The region’s wines are well known, the region less so. Nick Harman attends the yearly festival of art, culture food and wine in Minervois, Languedoc-Roussillon.

Red suitcases stand silently on stone islands by the banks of the River Cesse, one of the two rivers whose deep gorges have defended the picture-perfect village of Minerve through the ages. It’s been captured only once, in 1210, when Simon De Montfort’s army smashed the drinking well with massive stone catapults, the largest wryly named ‘bad neighbour’. Forced to choose death by dehydration or to surrender, the inhabitants chose the latter and 140 Cathar refugees, ‘the Perfects’ who refused to give up their faith, were then put to death on the Pope’s orders.

The suitcases symbolise flight and extermination and are just some of the otherwise cheerful installations created by local sculptors for Les Grands Chemins en Minervois, an annual festival in the region. Each chemin, or ‘path’, takes art, food or wine as its theme and guides the visitor through the richness of the area and of its artists, whether they work with a corkscrew, a paintbrush or a frying pan. Continue reading →