Inspecting a glass of freshly poured merlot

In our never ending quest for the good life it was inevitable that we’d have to broach the topic of wine: the drink of choice for those with refined taste. The wonderful thing about the journey into the world of wine is that more than any other alcohol, it allows for a study of history, geography, and culture that is simply unparalleled.

To help us in our quest to understand wine, we need look no further than the Guardian Guide to Wine. In this excellent online presentation, we can learn where wine is made, what makes some wine cost more than others, how to read a label, and so on. Please do use this excellent resource….I most certainly will :)

Courances, France

The UK Telegraph is counting down the 50 Most Beautiful Gardens in the World. Why don’t we take a look at some of the European selections?

Courances, France (image above)
Is this the perfect example of the French formal garden? Created in the mid-17th century – reputedly by Jean, father of the great Andre Le Nôtre – the garden is filled with water in many moods, although it is serenity that sets the tone. In front of the château, to the south, is an elaborate box parterre that prefaces a perfect rectangular still pool, surrounded by lawns and trees. This vista continues along a broad grassy walk to a small circular pool with a statue of Hercules (symbolising strength and virtue) and on to a larger pool and amphitheatre. The woodland on each side of the main vista contains many more delights, with allées cutting through and pools, canals and cascades to discover. The other side of the house is dignified by a pair of long rectangular canals. The singularity of the conception is what appeals so much and lends this place its sublime beauty.

Alhambra, Spain

Alhambra, Spain
The fabled patios of this Moorish fortress-palace in Granada, constructed between the 9th and 14th centuries, still retain an extraordinary sequestered atmosphere, especially if a visitor has the foresight to plan a visit to avoid the crowds. Spaces such as the Court of the Lions (late-14th century) are not gardens in the familiar sense, in that they do not contain plants, but the sight and sounds of water, the play of light and shadow and the decorative effects of the rich yet delicate carving and stucco-work turn these outdoor living rooms into works of art. Above the palace proper and across a gorge lies another palace complex, the Generalife, which contains more greenery and is not as formally organised. Its highlight is the celebrated long, rectangular pool adorned with arching fountains in the Patio de la Acequia.

Isola Bella, Italy

Isola Bella, Italy
A garden that looks like a ship is worthy of celebration indeed, and this extraordinary place – situated in the middle of Lake Maggiore and accessible only by boat – does not fail to live up to expectations. It was Count Carlo Borromeo’s idiosyncratic vision in the 1630s which saw this villa and garden constructed over a period of 40 years. The island is oddly shaped and rises naturally at one end, which means that there is no apparent rhyme or reason to the “formal” design of terraces and parterres, which seem to multiply as one moves on. It is all dictated by topography. From a distance it is the tobelisks on the highest terraces that help lend such a ship-like air to the place, but when one is on the island the series of six connecting grottoes beneath the palace command the attention first, followed by the monumental stone “theatre” topped by a statue of a unicorn.

Giardino Giusti, Italy

Giardino Giusti, Italy
In On the Making of Gardens (1909) Sir George Sitwell of Renishaw Hall described the “intensely solemn loveliness” of this urban garden in Verona, which takes a hold of most people who visit it (Goethe and John Evelyn included). Tall, elegant cypresses at first seem to define it, but the garden’s several levels are most affecting on the ground, with the flatness of the lowest accentuated by the smoothness of boxwood parterres punctuated by modest fountains and statues. The garden was originally laid out in the 1570s, with fountains, statues, grottoes and a labyrinth, all of which survive. Later additions include a late 18th-century parterre in the French style, a woodland area with grotto and decorative stone masks on the highest ground, together with a belvedere offering views of the city. The subtle organisation of these spaces chimes with a modern sensibility.

Powis Castle, Wales

Powis Castle, Wales
This is a garden which inspires passionate devotion among a large segment of the garden cognoscenti; it draws people back again and again. Powis is an unusual fusion of a steeply terraced garden in the Italian Renaissance tradition, with 20th-century herbaceous planting of the highest quality. The terraces were created in the mid 17th century at a time when the house, which started life as a 13th-century seat of the Princes of Powis, was also being remodelled. What we see today is a remarkable composition of multiple terraces of lawns, topiary and themed borders, giving onto a massive lawn, then rising again into woodland, with views of the fields beyond that. It is quite a spectacle. Original 18th-century statuary has survived here where it has been lost to so many other gardens. The planting detail is much enjoyed and constantly changing: colour is certainly not eschewed and fuchsias are in abundance, together with pelargoniums, nasturtiums and a many more tender specimens.

Villa Lante, Italy

Villa Lante, Italy
For the majority of seasoned visitors, this garden just east of Viterbo is simply the most sublime Renaissance garden experience of all – a hillside water garden of the 1560s where the twin pavilions that act as “the house” are absorbed by and remain subordinate to the rhythms of the landscape design. And what rhythms these are – the water first emerges from the gnarly Grotto of the Deluge at the top of the garden, complemented by flanking Palladian loggias that act as small dining pavilions. This tension between smooth rationality and rough nature is continued throughout the design, with rationalism triumphing in the large, ordered fountain parterre at the foot of the garden. Perhaps the most memorable moment is the Fountain of the Table on the third level of four, which consists of a long stone table with a central runnel down its length. Cardinal Gambara, who commissioned the garden, made reference to his family name by using the crayfish motif – “gambara” means crayfish.

