Village in the Vineyards

Vulnerable to the seductions of the simple life still to be found in the French countryside, the author, an editor of Wine Spectator , and his wife Sara, a photographer, left New York City in 1986 to spend a year in the Bordeaux village of Ruch. Renting a charming, if poorly heated, renovated presbytery, they settled in to learn about wines and wine-making, to savor the local cuisine and to enjoy their neighbors. Like similar records, this couple's account of their new surrounding culture initially deals with gossip overheard in the general store and with the resolution of problems of physical comfort. But gradually their friendliness percolated through the community and won them invitations to dinner and shared neighborly intimacies which, in a society otherwise famously closed to strangers, were rare rewards. Particularly appealing is the author's enthusiastic discussion of delicious menus and the tastes of wines; his fond but unsentimental portrait of a French agricultural community is enhanced by his wife's photographs of their amis Ruchelais. (Sept.)