Wine of the Day August 6, 2011 - Eat Local, Drink Localer

By a total fluke, I ran into my dentist at one of Vancouver's best coffee shops www.elysiancoffee.com about a week before we left for our trip.  He was getting a sandwich and he saw me and asked me what I had planned for the summer.  When I told him we were going to France, he asked, "Cool - what part?"  When I told him we were staying near Avignon, he said, "Oh my!  We go there all the time".  He then proceeded to join me for lunch and we spent the next 90 minutes discussing our itinerary, and he gave us some great places to see, especially the local markets.  Most Provencale villages and towns have a "market day" where they shut down a lot of the "downtown" streets and literally hundreds of vendors set up booths to sell their wares.  He then told me that the highlight of their trip is to visit an Auberge (Basically a small hotel with a restaurant) in the village of Entrechaux, called Auberge D'Anais.  

We popped in for lunch one afternoon after visiting the market at Vaisons la Romaine, which is an old Roman town, and it was incredible.   It is basically a farm house in the middle of the country, and they grow their own herbs, veggies, and meats on site to serve at their restaurant, which boasts an outdoor patio under the shade of olive trees during the summer.  We liked it so much we went back a few days later for dinner.  When we arrived, we learned that the farm also had a vineyard, and of course bottled their own wine.  We enjoyed a bottle of their Domaine de Tales with our dinner and it was incredibly good.

It was a full bodied wine with lots of spice notes that paired well with my smoked duck salad and my entree which was Lapin Provencale (yes I ate wascally wabbit).  Here is a pic of my salad, and I will spare you pics of the dead wabbit.  When we finished, we were marvelling at how fantastic it was to eat at a restaurant that grows its own viggies, farms its own meat, and produced its own wine.