Sublime
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Probably the most fashionable Provençal oils are those from the valley of Les Baux, and if you happen to be near Maussane-les-Alpilles just after the olives are gathered toward the end of the year, you can find those oils in the tiny Maussane cooperative.
Peter Mayle • Encore Provence: New Adventures in the South of France (Vintage Departures)
Our friends had rented their house to an English family for August, and they were going to spend the month in Paris on the proceeds. According to them, all the Parisians would be down in Provence, together with untold thousands of English, Germans, Swiss, and Belgians. Roads would be jammed; markets and restaurants impossibly full. Quiet villages w
... See morePeter Mayle • A Year in Provence (Vintage Departures)


The agent will go into rhapsodies about the Roman roof tiles, the courtyard, the two-hundred-year-old plane trees, and the wine cellar. He will tell you about the microclimate, sheltered from the mistral but perfectly placed to benefit from the summer breezes. He will tell you every last detail about the house except where it is.
Peter Mayle • Encore Provence: New Adventures in the South of France (Vintage Departures)
More recently, Paul Ricard, who became Marseille’s most celebrated and flamboyant tycoon—he once took fifteen hundred of his staff to Rome to be blessed by the Pope—decided as a young man to make his own brand of pastis. It wasn’t an original idea. The Pernod distillery near Avignon had turned its production over to pastis when the dangerously addi
... See morePeter Mayle • Encore Provence: New Adventures in the South of France (Vintage Departures)

Marseille may be a rough old girl with a dubious reputation, but she has considerable charm, and there are patches of great beauty among the modern ugliness. Also, I happen to like Marseille’s independent, slightly overblown personality, and I particularly admire the cheek with which it has appropriated both the French national anthem and the most
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