All in a days work

Every year around this time a strange vehicle arrives just outside the town near the river, and each day for about 3 weeks vans can be seen driving up to it depositing large blue containers and assorted others (like large black dustbins in our case). What is going on I hear you ask...well it is the annual distillation!
Whenever we have sufficient fruit, in our case small yellow plums which our friend says are not mirabelle, but are reine claude (greengages)  - I don't agree with him as they are very small for greengages, we collect them and add sugar. When they have stopped fizzing, we seal them up and leave them over the winter. Then at the end of May we take them to the man by the river who turns them into eau de vie. We then use the eau de vie to make an aperitif called Epine (the recipe of which changes from family to family, but is a closely guarded secret), which is of a similar strength to sherry.

All of this is controlled by the local Mairie, and you have to have a permit to distill in order to turn your fruit into alcohol. Unfortunately, most of the permits are held by quite elderly people, and we are led to believe that the bureaucrats in Paris are determined to end the practice and will not allow the permits to be handed on to sons or daughters when the permit holder dies. It's a shame when a tradition in the countryside is not allowed to continue. Something is lost.

One of the fruits he was distilling the day we collected ours was strawberries - the smell was wonderful. It's a wonder he doesn't spend every day in a fuzz of alcohol! Certainly the fish in the river must be happy at this time of year! I wonder if the fishermen notice anything different about the taste of the fish they catch!

Well, we got 20 litres which I thought was quite respectable, but my neighbour Dominic has just told me he got 50 litres! Phew! Still, he says you never know if you will have enough fruit and it always pays to have some in stock. I suppose if the permits are being removed we won't know if we will get any next year so it's as well to have some in.

Our French friends put a little in the bottom of their empty coffee cups at the end of a meal - just to finish off the dregs. Me, I prefer a good malt whisky, thank you very much.