The Languedoc , for a hundred years the Wine Carafe of Europe and then, as she was overtaken by cheaper imports, the Wine Lake , is having to change to keep her head above the water.

This was all to observe as Síle and took a stroll around St. Genies yesterday.

There we saw a farmer ruthlessly ploughing up his old vines.
Probably because their grapes no longer are to the modern taste.

He may replant with new, more fashionable vines or go the way of his near neighbour.

And plant wheat.

Not as hugely untraditional a move as it first seems.

Cereal crops were the mainstay of the area until the vines took over in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as witnessed by the many stubs of windmills which dot the Languedoc and by the origins of the name Beziers, which means, it is thought, “The Place of Two Harvests”.