During their few years working in Ireland, Anne-Marie Jamand and Martin Guillemot delighted everyone with their extraordinary cheesemaking skills, and then astonished everyone with their ability to grow vegetables to the same exactingly high standards as their cheesemaking.
They have now returned to France, for personal reasons, and have begun to lease a pair of gites (self-catering units) in a house which they bought in Feilluns, a tiny village of 50 people which nevertheless boast a wine co-op. Some 90 km from Spain and only 45 km from Perpignan, the area fuses the cultures of the Languedoc (currently one of the most exciting wine-making regions of the world) with that of Catalonia. "We feel far from Ireland and still so close that we dream to make many Irish guests discover the richness of this area," they write, and after the bad weather we have had, I suspect Martin and AnneMarie's dreams will quickly come true. I couldn't think of anything nicer.
Anne Marie Jaumaud, Martin Guillemot, 7 rue du Coulouminier, 66730 Pezilla de Conflent, France tel/fax: 00 33 468977310.