Banyuls: Our Hosts with the Most

Notre QG (pronounced QJ) or Quartier Générale, French for HQ (headquarters)! Our downtown home base, our friends’ lovely store, became symbolic of the warm hospitality they showed us in Banyuls.

Listen to the sea:
It gets insides men’s hearts
Like a grey shifting ghost
And steals them from their homes,
Their women and their children.
—Agamemnon, from Tantalus by John Barton

I was bewitched by Banyuls and its alternately still or swirling seas. But by the time Bret arrived with my cousin Sarah, an avid traveler who has joined us abroad before, I’d been single-parenting for 12 days and was starved for adult conversation as well as, I admit, speaking English. Travel is the exercise of empathy in so many ways, and traveling alone with my children frequently puts me in mind of parents who do this full time, finishing long days of caretaking with pent-up adult thoughts rattling around their brains. I also thought often of those for whom English or any language is secondary; no matter how proficient or even fluent one becomes, to live long—or even two weeks!—in a tongue other than one’s own is to sublimate something of the self in ways that can feel exhausting or melancholic; both more and less energy is being used. This led me to ponder if ideas shape words or the other way around? Getting mired in this genre of thought, I nearly pounced on Bret at arrival. He didn’t complain.

The night they arrived just happened to be one of the babysitting windows I’d procured and, as it turned out, our only dining experience without children. I recommend more of those.

After Bret arrived we entered full wining-and-dining mode as our friends sought to showcase the region. Also our Airbnb hosts, Jean-Francois and Ann-Sofie Ey let our their extraordinary home and our little studio each July and August, living in nearby Perpignan and commuting to work their two wine stores, MonClubdeVin. We know this industrious pair from Bret’s Daniel days, when he met Jean-Francois at a tasting dinner for Gosset Champagne, whom Jean represented at the time. Ann-Sofie, by way of Sweden, was making her own way in New York when she met Jean-Francois, and the pair eventually moved back to Jean’s hometown of Banyuls after seeing what the same sum could get you in Queens. Ten years later, just before the pandemic struck, they returned to New York for a two-month stay on which we all connected over children and wine. In the midst of juggling their shops, Airbnbs, and kiddos, as well as their side hustle as owners of the European rights to Bagavin, Ann-Sofie was indispensable in helping me organize this trip not once but twice, as we re-created last year’s plans for 2021.

The beautiful Ann-Sofie Ey, mother of two daughters, stores, and Airbnbs!

I did not know, however, when when plotting our mini French study abroad that we were really going to Catalonia. Five miles from the Spanish border on the French coast north of the Costa Brava, it didn’t take long to realize that Banyuls, lost by Spain to France the Pyrenees Treaty of 1664, is proud Catalan country. We gained a deeper understanding of this torn identity from Jean Francois who, in addition to being an ardent publicist for the undersung wines of the region, is a passionately versed representative of his home. Situated in France’s poorest department, the Pyréneés-Orientales, Banyuls has two industries: wine and tourism, the latter driven by its pristine seas. Home to the country’s only marine reserve since 1974, snorkelers and divers the world over flock to see signs of regeneration in the Mediterranean, history’s greatest sea so long devastated by decades of overfishing, pollution, and rising temperatures, perhaps beyond repair.

While touring the area together Jean Francois spoke poignantly of Catalan’s between-the-cracks narrative, a sad fact with the silver lining that, thanks to Napoléan, France’s 101 departments are well-united, unlike the chronic inter-fighting between the regions of Italy and Spain. In Collioure, to which Matisse returned time and again, he informed us that the Germans thought D-Day was to occur there, having intercepted a red herring from the British, who didn’t believe that the Germans had fallen for it! I asked him if he learned this in school, as part of a common core (which the French call “common trunk”), and he said no, just his personal reading out of a belief in the importance of knowing one’s local culture. This principled man and Ann-Sofie had been married in Collioure, in a 13th century church we visited and that made my eyes mist, for the untold history it has seen, for the reminder it gave me of the role that churches played in my falling in love with travel.

A burnt Bret and Jean-Francois at the fabulously and fiercely women-run Domaine Piétri Géraud.

The next day Jean-Francois directed us to paddleboarding in Port Vendres with Paddling Paradise Paulilles, run by a lively couple who spend half their year there and the other half skiing in British Columbia, explaining, “we are not rich, but we are rich,” a sentiment that was all too clear in their sun-lined happy faces. We finished with a wine tasting at Les Clos de Paulilles after which, upon getting home, I stayed in the car to work and let my smallest paddleboarder nap a little longer. Bret left on the jazz station and a sweet serendipity occurred as a musical retrospective of Minneapolis aired, playing an retrospective of the Tween Ceetees contributions to American music, from the Anderson Sisters to Prince. The French in general are crazy about Bobe Deelan*, and to hear his remarkably phrased “Man of Constant Sorrow” while looking over “our” beach, after the announcer reminded his French audience about last year’s murder of George Floyd and our country’s continuous racial tensions, felt like an entire circle of my life made complete.

Our front yard in Banyuls-sur-Mer.

After a couple dicey dinners with the kids—Cordelia is ready for fine restaurants but not on the late Mediterranean clock—we finished strong with the best meal we’d had at Quintessence, which had been closed because the chef had COVID, he explained to me over a cigarette. It happened to reopen our last night when the Eys took us to a meal so unpretentious and fine, we drew much inspiration for the spirit of dining as we ponder the re-opening of Gotham after its far longer closure. It was the perfect note to end on with the hosts who had found the bandwidth amongst their work-life juggle to show us the heart of Banyuls and something of their own. We left them the better, not rich but rich, with a friendship that will endure.

Next stop, Arles!

*My observation about France’s love of Dylan was made more certain upon our arrival at the Musée Maillot, a miniscule museum in the middle of Banyuls wine country where the great sculptor Aristide Maillot, admired by Rodin, lived. The estate complements their permanent collection with occasional special exhibits, including back Jerry Schatzberg’s photography of Dylan in 2011. It was a surprise indeed to walk in and see Dylan’s face on the door!