A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE: ‘LES VIGNES BUISSONNIÈRES’
From ANDREW JEFFORD — Decanter Newsletter — Monday September 2, 2013
This was, perhaps, the most endearing French event I have taken part in since arriving here three years ago.
Over the course of a single weekend, 3,200 people (paying €65 each) are dispatched on a 6-km vineyard walk up hill and down dale, over brooks, along cliff lines and through scrubby forests.
Along the way, they stop to sit and eat a six-course lunch of ferocious ambition (example: ‘la soupe de cèpes glacés au vinaigre de xérès, escalope de foie gras poêlée, crème légère à l’huile de truffe et coriandre’ — and that was just the starter) at a rate of approximately one course per kilometer; wash the food down with 60 or so local wines; enjoy musical interventions; and read a long series of quotations chalked up on blackboards which are hung, faintly surreally, from branches and bushes. I felt Peter Greenaway should have been on hand to film it all, with a Michael Nyman soundtrack. (suite…)