Where to stay

Prices quoted are for a double room based on two people sharing.

Château les Farcies du Pech’ Luxury bed and breakfast surrounded by vines – excellent wine is made here also, and cellar visits are easily available for guests. From €110 including breakfast. Hameau de Pécharmant, 00 33 6 30 19 53 20, chambre-hote-bergerac.com

La Chartreuse du Bignac A 17th-century manor in a peaceful and beautiful spot on a hilltop. From €145, room only. Saint Nexans, 00 33 5 53 22 12 80, abignac.com

Château des Vigiers There’s a glamorous feel to this large-scale golf hotel. From €280 in the main château, room only. Le Vigier, Monestier, 00 33 5 53 61 50 00, vigiers.fr

Château Gauthié Stay in a tree house in the grounds of a lovely château near Issigeac. You can choose from a romantic retreat for two, or a larger cabin for five. There are also bedrooms in the main house. From €120 including breakfast (from €90 in the main château). Monmarves, Issigeac, 00 33 5 53 27 30 33, chateaugauthie.com

Travel Information

Currency is the euro. France is an hour ahead of GMT. Bergerac has a continental climate, with the warmer months from March to late October. Winter is the best time for truffle hunting.

Getting There

Ryanair (ryanair.com) has direct flights from London, Bristol and Liverpool to Bergerac’s Roumanière airport.

Flybe (flybe.com) flies from London, Exeter and Southampton.
Resources - Les Vins de Bergerac (vins-bergerac.fr) Discover more about the region’s wines and wine tourism.

Bergerac Tourism (00 33 5 53 57 03 11,bergerac-tourisme. com) Resources to help you plan a visit to the region.

Further Reading

The Ripening Sun and La Belle Saison by Patricia Atkinson (Arrow). A British woman establishes a vineyard in Bergerac.

Where to eat

Bergerac places great emphasis on food and, as with much of France, everything grinds to a halt between 12 and 2pm. Meal times are fairly rigid here, so don’t leave it too late before sitting down (kitchens won’t open up again until 7.30pm).

Prices are per head, based on four people sharing.

Chez Alain Excellent local restaurant offering seasonal game and regional dishes. €20. Tour de Ville, Issigeac, 00 33 5 53 58 77 88

La Brucelière An attractive terrace makes this gourmet restaurant a good choice for summertime dining. €30. Place de la Capelle, Issigeac, 00 33 5 53 73 89 61

Le Repaire de Savinien High-quality regional cuisine, beautifully presented. €25. 15 rue Mounet Sully, Bergerac, 00 33 5 53 24 35 46

Restaurant Le Rouge Ardoise Small restaurant serving traditional, seasonal dishes. €28. 14 rue Saint Clar, Bergerac, 00 33 5 53 22 37 26

La Table du Marché Elegant, modern presentation of seasonal flavours. €25. 21 Place Louis de la Bardonnie, Bergerac, 00 33 5 53 22 49 46

Food Glossary

Bourru

Unfermented grape juice.

Cabécou du Périgord

A creamy, local goat’s cheese.

Cèpes

Rich, meaty mushrooms that are one of the great delicacies of the region.

Canard

Duck in its various forms is abundant here, whether confit de canard (preserved duck, almost always the leg), magret de canard (duck breast) or rillettes de canard (a rough pâté).

Chèvre tiède

Warm goat’s cheese.

Foie gras

This fattened goose or duck liver pâté may be controversial, but it is unquestionably part of everyday life in south-west France, and you will often find it served as a starter, often accompanied by a glass of sweet wine.

Fromage de brebis

This cheese hails from a little further down south, in the Pyrenees moutains, but is widely available in Bergerac markets.

Huile de noix

Walnut oil.

Marrons

Chestnuts (marrons glacés when they are candied in sugar syrup), usually sold at markets over the winter months, roasted on an open fire.

Miel

Fresh organic honey abounds in the Bergerac region, much of it perfumed with local flowers.

Myrtilles

Blueberries.

Noix du Périgord

Walnuts; which are made into oil, walnut bread or eaten them on their own, fresh with a little cheese.

Tarte aux noix

A sweet tart made from the prized local walnuts.

Truffes

Black truffles rule here, particularly the perle noire du Périgord – the ‘black pearl’.

Food and Travel Review

The early morning mist has burnt off by 11am, but when you step out of the sun, the air contracts and you pull your coat tighter. The sandy Labrador doesn’t seem to notice though, and scampers ahead of our small party, eagerly sniffing at the ground and scratching at a particularly interesting spot.

