We went to Cassis in the morning, but Nick effectively and consistently distracted me from buying cassis the whole time we were there; unfair. We did have a lovely lunch and stroll along the charming port area, then waved Mom and Ben toward Marseille while we headed off to Aix-en-Provence, me grumbling the whole time about not getting the chance to pick up some authentic Marseillais soap from the city itself.
I have what I consider a reasonable wish-list of Provençal products: olives, olive oil, tapenade, soap, lavender blossoms, lavender honey, something with truffles, cassis, pastis, herbes de Provence, and plenty of that pale, almost gray rosé wine. Nick’s mission, naturally, is to sidetrack me as often as is humanly possible in my quest for these items in the hope that I’ll run out of time before I manage to spend too much money. Or before I bore him to tears during my various deliberations; I think he’d really prefer to avoid that, as well. He did already jump on a key grenade by picking up some truffle vinegar in Barjols, so it’s entirely possible that speeding up my selection process is, in fact, his primary motivation.
How frustrating it must be for him, then, that I like to keep my list nice and flexible.
For example, almost as soon as we arrived in Aix, I spotted calissons, and did some prompt mental editing. I see them all the time at the more upscale of the grocery stores near us: little almond-shaped cookie things with sugar icing. They come in a range of colors and packaging, apparently reinvented for every season and holiday, but the most intriguing thing about them to me is how bizarrely expensive they all seem to be. I mean, sure, some of them have edible silver and gold leaf on the icing, but even the regular white or blue ones run way higher than your average cookie, so I’ve never actually bought any, and my curiosity has just had to rage unsatisfied.
The full label on the boxes, though, often reads “Calissons d’Aix.” I had unwittingly stumbled upon the source of these strange little confections, and even Nick’s endless detours through bookstores couldn’t stop me then. One Provençal cookbook and a couple of Roman history books later, I made a beeline for a ubiquitous but reasonably high-quality chain you see all over the south called La Cure Gourmande, and picked myself out some calissons at long last. They turn out to be delicious little bites: soft on the bottom with a little crunch from the icing, and the candied melon ground in with the almond flour adds a kick that borders on the fermented. Lovely.
It even made up for the cassis incident, especially since on the way home we decided to stop at an honest-to-goodness winery. On the way out Nick had recognized the name from the bottle we had ordered at dinner last night, and a quick calculation of the likely markup gave us a guess of the per-bottle price that seemed reasonable enough, so we stopped by.
Caveaux Arnaud is a 100% family-run business. They grow the grapes, make them into wine, bottle it, and sell it, and the whole operation is organic. We were shocked to learn that their trade with the local restaurants leads to a whopping 641% price markup over retail, and after an emergency whispered conference we grabbed a couple of cases of their reserve (the restaurant buys the medium-level stuff, but all of their wines are a distinct bargain when bought directly from the source).
Of course, we weren’t going to be allowed to just…do that like that. First, the worried wife had to make sure that we understood that we were buying something different from what we had had the night before. We danced around “Yes, but this is probably even better–and only €1.10 more” as delicately as we could until the husband roped us into at least trying what we were buying. And what we drank last night. And their red. And their reserve red. And then, having pinned us down as Americans, he insisted on giving us a tour of the vats, introducing us to his rather taciturn son, and telling us all about why he loves Americans (a U.S. family sponsored his sister after WWII; you can’t imagine how very present WWII has been every time we leave Paris).
Anyway, we wound up spending over half an hour chatting and touring, and still left with exactly what we had originally picked out, but no one seemed to mind at all; it was a pleasant little surprise interlude. It’s a lucky thing that we did come out of it with plenty of wine, though, because we’ll be seven at dinner tonight, and Nick is working on some specialties of his own: chicken with olives, tomato-and-fennel cakes, and herbed potatoes. Prep work, here I come….