Pass the Salt

A couple of days ago we were visiting friends in a small hamlet a few kilometres away from our own and I saw what I imagined was a bit of old farm equipment parked up in their neighbour’s field. The people here never throw anything away; they all have massive barns crammed full of stuff, some of it really old and some of it still in working order. The French are famously reticent about inviting you into their homes but they love showing you around the interesting stuff they’ve stored away in their ‘grange’.

Anyway, sometimes the really big stuff spills out into the surrounding fields and it’s not unusual to see antiquated tractors or a rusty old plough with grass growing through it. But this was different – a sort of machine on wheels with big copper vats, chimney pipes and a rickety roof. Our friend John knew all about it. He’s an Englishman whose own jam-packed barn has made him a hit with the local French community. A mechanic by trade he loves old equipment and he knew all about this piece. It turns out it’s a mobile still owned by his friend Michel. The pair of them are fixing it up in in readiness for the ‘eau de vie’ season that starts in October.

For hundreds of years the people here have fermented part of their fruit crop and had it distilled into a potent sprit to help keep them happy and warm over the very cold winters. Presumably that’s why they named it eau de vie – water of life. I’d been told the tradition was dying out and that people now carted their barrels of fermented fruit to permanent distilleries but Michel told me this was wrong; his is one of about 25 mobile stills that continue to rattle along the country roads of the Dordogne every autumn.

Certainly the business is much more regulated these days. Licences are issued for a lifetime and the authoriites ensure the machinery is shut down and sealed at the end of each season. When the licence expires the police punch a hole in the still, which renders is useless until the new licence holder fixes it up. Michel’s still has three hole marks, one for each of it’s three previous owners; he is the fourth and this season will be his second on the road. His previous still (without wheels) is now gathering dust in John’s barn.

The mobile stills can’t move very fast so each one covers quite a small area. Michel says he travels around the hamlets in his circuit, parks up and builds fires under the two big copper vats. Fruit that’s been fizzing in people’s barn for months is tipped into these and boiled up to produce a vapour that’s directed through coils of copper pipe. Eventually the pipes deliver a primary distillation which is then put into a second vat where the process is repeated. The final distillate is diluted to around 45% abv. Michel charges 3.50 euros a litre to produce the spirit, which his customers bottle themselves with equipment they all seem to have tucked away in their barns.

Friends have given us bottles of their eau de vie as gifts. The first couple of sips are always a bit of a shock but then it gets smoother and it really is a nice way to finish a meal. It is usually made with apples, pears, peaches or plums but some people make cherry or strawberry eau-de vie. My favourite is plum, but to be honest I’ve always found the fruit is all in the aroma; the fire in the spirit makes them taste much the same.

I asked Michel which fruit he prefers and he told me he never drinks the stuff himself, he makes it for pleasure. It’s doesn’t earn him much money but for six weeks of the year he enjoys the conviviality of turning up in a hamlet and stoking up the copper while people roll out their barrels and hang around to watch and talk, in the same way they have for generations in the Périgord.

During the rest of the year he works in the town of Piegut where he continues another local tradition – he  makes false teeth. I’m not sure if I should believe this but apparently Piégut has the distinction of being the denture town of France in the same way that Nontron makes knives and Agen has prunes.

Unsurprisingly the denture tradition doesn’t get much attention in a region that has so much else to offer, but it’s a business that’s likely to outlive mobile distilling – if only because the authorities are no longer issuing lifetime licences. Michel says he is one of the three youngest mobile distillers in the départment so he may well be the last. When he passes on, his still will be punched with one final hole and I’m guessing it will come to rest in a Périgord barn – a dusty reminder of how people used to live in these parts.