‘Sometimes I see where the truffles are before he does,’ says François Bonetti, referring to the swollen earth that can indicate there are truffles close to the surface. ‘But Tazz is just one year old, and already he knows how to spot the deeper truffles that I can’t find. And only the dogs can tell when they are ripe and ready for digging up.’ In tandem, Bonetti and Tazz uncover several of the prized truffles – a little small because it’s early in the season – and we bask in their distinctively pungent, musky aroma. Later, Bonetti will sell these to restaurants in Bergerac, Toulouse, Paris and London, but for now we share smiles at the find, and give Tazz his reward of a small cake that for him is worth far more than the funny-smelling fungus.

Bonetti was born near Bergerac, and grew up a cereal farmer, but like all locals, was fascinated by the tantalisingly rare perle noire du Périgord that is so celebrated on local menus and that is known to fetch over €1,000 a kilo at the winter truffle markets held weekly in the medieval village of Saint Alvère. Eager to unlock the mysteries for himself, he planted his first three acres of oak trees, a variety known as chêne vert or quercus ilex, 15 years ago. They are known to encourage truffles to grow under their shade, and are particularly effective because they don’t lose their leaves over the winter months. Just to be extra certain, Bonetti had the roots of all 1,000 trees infused with Tuber melanosporum truffle spores as he planted them, but still had to wait 10 years before he saw his first harvest.

Today, he has six acres in total, although only half are in production, and he has just set up ‘truffle weekends’ – to be held from December to March – where guests can accompany him on the hunt (‘I love sharing the fact that Nature entirely dictates what happens, and we can only follow’). guests will also learn to prepare meals based entirely around truffles using many of the recipes favoured by local chefs, from simply slicing them onto toasted bread rubbed over with a touch of truffle oil, to perfuming a rich sauce of grated truffles, butter and stock for a roast duck or wood pigeon. Local restaurants also offer inspiration for wine pairing – a richly fruited red pécharmant to pair with duck, or even a sweet Monbazillac white if the truffles are served with quince jelly and soft cheese. ‘Truffles are a passion,’ he says gruffly, ‘but I make my living from cereal farming. Truffle hunting is addictive, but it would be hard to survive on truffles alone.’

Perhaps because of the difficulties of growing them – a century ago, the forests of France produced an estimated 1,200 tonnes of black truffles every winter, but the annual harvest today stands at just 20 tonnes – they serve as an illustration of just how much the identity of this region is bound up in the fruits of the earth. Bergerac lies in the heart of Périgord, with rich red grapes hanging off its vines, punctuated by villages of thick stone walls and shady squares, and an abundance of walnut trees in rows that add order to the landscape and offer one of the richest harvests of the year.

There are over 10,000 acres of walnut trees here, producing 6,000 tonnes of the softly knarled husks each year. Almost all are harvested by machines in the early autumn, with the walnuts gently shaken from the trees into small containers below, while another machine follows behind to separate the leaves from the fruits. The walnuts are then sorted carefully and washed in spring water before being offered fresh to local markets and artisan food producers, or dried before being sent further afield. You’ll find them everywhere in Bergerac – in richly nutty walnut bread, as fragrant walnut oil, or even as walnut liqueur. Local restaurants are endlessly inventive – some menus offer walnuts simply crumbled onto a fresh goat’s cheese salad, topped with a huile de noix (walnut oil) dressing and served with a local sauvignon blanc, while others will use them for desserts, making a wonderfully indulgent tarte aux noix (a sweet walnut tart, often served with crème fraîche). They may also be brought to your table with an apéritif (a local favourite is a crisp Bergerac dry white mixed with a touch of prune or blackcurrant liqueur) after being roasted in an oven with freshly cut herbs, butter and salt. So prized are the walnuts in Bergerac – the Franquette variety, larger than those grown elsewhere in France and said to have slight notes of butterscotch – that they have their own protected appellation (AOP), the noix du Périgord. There are still a few artisan producers, such as OccitaNoix, who pick their 16-acre organic production by hand, and are often seen at markets and farm shops around the region.

The market is the soul of the Bergerac region, a place where producers of all the local specialities come together to discuss their harvests, to exchange gossip, and to show off their produce to the crowds of visitors that descend each week. One of the best of these markets is held in the city of Bergerac itself, every Wednesday and Saturday, in the narrow streets that encircle Notre Dame church. Butchers offer locally reared beef, goose and duck next to farmers who unload their fresh fruit and vegetables (the region abounds in strawberries, melons, asparagus, tomatoes, plums and endless herbs). A few stalls away, a baker specialises in walnut breads and cakes, while her neighbour displays wild honey and endless variations on the local cabécou du Périgord goat’s cheese. Local winemakers complete the picture. Depending on the season, you might find the sweet unfermented grape juice, known as bourru, sold during harvest time, or rows of older vintages.

