Cabrières d’Arignon

After the hilltop roller-coaster ride of Oppède, Ménerbes, Bonnieux, Roussillon and Gordes, the country settles down into a wide, peaceful valley with towns that are more practical, if less like etchings from eighteenth-century romances. At Cabrières d’Avignon near the lovely watery town of L’Isle-sur-la Sorgue. Michel Bosc and his family have a café where villagers come to discuss the relative merits of the year’s Côtes du Lubéron. Michel Bosc’s parents worked as bakers and pastry-makers in the Bouches-du-Rhône area, where in truffle and quince season, it was not uncommon for villagers to arrive mid-afternoon with one or both ingredients to have them wrapped in separate bundles of bread dough and left in the oven, still warm from the morning’s breads-baking, until supper. By then the truffles and quinces would have worked their magic on the little nests of bread, and the result, when they were cut open, was a burst of indescribable perfume.