Jean-Florent’s Pineau des Charentes

We’re finishing dinner at The Neighbours’ farmhouse; roast lamb, melting, pink and succulent, from one of the pom-poms slaughtered earlier this year. A small shadow grows its way up the window panes in The Neighbours’ front door. It crunches up the gravel path, knocks briskly at the door.

Jean-Florent exchanges three kisses with The Neighbour’s Wife and nods and shakes our hands. He has dressed carefully for the unusually cold April night. A soft, checked woollen scarf is wrapped and tied under his chin and the zip on his quilt-collared jacket is pulled tight. His ears stick out from under his flat wool cap.

He hands The Neighbour a small, foil-wrapped parcel. Inside is a portion of his ‘civet’ – pork skin, left-over meat and herbs boiled in red wine. It is Jean-Florent’s secret recipe and he says it is very good.

After much encouragement he is persuaded to join us. The parcel is placed at the top of the fridge and an extra chair is brought to the table.

The Neighbour’s Wife pours Jean-Florent a glass of his own Pineau des Charentes from one of the many bottles in the cellar.

Every year he makes 40 litres of pineau from the freshly harvested fruit of his own vines. Warm, honeyed gold, it is pure grape juice, he tells us – just that and throat-burning eau de vie.

And every time The Neighbour does him a good turn, he receives a bottle – and I’m told it’s a good deal.

At 78, Jean-Florent has the charm and good manners of an elderly rural gentleman. He eyes are kind and he speaks gently, with a heavy Charentais’ patois that his wife understands, but not their children.

He asks us to remember him to Monique; he knows her from long ago when she delivered bread to his commune on her bicycle, the loaves wrapped in ferns to keep them fresh.

“My how that woman could talk,” he smiles, “though not quite as much as my wife.”

He finishes his Pineau wishes us all a pleasant evening and leaves; the neat little Frenchman crunching his way back down The Neighbours’ path.