LearnSweden Blog

To Champagne

by Per Svangren

 My wife and I  went to France. We went by car from Stockholm, via Denmark, and Germany to big and lovely France. Our goal was to reach the Riviera and La Londe, close to Toulon, where we rented a house for a week. Also there, we would be meeting our children and their boy/girlfriends.
So there will be some blogs about the trip, starting today with Champagne.

The district of Champagne is quite small but contains many vineyards producing the lovely, sparkling white vine that has become so famous that the producers  have problems nowadays to produce enough for all buyers.
We stoped at many vineyards in and around Epernay and tasted and bought a lot of bottles. One of our favourites was Eric Isselée, where we also stayed over  night in a lovely little room in the middle of the wine fields. The sun was shining and it was quite warm when we arrived. So after placing all of things in the room, we took a bottle of cold champagne an sat down in the garden. Surrounded by grape vines we enjoyed the lovely taste of a bottle from Eric Isselée.

 

Celebrating the Colors of Autumn

:: The Colors of Autumn

Truffles

The black gold, the mushrooms of Gotland, Bourgone truffles. Every fall the season starts sometime in September and lasts until sometime in December. Around 40 truffle dogs, Lagottos are working with their noses around the forests to find the truffles. It grows about 10 cenimeters or deeper under ground and you need a very good nose to find them. Lagotto are perfect for it. They are traditionally used in Italy, but they have become our tradition here in Sweden too.

Gotland is a good place for truffles, but they have also been found on Öland and in a few other places, but Gotland is the best place. You can´t pick truffles in other peoples land, so you need to own your own forest for it or pick in other people's forest by invitation only.

We have a big parcel of land, but we also pick for other people and our dog Diesel is a truffle king. Very fast he scan the area we are in and dig out the truffles. This weekend he picked over two kilos in about two hours. So we were very pleased and all the truffles were sold out directly.

You can eat truffles raw or heated up to maximum 70 degrees Celcius. Otherwise they loose their taste. If you have more than you can eat during the two weeks they are fresh, a good thing to do is truffle butter. Just cut small pieces of truffles into room temperature butter, stir and mix. Then put it in the freezer and you got a perfect taste for fried meet, boiled fish or in an omelette.