Season of mellow fruitfulness

Yesterday saw us brave the narrow, twisting road over the mountains to Collobrières. There isn't much to Collobrières town, apart from a nice medieval bridge and ducks on the river. The trip there, though, is spectacular, with the winding, single-track road snaking amongst impenetrable plantations of chestnut, cork-oak and mediterranean pine. The colours in autumn are indecently spectacular. We looked for mushrooms, getting hopelessly entangled in the undergrowth. Other pickers had found the local delicacy, sanguines, a kind of scarlet chanterelle. All we found were two parasol mushrooms (a large example above, standing a foot high from the ground) and a cèpe. We didn't dare eat them, as there is a similar-looking lepiota species which is deadly poison.

The real reason, as always, for going to Collobrières is the Confiserie Azuréenne, which makes marrons glacés and other chestnut-based, more-ish delicacies. Choosing one's poison is difficult, and probably impossible without a pause for reflection, aided by their ambrosial chestnut ice-cream. There is always a risk, with delicacies rarely consumed, that the memory has plumped up the recollection of goodness, and the retasting turns out to be a disappointment. Not so with Collobrières ice-cream. Words fail, or rather are smothered in a bouchée of total papillary delight.

The ice-cream set us on the right course for purchases (chestnut flour, marron glacé fragments, crème de marrons, and several kilos of ice-cream for the Xmas and New Year season), and made us feel we were in the right place at the right time, despite the absence of anywhere to eat or drink, and the dreich reminder of a steady drizzle down our necks.

On the way back, we stopped at a vineyard to sample their wares. Very dry rosés, lightish reds, available in bottles, bags, or whatever container you could bring along. There was one chap who filled a jerrycan with the rouge. He seemed to know what he was doing. We bought a selection, and headed home through the increasing mist, bearing gifts which certainly exceeded those of the three wise men when they were preparing Xmas.