Apero

Apero

In the tenth century at the Abbey St. Michel in Gaillac some monks planted the first vineyards of what is now the Gaillac Wine Appellation. Last night I went wih my English neighbours Anita and Ray to an apero at this ancient Abbey.

Come for an apero! The French shorten the word aperatif to apero when they ask you round for a drink in the evening. This habit of shortening many words or worse turning lots of phrases into acronyms means a foreigner like me has to almost learn a third language in order to get along linguistically.
Every second Friday night during July and August there is an apero in the garden behind the Abbey. For the princely sum of five euros you can buy a plate with olives, cheese, salami and chips along with a ticket for two glasses of wine. Then you find a table and chair and bask in the wonderful evening light on the banks of the Tarn River and listen to the band play and watch the French dance. They dance at every opportunity. No matter what the music, it is the same dance and I swear every one of them can dance at birth. A different band plays each week. Last night it was Salsa.  It could be New Orleans Jazz or Country and Western. About two hundred people can fit into the grounds and it is always crowded with young and old.  There seems to be no age bar at social gatherings here, unlike Australia and also I'm told the UK where neither oldies nor children are truly welcome.
While the young and not so young danced or gossiped, the children played happily in the tiny vineyard "garden" planted in the grounds. Anita commented that in England they could well be classed as "out of control" .  French children are extremely well behaved and as they are taken everywhere with their parents from birth they are very well adjusted socially.

It was a great evening and watching the dancers and the happy faces of the crowd reminded how much my small enterprise Vin de Tarn  has to offer for visitors to this area. My groups become more like family rather than simply clients or tourists during a lively busy week here in lovely Labarthe-Bleys. They get to experience a real Taste of the Tarn on evenings like this.