Fete de la Cerise

 

This is more like it...a perfect sunny Sunday in June. A hot sun shone on the Cherry Festival at Caseneuve, a charming hilltop village slightly off the beaten track opposite the Grand Luberon ridge. The whole of the Luberon valley is renowned for its soft fruit growing - apples, apricots, pears, plums, grapes, peaches, nectarines - but it's the cherry orchards that produce first, from drifts of white blossom in spring to the vibrant red dots swinging beneath pretty green leaves.

   

 

Stallholders came from as far afield as L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue and Gordes to showcase their fruit, and of course, in France you can't have a gathering of more than three people without a comprehensive spread of food available. The crowds wandered around tasting local wines and liqueurs, goats' cheeses, macaroons, honey and pastries, just enjoying the warmth and smells, as well as the spectacular views from high above the eastern end of the valley.



 

 

There were the obligatory lavender products, loose linen clothes, plenty of imaginative silver jewellery, and pottery - much on a cherry theme.

These tee-shirts were much in evidence among the stall-holders and helpers...

...and rather delightfully, the village committee's stall included a folder full of local family recipes for cherries. My favourite would have to be clafoutis, a baked vanilla custard-batter studded with the fruit and dredged with icing sugar when cooled. Hmm, now there's a tempting idea - we seem to have come back with an awful lot of cherries...

I really wanted to stay for the Grand Concours at 2.30pm: the Spitting the Cherry Stone competition. Exactly how far can a man or woman spit a cherry stone? Is there an acknowledged best technique - and does it seem a bit bonkers the first time you see it, a Fosbury flop of the cherry stone spitting world? Does the area have an unbeatable champ, identifiable by the historical red dribbles on his (or indeed her) lucky spitting shirt? Sadly, we will never know. We had to make our excuses and leave.