Low-budget

The summer events are fairly low-key this year (as is my only photo today!). This evening there was a showing of the latest film from local "docu-fiction" maker Yannick Séguier. He has made a series of three films dramatising the history of wine-making in the Languedoc from the early 19th century to the present. He uses a mixture of actors playing scenes in real locations, old postcards and film, and interviews with historians and wine professionals. 

This film is a synthesis of the previous films, more focused on narrative and interviews with historians and witnesses than the previous ones. It was a good overview of the ups and downs of wine-making over the last couple of centuries, both the tragedies (a confrontation between vignerons and police in 1976 that left one vigneron and one CRS dead and many injured) and the success of some key figures (looking at you, Gérard Bertrand) at giving Languedoc wines a much more respectable image at home and abroad by vastly improving quality. 

Unusually, there were lots of villagers and very few tourists at this event! (the competing all-you-can-drink apero at one of the local domaines that we could hear over the back wall might have been a factor).