If you really want to make good wine, you have to make sacrifices, along with those to Bacchus we made a physical sacrifice by cutting of half of our grapes. Only this way you can make a wine that after one sip your taste buds are doing summersaults out of sheer joy. At the beginning of June thirty Dutch men and women arrived here, whose sole common point was that were all wine lovers, at our Château la Tulipe de la Garde. They were willing to risk back and fingers for our yearly grape-castration: the ‘Vendanges Vertes.’

Cliquez ici

Piquenique

By the time your stomach starts to make rumbling noises take the nearest exit. Drive into the countryside for a while (remain on some form of paved road) and search for of peaceful spot which is rich in shadow, preferably next to some form of water.
This could take a while, but in lovely France there is always a beautiful spot ready to be discovered.

Draai een halfje rosé open (handig schroefdopje) en vul de zojuist zelfgesneden glaasjes.
Je kunt natuurlijk ook wijnglazen meenemen.

Rub garlic on two slices of bread for wife, girlfriend, friend or pet (or all of the above) and you have:
1. Totally independently decided your walk of life
2. Eaten well and healthy
3. Rested listened to the birds and enjoyed the view. So you can drive on for a few more hours, sans problême.

PS
Especially with children a piquenique like this is much better than the shoving to get some 'food' in one of those rubbish restaurants. The kids have the adventure of finding a spot and eating in the wild and a wineboer’s lunch is much better than the fattening junk you get at a highway restaurant. Moreover, this way the growing posterity will have the opportunity to fall out of trees, get stung by an interesting insect or to fall into the water, which is still better than hanging in a plastic chair while eating a burned sausage and some fries that have withered away.

Why would anyone with half a brain cell go to Bourg-en-Bresse
In France the better wines have an A.O.C.: an Appelation d’Origine Contrôlée. Meaning that the origin of the wine is verified. So you can’t ship a load of South-African junk over here, bottle it, put a Bordeaux label on it and then sell that for a ridiculous price. That is against the law and they check it. Because the wine we make ourselves, La Tulipe, is a Bordeaux wine, we receive with a certain regularity letters of the controlling Bordeaux-wine-institute INAO. They send spies to look into every nook and cranny in the entire world and sneakily buy bottles of Bordeaux. These are tasted, tested and if necessary, chemically analyzed. If everything is found to be in order, the wineboer gets a very formal note saying that they tasted his wine and that it meets the demands consumers could reasonably have. If that isn’t the case, and the wine is found to be disgusting, than the wineboer will get a warning. And that they do well, because if you get three of those warnings you’ll be kicked out of the A.O.C and you’ll only be allowed to label your wine ‘Vin de Table’.

Cliquez ici for such a letter.

So a wonderful institute, guarding the quality of our wine. Putting our minds at ease, they should do that for other stuff as well, one might think. Well they do, those eccentric French don’t just check their wine, but also the rest of what appears on the table. Cheese, meat, olives, olive oil, honey, nuts, right up to the chili peppers - everything is strictly verified and given a quality mark. And that is why we made a stop in the dreary Bourg-en-Bresse: because of what is known to scamper around here.

The Maitre des Poules prepares his precious courtyardbirds in four ways: 1. Baked crispy without any further fussing about except a few shrooms and some gratin potatoes. And 2,3 and 4 are all things you don’t want covered in a taste hiding cream sauce.

The winemaker has had enough chicken to last him a lifetime.
And what does he get for dessert?
An 'Oeuf à la neige', a dessert in the shape of a chicken.

PS
All kidding aside, the food is delicious and the parton cuisiner JP Vullin is a sweetheart and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Obviously the chickens were long dead.
Later I asked the chef what he thought was the best way to make the chicken. First he looked around to see if no one was within earshot and then he whispered: 'Just baked and crispy. At most with some shrooms. The rest is all nonsense I only do that because people want something special. And that is the way I make my money.’

Here’s the address. It’s recommended.

In the next Slurp! it continues: the best chicken Live!