Dug into a bend in the Dordogne river, Bergerac dates back to the 11th century, when a castle built on the banks became a focus for the local population. Vines were planted on the sunshine-drenched slopes surrounding the town during the 13th century, and barrels of the fragrant local wines began to be loaded onto the flat gabare boats from the cobbled quayside of the Old Port. Today, tourists have replaced the barrels on these graceful boats, but the Old Town remains a maze of streets, and wine remains an essential element of the region, along with industries as varied as barrel making, duck farming, truffle hunting and walnut growing.

In Cloître des Récollets, in the Maison des Vins, local winemakers hold tasting classes to explain the riches of the six regional appellations that make up Bergerac wines. Export manager Xavier de la Verrie takes us through easy-drinking, pleasure-filled glasses from the appellations of Bergerac and Côtes de Bergerac (where we are struck by a classic red from Château Tour des Gendres, an effortlessly smooth wine made by the de Conti family) through to the mineral, elegant reds and whites of Pécharmant and Montravel. We finish with the sweet wines of Monbazillac and Saussignac, before heading out into the vineyards to meet the people who make them.

The wines of this small, human-scaled region are perfect for food matching, because the grapes planted are an almost exact split of red and white, with all styles from structured, long-living reds to fresh rosés, crisp dry whites and luscious sweet stickies. Caroline and Seán Feely at Château Haut Garrigue offer food and wine lunches with ‘Périgordian tapas’. Set on a promontory with sweeping views over the surrounding valley, Garrigue’s name refers to the herbs – lavender, thyme, fennel, rosemary, nettle – that thrive here.

The Feelys moved to the estate five years ago and since then have renovated the house and the winery while keeping tradition alive, as part of their harvest is still trodden by foot to gently squeeze the juice from the grapes. Their latest project is a new tasting room and an expansion of their successful gîte business. With their emphasis on biodynamic, low-intervention winemaking, it seems natural that memories of the herbs can be tasted in the wines. They are also put to good use in organic treatments for the soils and as ingredients in the tasting plates that we sample over lunch. The menu focuses entirely on local produce, from thinly sliced smoked river trout (served with or without soured cream, depending on whether you choose oaked or unoaked sauvignon blanc) to a fresh cabécou goat’s cheese, a richer blue cheese, gently warmed walnut bread, pan-fried duck and organic black chocolate. Presented tapas-style with several glasses of wine set alongside them, you are encouraged to experiment with which tastes work best. Caroline suggests the most successful matches, but you are free to switch them to get a feel for the process of balancing flavours and weights. Their ripe La Source red (a blend of merlot and cabernet sauvignon) stands up to the duck, while the sweet Saussignac (mainly from sémillon grapes) is lusciously indulgent with the blue cheese and walnut bread.

As we say goodbye to Caroline and Seán – who head back into the winery to finish off the afternoon’s work – they recommend we drive up to taste the wines of the picture-perfect castle that is Château de Monbazillac. Architecturally a blend of medieval and renaissance styles, from its terrace it has a view over the city of Bergerac and the surrounding valley that just about equals that at Haut Garrigue. The wine from this estate is made by the Monbazillac Cellars Company which represents around 100 growers in the region; it offers flavours of rich apricot with a subtle lime tang on the finish. Slightly chilled, it makes a great pairing with a rustic local pâté or duck rillettes.

Heading further out from the city, we make one final stop of the day – to Pascal Cuisset at Château des Eyssards. There can’t be many winemakers in France who make better company than Cuisset. His comfortable frame serves to emphasise that he embraces every aspect of the good life offered by south-west France, and is just as likely to serenade you as he is to offer a tasting of his excellent Adagio des Eyssards (a largely merlot-based wine, that we taste later over a dinner of roasted duck breast at local Bergerac restaurant Le Repaire de Savinien), or his crisp sauvignon blanc, which has a floral nose from its touch of muscadelle. Cuisset plays the French horn in a band of local winemakers called – what else? – In Vino Veritas. His philosophy on wine, and on life, is clear. ‘I believe that wine should be above all about pleasure, I am happiest when I know that my bottles are going to be opened immediately, and shared with friends.’ But today Cuisset is focusing on neither wine nor music. He is preparing for an early-morning forage for cèpe mushrooms – a creamy-yellow variety that has a strong meaty flavour and firm texture, and is almost as prized as the truffle on the best menus of Bergerac; it’s often used in sauces or sliced over duck and beef.

A wonderful starter often found on menus at this time of year, he tells us, is pan-fried cèpes with garlic and parsley, ‘very simple and utterly delicious’, or a cèpe omlette served with a crisp green salad. After explaining the best way to prepare a mushroom (‘scrape away the underside because it will become too moist during the cooking process, and keep them dry at all times – they are best stored in a cool dark cupboard rather than a fridge’) he sends us on our way clutching a few bottles of his wine. We leave with the impression that he would be fully in agreement with François Bonetti’s assessment of Bergerac – that it is Nature rather than man that reigns here.