A village in the south of France

The word “France” conjures up images of wine and cheese, of art and beauty, of quaint villages and the metropolis that is Paris. A compact country, France is nevertheless quite diverse in itself as one goes from the Norman coast along the English Channel through its Midlands and down into the Mediterranean south.

Anthony Peregrine, a British reporter for the UK Times, so fell in love with France that he’s moved there and has married a local. He writes an excellent series on France for his publication entitled Peregrine’s France.

In Peregrine’s France, you’ll learn about thebest towns in Provence, the Smart Guide to Gascony and you’ll be taken on a virtual cheese tour of the country.

Visit Peregrine’s France and share his journey with him.

Versailles’ South Gardens

Few places on Earth can compare to Château de Versailles when it comes to sheer aesthetic beauty. From the dramatic facades of the structures to the finely defined interiors, and of course the splendour of the gardens.

Take a look at this gallery of images from Versailles.

Marie Pierre-Manet Beauzac claims to be the last living Cagot, a caste of European outcasts from the Pyrennes of Spain and France

Genealogy projects sometimes take strange turns. Whether you’re using centuries old birth records from churches tucked away in remote hills on the European continent to sending away for your DNA results that end up revealing a 5% African gene presence, you’re more often than not presented with unexpected surprises.

Marie Pierre-Manet Beauzac of the French Pyreenes is no exception. The arrival of children in her life led her on to a quest to discover her roots and what she found was quick a shock: she is descended from the Cagots, a people that were outcasts from Medieval Europe. We can’t be certain that she is the world’s last Cagot, but what we do know is that the existence of the outcast Cagots in Europe is not everyday knowledge. Much about the Cagots is blurred thanks to the fog of history and the deliberate destruction of documents by Cagots themselves who wished to be rid of their lower-caste status.

Here are some thoughts on where the Cagots came from, who they are, and what we do know about their treatment in Europe:

The people first emerge in documents around the 13th century. By then they are already regarded as an inferior caste, the “untouchables” of western France, or northern Spain. In medieval times the Cagots – also knows as Agotes, Gahets, Capets, Caqueux, etc – were divided from the general peasantry in several ways. They had their own urban districts: usually on the malarial side of the river. These dismal ghettoes were known as Cagoteries; traces of them can still be found in Pyrenean communities such as Campan or Hagetmau.

For hundreds of years, Cagots were treated as different and inferior. In the churches, they had to use their own doors (at least 60 Pyrenean churches still boast “Cagot” entrances); they had their own fonts; and they were given communion on the end of long wooden spoons. Marie-Pierre adds: “When a Cagot came into a town, they had to report their presence by shaking a rattle. Just like a leper, ringing his bell.”

Daily Cagot life was likewise marked by apartheid. Cagots were forbidden to enter most trades or professions. They were forced, in effect, to be the drawers of water and hewers of wood. So they made barrels for wine and coffins for the dead. They also became expert carpenters: ironically they built many of the Pyrenean churches from which they were partly excluded.

Some of the other prohibitions on the Cagots were bizarre. They were not allowed to walk barefoot, like normal peasants, which gave rise to the legend that they had webbed toes. Cagots could not use the same baths as other people. They were not allowed to touch the parapets of bridges. When they went about, they had to wear a goose’s foot conspicuously pinned to their clothes.

Quite interesting. Here’s the speculation on their background:

Their provenance is opaque. That is partly because the Cagots themselves have disappeared from view. During the French Revolution, the laws against Cagots were formally abandoned – indeed many Cagots pillaged local archives and erased any record of their ancestry. After 1789, the Cagots slowly assimilated into the general populace; many may have even emigrated.

Nonetheless, there are historical accounts that afford an intriguing glimpse. Contemporary sources describe them as being short, dark and stocky. Confusingly, some others saw them as blonde and blue eyed. Francisque Michel’s Histoire des races maudites (History of the cursed races, 1847), was one of the first studies. He found Cagots had “frizzy brown hair”. He also found at least 10,000 Cagots still scattered across Gascony and Navarre, still suffering repression – nearly 70 years after the Cagot caste was “abolished”.

Since Michel’s pioneering work, various historians have tried to solve the Cagot mystery. One theory is that they were lepers, or contagious cretins. That would explain the rules against Cagots “touching” anything used by non-Cagots. However, this theory falls down on the many descriptions of the Cagots being perfectly healthy, even sturdy.

Another idea, as Marie-Pierre implies, is that the Cagots were slaves of the Goths who inundated France in the Dark Ages. From here, etymologists have deduced that “ca-got” comes from “cani Gothi” – “dogs of the Goths”. But that idea fails to explain the many variants of the Cagot name, nor does it square with the geographical distribution. In fact, the Cagot name probably derives from “cack” or “caca”, a term of abuse in itself.

Last year, a new theory emerged, propounded by the British writer Graham Robb in his book The Discovery of France. Robb suggests that the Cagots were originally a guild of skilled medieval woodworkers; in this light, the bigotry against them was commercial rivalry, which became fossilised and regimented over time.

So who is right? It’s a confusing picture. But Marie-Pierre Manet-Beauzac, “the last Cagot in the world”, has no doubts where she comes from: “I believe the Cagots are descendants of Moorish soldiers left over from the 8th century Muslim invasion of Spain and France. That’s why some people called them ‘Saracens’. I am quite dark, and my daughter Sylvia is the darkest in her class.”

And her theory, of the Cagots being converted but still-distrusted Muslims, is supported by many French experts: because it neatly explains the religious disapproval of the Cagots. As for the geographical spread, that’s probably linked to the St James pilgrim routes.