their servants with them, many of the middle classes were left behind in Gascony. The local population turned on their former oppressors and made them outcasts. If this explanation is true, the term of abuse Canis Goths or Chien de Goth, meaning dog of a Goth, may be the origin of the name Cagot.

  The Visigoths made Toledo their capital and founded the first monarchy in the Iberian peninsula. They called this new land of theirs Spania, which evolved into modern Spain. The Cagot descendants of the Visigoths left behind in Gascony, when they wanted to reassure themselves that they were more than mere outcasts, there are tales of them using blocks of wood left over from their normal work to sculpt crowned heads that they would place near their front doors. When asked who the head represented, they would reply: ‘It’s my cousin, the King of Spain!’

  Each of these explanations probably contains an element of truth, as successive generations of the marginalised and the dispossessed took refuge among the Cagots. Their struggle for integration was long and slow. In 1514 they petitioned Pope Leo X and in 1683 they paid dues for letters patent from Louis XIV, in each case with limited effect. In 1724, the Baron de Montesquieu intervened in favour of the rights of the Cagots of Biarritz.

  After the Revolution the Cagots became assimilated into the general peasantry. The last identifiable Cagots lived on until the first quarter of the twentieth century, and they were finally lost sight of shortly after the First World War.

  FRUITS OF THE VINE

  JACQUES-HENRI HAD AN APPRECIATION FOR THE FRUITS OF THE vine. He associated wine with friendship and the sharing of simple pleasures. It was a means of creating good humour rather than getting drunk. When he brought out a bottle from the store, he referred to it as encore une bouteille de plaisir.

  Only Gascon wines were served at the Auberge. The local wines express the individualistic qualities of the vineyards and grape varieties, le vrai goût du terroir. There are full-bodied reds, clear fruity whites, easy-drinking rosés, sparkling vins mousseux, high-quality sweet vins moelleux, and of course the spirit of Gascony, Armagnac.

  One concession to technology at the Auberge was a fax machine. Jacques-Henri wrote out a list of the wines and Armagnacs required and faxed the order down to a négociant, named Georges Castelbon, based in Boulogne-sur-Gesse. A day or two later Georges would appear in his ancient Citroën H-van, one of those big, square, angular vans that look as if they’ve been bolted together from old galvanised sheds, with suicide doors opening backwards. The engine whirred as it came up the drive, straining to pull its heavy load. On the side was a sign with the name of the négociant in faded wine-red letters arched over a bunch of grapes, George Castelbon & Cie, and underneath the simplest statement of his product: Fruits de la Vigne.

  Georges was a real old-timer. He had a wealth of knowledge about wine and could talk about vines, vintages and vinification with enthusiasm and authority. He had been born in the village of Madiran, about fifty kilometres west of Péguilhan, was fiercely proud of his home soil, and supplied mainly Madiran wine to the Auberge.

  I remember Georges drinking a glass of Madiran. ‘Ah, ça me rappelle le pays!’ he said, suddenly getting quite emotional.

  He took me to see a Madiran vineyard. It had been a hot summer, the vines were laden with grapes and the vendange would soon begin.

  He came to pick me up at the farm at about five o’clock in the morning. As we drove westwards, the rising sun cast a long shadow of the van on the road in front of us. I was bleary-eyed and still half-asleep. The shadow gradually shortened as the sun rose higher in the sky behind us. We passed through shady valleys and over glorious hills. Georges swung the van along the winding roads, a little too fast for comfort downhill, slowly up the steeper hills, almost coming to a stop on some hairpin bends.

  I heard the sudden explosive reports of gunfire in the woods, the sounds of hunters who had got up early to shoot ortolan and quail. We drove past a murderous-looking man standing by the roadside, wearing a fluorescent green jacket. He had bushy black sideburns sticking out from under his hunting hat and a shotgun slung over his arm. He was on patrol ready to shoot any animal that bolted onto the road. He touched his hat as we passed. We were safe, even if the animals were not.

  We wound our way down into the valley of the ri
ver Adour, stopping at Maubourguet for a strong café double at a relais that had just opened for the morning.

  Heading north, we turned off left and began the climb into the Madiran wine country, which covered the range of rolling hills above the sharp bend in the valley of the river Adour. I saw more and more land covered with vines. We passed through the village of Madiran, the shutters still closed on the windows of the houses along the main street. The Madiran hills looked subtly welcoming and peaceful. Just over the brow of a hill, we turned down a narrow road and through a pair of gates into the yard of the Château Vézac. We drove into the front yard of a neat-looking house, with outbuildings attached, looking out over a low stone wall and railings towards the vineyards of the domaine.

