It was during last years Festival del Catet , at one of those pre show meals when a man from Toulouse at our table decided to tell us about his family Aperitif; Vin d’Orange.
He said the recipe was a “family secret” but then proceded to give it to us anyway.
Now constant readers will remember my recent and successful attempts with Vin de Noix , which is really a home made fortified wine , and as this years festival del Catet is just finished, that and having a day off , I went trawling through my cook-books to find a recipe which resembled that heard last year.
I found it , in a book by Roger Verge ; Les Tables de mon Moulin . he says it is a traditional Provencal Apero .
Here is his recipe as he gave it.

Put into a bocal (a glass jar) Three bitter Oranges in quarters, 10 black peppercorns, 1 Vanilla pod, a half of a cinnamon stick , 1 litre of Rose wine, and 25cls of Cognac.
Leave this to macerate for 20 days , then add 200g of Sugar, leave for a further 10 days then filter and bottle.

There happened a moment of serendipity.
In my freezer I have still about a dozen vanilla pods which were left over from the restaurant, also in the freezer were a couple of dozen Seville Oranges ready to be made into Marmalade, we had just bought a large quantity of Rose in the co-op of Roquebrun and on my last trip to Spain I had bought a bottle of incredibly cheap Cognac.
My spice cupboard easily yielded up the cinnamon and the peppercorns so it was all systems present and ready to go.

Since my prettiest Bocal is Four litres I decided to multipy all by three (except the oranges by two ) and a mere five minutes later the above mixture was commencing its maceration.
In thirty days time I’ll get to taste it.