Sublime

The beginning of a hot summer day in the Lubéron, sitting on the terrace with a bowl of café crème, the bees rummaging in the lavender, and the light turning the forest to a dark burnished green, is better than waking up suddenly rich.

Two Provençal oils, from Nyons and Les Baux, already have A.O.C. status, and the oils of Haute Provence will have joined them by the end of 1999.

The rich, insulated by money and protected by privilege, were not temperamentally equipped to deal with the harsher realities of life. When faced with loss of any kind, they tended to behave like spoiled children—selfish, unreasonable, often hysterical. She’d seen it all before.

He got up and went across the room to his library, a long run of floor-to-ceiling bookcases, stopping in front of the section where he kept his wine books. There, in various stages of wear and tear, were Penning-Rowsell’s The Wines of Bordeaux, Lichine’s Encyclopedia of Wines and Spirits, Forest’s Monseigneur Le Vin, the current year’s Guide Hachet

Tourism makes an important contribution to the local economy and provides a living for many talented people—several cooks among them—who might otherwise have to look elsewhere to make ends meet. Let’s take, for example, the only two good restaurants Reichl was able to find in the whole of Provence: the Auberge de Noves and the Bistrot du Paradou. B