  It was by then about seven o’clock in the morning. Monsieur Vézac, the vigneron, was already hard at work in the barn. When he heard the van he came out to greet us. Salut, mon vieux! Hello old friend. A small brown dog came with him, barking excitedly. Old Georges and Monsieur Vézac hadn’t seen each other for three vintages, so there was a lot of hail-fellow-well-met hand shaking and back slapping to be done.

  Georges introduced me as a stagiaire at the Auberge in Péguilhan, with an interest in wine making.

  ‘Ah!’ Monsieur Vézac exclaimed, ‘isn’t that the place run by Jacques-Henri Cazagnac? I’ve been told I should go there to try the magret de canard.’

  I was surprised the reputation of the Auberge had reached this far.

  ‘It’s me who’s cooking the magrets there at the moment,’ I told Monsieur Vézac.

  He looked rather taken aback, then he said, ‘You’ve got talent, jeune homme!’

  The conversation immediately turned to grapes. Monsieur Vézac wanted to show us round the vines before we enjoyed a tasting.

  We walked out into the vineyards. The ground was pebbly soft clay, moist with dew. Strips of grass grew between the rows of vines, making them easy to walk around. The domaine was immaculately kept.

  At the end of each row of vines was a red or pink rose bush, still in flower at the beginning of September, adding bright spots of colour. Rose bushes were planted next to the vines because they were more susceptible than grape vines to diseases like black rot and phylloxera. The roses acted as floral barometers, forewarning Monsieur Vézac of any disease, allowing him time to deal with the problem before it attacked the vines, when it would be too late.

  The vines were heavily laden with bunches of grapes, hanging in tight clusters like purplish-black berries, with a glaucous bloom over the surface. Some of the leaves were beginning to turn their seasonal burnished copper colour. The vines looked very old. The stems were about twenty centimetres thick at the base and gnarled where they divided, and the grey-brown bark was coarse and flaky.

  These were Tannat grapes, an indigenous Gascon variety, the backbone of strong, robust red Madiran wine. Tannat is a highly tannic grape – the clue is in the name! Tannins are the acidic compounds in the skin, pips and fragments of stalk, which make a wine taste harsh when it is young but give it depth with age. Madiran is a vin de garde, a wine to keep, and it has to be kept to allow those tannins to soften. Because of the high tannin levels, Madiran is the only appellation in France that by official decree must be aged for at least one year. A good, strong Madiran will reach its best after five to ten years, longer in some cases. It is the most characteristic Gascon wine. As Monsieur Vézac said, il sait bien porter le beret, it knows how to wear a beret!

  The white wines produced in the Madiran area are known by a different name, Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh. This unusual name comes from pachec-en-rènc – the local dialect for piquets-en-rang, meaning posts in a line, which describes the practice of training the vines over posts high above the ground, well above head height – and Vic-Bilh, meaning old hill villages. So the name means ‘posts in a line from the old hill villages’. Local grape varieties are used, Arrufiac, Courbu, and especially Petit Manseng and Gros Manseng. Sweet Pacherenc is obtained from a late autumn harvest, une vendange tardive. The later the grapes are picked, the sweeter and more expensive the wine. The Madiran hills enjoy a gentle microclimate, perfect for making sweet wine: the air is moistened by Atlantic breezes in the spring, while the protective hills ensure low rainfall during the summer and autumn over the vineyards on the south- and east-facing slopes.

  Monsieur Vézac, Georges and I walked on to look at a row of Petit Manseng vines. The grapes were a fresh green colour, with a pink blush beneath the translucent skin. I cupped a bunch in the palm of my hand; they felt full and fruitful, and quite delicate. I picked a few to eat, which were deliciously sweet and fruity.

  We walked through a tunnel of vines, which Monsieur Vézac and his wife had trained as a feature leading up towards a belvedere, from where we could see the whole domaine. Below us, the vineyards were held in the gentle curve of the hill. In the morning light the rows of vines shimmered like silken threads laid out carefully across the ground. I could feel the warm air beginning to rise up the slopes.

  Above us, Château Vézac stood on top of the hill, looking out over its domaine. The château was an attractive, well-proportioned building, in the process of being refurbished, made of creamy-brown coloured stone with a horseshoe-shaped twin flight of steps in front. Monsieur Vézac and his wife lived in the smaller house by the yard.

