Mayle writes, “These are informal, good-natured affairs, organized by people whose sole desire is to give you a taste of pleasure, whether your particular weakness is a fresh sardine or an elderly cheese.” He continues by saying the range of festivals “supports the widely held conviction that, wherever you are in Provence, you need never go hungry.”
Throughout the year, food festivals are governed by the seasons to display regional delicacies - rice, olives, truffles, lemons, melons, garlic. It also has a bit of the wild side with truffle hunters and their golden-nosed dogs secretly plying their trade to keep their sources out of the sight of others, while game hunters with noisier instruments roam the woods in search of wild boar. Provence is an agricultural region bursting with grape vineyards, olive groves, fig trees, and asparagus fields. Provence is truly a magical place that spoke to Mayle through its food - a place where vin rose is “a taste of summer in the glass”, where making goat cheese is an art form, where eating a black truffle on foie gras is “the closest thing on earth to having heaven in your mouth”, and where the night markets provide the most pleasant grocery shopping experience he can ever imagine.īy taking up residence in such a unique locale, Mayle grew accustomed to picking up on the trends of the seasons by observing what farmers were up to and listening to the gossip of the patrons in local cafés. It started out as “a year” and now, after a quarter of a century of Provencal living, Mayle is taking a look back in My 25 Years in Provence (Appetite by Random House, 2018). Mayle knew it too, since he has written many sequels that thread together his unique and exquisitely described outlook on French food and culture. I knew I was onto something of this calibre when I first read A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle when it came out in 1989. Some books are so seminal that from their first appearance they become untouchable, iconic archetypes, paving the way for future authors to imitate, but never replicate - a good storytelling recipe.
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