Bergerac: Winner by a nose

A 17th century nobleman with a long nose is the cult hero of France’s Dordogne, finds Roger Ratcliffe.

You see the man with the pointed protuberance everywhere. Statues of him make good perches for pigeons in quiet tree-shaded squares while, all around the shopping centre, pavements are crowded with racks selling figurines, puppets and portraits of the man. Local opticians even use plastic reproductions of his comical conk to show off their spectacle frames.

It’s like accidentally walking onto the set of one of those Monty Python sketches in which the bizarre becomes the norm and people laugh at the commonplace. You almost expect to find Michael Palin, complete with le nez grande, passing you in the street.

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A newly arrived visitor who has yet to open the guidebook might assume that this nasally endowed man must have been the city’s founding father. After all, they both share the same name. But Cyrano de Bergerac was first and foremost the hero of a French comedy, a poet and swordsman who idolised his cousin Roxanne but dare not reveal his feelings because of his odd looks.

Instead, she falls in love with someone else, largely on the basis of poems that Cyrano has written for him. If the story sounds familiar it’s probably thanks to the popular Steve Martin remake called Roxanne, although the ending of that story was rewritten to let the big-nosed Hollywood hero win the girl.

No other place has elevated a figure of fun from literature to be its symbol quite like the city of Bergerac. But as your holiday here progresses, you begin to wonder if there’s another reason for the nose cult; that, actually, a good nose is considered not merely important but vital in this part of France.

You’ll get more than an inkling of this on a visit to the shop run by the Bergerac region’s vineyard cooperative, where you should not miss the wonderful theatre of noses plunging deep into wine glasses for long inhalations of the bouquet, followed by Oz Clarke-like rhapsodies such as “a hint of butterfly’s breath building to a finish like the inside of a French parfumeur.” (Okay, I made that bit up).

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There’s plenty more of these places whichever way you travel through the Dordogne valley from here. Although overshadowed by the nearby Bordeaux region’s wineries, those carrying the Bergerac label are highly regarded by the French. It has even been alleged that the superior name of Bordeaux, which is next door, results largely from its great success in rubbishing Bergerac’s wines.

But at Le Château de Monbazillac the reassuringly expensive white vintages produced here speak for themselves, or rather they use as a mouthpiece a lovely porcelain doll-like lady called Laurence, who presides over our convivial wine-tasting, and it’s hard to believe that anything could taste or – yes – smell better.

The 16th century Château itself has four large, round towers and is as good a place as any to get a feel for this landscape, which is entirely wooded or cultivated and none the less spectacular for that.

In these rippling hills some the most beautiful villages in Europe are to be found, and they don’t get any more picturesque than Issigeac to the south-east of Bergerac, where most of what you see was built between the 13th and 15th centuries and apart from the inevitable phone lines hardly a brick seems to have changed since then.

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Its streets are a maze of ancient houses winding out from an old Bishops Palace and the wonderful Gothic church of St. Felicien. Issigeac’s biggest day of the week is Sunday because of its huge and always crowded market which specialises in the food of the Dordogne region, particularly love-it-or-loath-it goose and duck foie gras.

Further on is reached the classic Bastide town of Monpazier. If you’ve never come across Bastides, they were fortified new towns built across Aquitaine, Gascony and Languedoc in medieval times to populate what were then considered wildernesses, although it’s really hard to imagine that now when you look at today’s man-made landscape of vineyards, walnut groves and lush meadows.

Monpazier is considered the best preserved Bastide of them all, and its large square is pretty much untouched. Foodies come here to buy freshly picked wild fungi, starting with delicious morels and ceps in late spring and continuing with baskets of girolles, and then truffles from November through to March.

The black truffles of the Perigord area are the most prized in the world, and known as “black diamonds” because of the crazy prices people are prepared to pay for them. Just one ounce will set you back at least £100. So what’s all the fuss about? If you want to taste – and smell – these fragrant, underground fungi and don’t mind splashing out a little, then visit one of the two towns here that are famous for truffle hunting, selling and, of course, eating.

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The main black truffle centre is Sarlat, sometimes known as the truffle capital of France. It has a Truffle Festival each January, and the surrounding oak forests are guarded like gold mines as the valuable Perigord Noir are tracked down out by hunters and their dogs. But the town is a must-visit at any time of year, especially for its food markets.

The other truffle town is Périgueux, where La Taula restaurant is as good a place as any to try them. The cuisinière restauratrice, Christine Maurence, has been around truffles all her life, first as a child helping her father to cook, then as a young chef in the Paris Ritz, and now running her own kitchen and where possible using truffles found by her husband, who happens to be one of the top truffle finders in Périgueux.

Her restaurant is next to the 12th century Cathedral of St. Front, around which clusters a delightfully peeling medieval quarter. If these buildings were in York they’d have been loved and restored into submission, and no doubt turned into branches of Pizza Express or Laura Ashley, but here the old streets look better with their haphazard walls and weathered timbers.

GETTING THERE...

* Jet2.com operate weekly flights to Bergerac Dordogne Perigueux Airport from Leeds Bradford Airport between May and September (twice weekly in July and August). Prices start from £29.99 one way.

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* Roger Ratcliffe stayed at the three-star Hotel de France, 18 Place Gambetta, 24100 Bergerac. Visit hoteldefrance-bergerac.com

Bergerac region wine-tasting is available at Maison des Vins. Visit www.vins-bergerac.fr

* For details of the walking tour of Monpazier (“the English Bastide”) visit www.pays-des-bastides.com

* La Taula restaurant is at 3 rue Denfert Rochereau, 24000 Périgueux. For reservations phone +33 5 53354002 or email [email protected]