  I told Monsieur Vézac about my experience of grape picking the year before. He was impressed that I’d picked the Blanquette de Limoux grapes, and thought it was funny that I’d had to find out the hard way what tough work it was. I’d worked as a coupeur, I complained. The hardest part was having to squat. Il faut s’accroupir, we were ordered. We couldn’t bend, which would hurt the back and meant we couldn’t reach into the vines. We couldn’t kneel, which would hurt the knees and was too slow. Squatting was such a painful position to maintain. My thigh muscles had ached and seized up. My face and arms were dirty and sticky from the dust and sap on the leaves. The only time we moved out of the squatting position was to tip our buckets into the hotte at the end of the row.

  Monsieur Vézac smiled and assured me that at Château Vézac, all the grapes were picked by machine. The harvesting machines pick the grapes quickly, he explained, which is better for a consistent vintage.

  The wine cellar, le chai, was the whole basement of the château, three cavernous rooms with vaulted ceilings. New oak barrels with shining steel bands stood in rows, two tiers high. Light came in through a few small high windows set in the thick cellar walls and from new halogen lamps set into the stone floor. Monsieur Vézac was very proud of the newly refurbished cellar. He explained that the thick walls and small windows maintained a constant temperature in winter or summer, without any artificial heating or cooling, which was absolutely necessary for aging good wine. In those rows of barrels the wine was going through its slow, silent aging, as the tannins from the grapes achieved a synthesis with the tannins from the wood.

  We walked back down the hill. The fronts of the barns were open and everything inside was neatly and tidily stored: a small tractor, spraying equipment, crates, pipes and spare barrels. Taking up most of the space in one barn was a giant old wooden wine press, no longer used, with a huge rusting iron screw sticking up in the middle.

  The tasting room was in a converted barn next to the house. In the middle stood a stunning circular glass-topped table with a base made from gnarled old vine stems, buffed and varnished.

  Monsieur Vézac took three wine glasses from a shelf. We tried a pure Tannat red, a short-and-sturdy beret-wearing Gascon wine, the darkest ruby-red colour, strong and smooth – a real connoisseur’s wine, not for the fainthearted.

  We ate some nougat to clean our palates and then tasted some Pacherenc dry. Fruity and invigorating, it seemed to evoke the clear, refreshing air of the hills where the grapes are grown. There was an aftertaste I couldn’t identify, until Monsieur Vézac told me it was a hint of pierre à fusil, gun flint.

  We rounded off our tasting session with some sweet
Pacherenc moelleux, honeyed and smooth, not cloying, with subtle hints of caramelised pear, citrus and spicy in the finish. There was something powerful but subtle about the sweetness of the wine, which gave a feeling of contentment. I was impressed.

  It was only mid-morning and the wine was making my head spin. Monsieur Vézac and Georges seemed unaffected by it. They had some discussion about the weather, the soil, the imminent harvest and vinification techniques.

  As Georges and I drove off I thought how very lucky Monsieur Vézac and his family were to own those vineyards in that idyllic setting, devoting their lives to cultivating the vines and producing good wine. They worked hard and saw the fruits of their labour all around them.

  On the way back, Georges and I stopped at the Tonnellerie near the village, so that he could show me where the barrels were made. It was an unusual-shaped wooden building, with a roof that came right down to the ground on one side, and a high wall with big sliding doors on the other. We parked in the yard and pulled on the handle of one of the sliding doors, where someone had written TIREZ in marker pen.

  Inside the Tonnellerie was dark, with a brazier glowing at the far end and narrow shafts of light coming down from high windows. The smell of wood was very strong. The barrel maker, the tonnelier, saw us come in, put down his tools and came over to greet us. He wore a tough leather apron and thick leather gloves. His handshake had a grip like a vice. He had never shown an Englishman around his Tonnellerie before.

  He took us through the stages of barrel making. At one end of the workshop staves of wood were stacked under the low roof. On the top surface they looked dark, but when he turned one over it was silver coloured underneath. All the wood was oak. The trees were two hundred years old, felled in the dead of winter, under a waning moon, when the tree was resting and the sap had settled. The wood was seasoned for between twenty-six and thirty months. The first stage of making the barrel was to shape the staves into tapered sections. These were bound with metal hoops at one end, then the barrel was soaked and cooked so that the wood could be bent into the curved shape of the barrel and the hoops fitted over the other end. The barrels were toasted over an open fire, the flames just licking the inside, creating a fine charred layer on the inner walls. The toasting added flavour to the wine: a light toasting for white wine, a longer toasting for red. The final stage was to hammer in the top and bottom, and there it was, the finished barrique.