Paris, summer 1964. I ran into Rika Zarai (1938-2020), my classmate from Beit Hakerem High School in Jerusalem, all excited about a performance she had given in the Loire Valley, in a charming town called Doué-la-Fontaine (in 2017 it merged with six of its suburbs under the name Doué-en-Anjou).
Half of its residents are winegrowers, and the other half grow roses. The town holds ancient remains of cave dwellings carved into the rock, a Gallo-Roman amphitheater, and underground quarries of soft limestone once used to carve sarcophagi. Every July, as it has for years, these quarries host a spectacular rose festival. “You have to go see this,” Rika declared, in a tone that left no room for argument.
I went, together with my wife Aviva and our two sons, Gilad and Eyal, and we never regretted it. We were welcomed by Jean Bégaud, a rose grower who served as mayor for three decades while also sitting in the National Assembly. He guided us along a dreamlike path through the underground quarries, where thousands of roses bloomed among green lawns, fed by clear streams of water. I felt like Alice in Wonderland, stepping into the Queen’s rose garden.
The Queen of Roses of Europe
Doué-la-Fontaine has been known as the “Queen of Roses of Europe” since 1790, during the French Revolution. Of the 12 million rose plants sold in France every year, 7 million (45%) are grown in Doué-la-Fontaine, in nurseries covering roughly 300 hectares (740 acres) and holding more than two thousand different rose varieties. The rose festival did not take place in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic, and is set to return this year, from July 14 to 17.
As we emerged from the dazzling quarries into the open-air amphitheater, a surprise awaited us. Doué-la-Fontaine sits at the heart of the Loire Valley wine country, and that very day a festive gathering was taking place of winegrowers and winemakers, members of the Order of the Knights of the Fine Palate of Anjou Wines, dressed in red robes and hats trimmed with white feathers.
The head of the order handed me a large glass of rosé, and once I had passed the test and drained it, he declared me a new knight of the order, hung a knight’s ribbon around my neck with a silver tasting cup bearing the emblem of the Anjou region, and presented me with a certificate in archaic French, sealed with wax.
The Knights of the Fine Palate of Anjou Wines
Years passed. My work took me to Africa, the Far East and Eastern Europe, and eventually back home. I tracked down the Knights of the Fine Palate online and reconnected with them by email.
The order’s leadership realized that, fifty years on, I was likely one of the oldest knights still living, and they decided to mark the occasion by promoting me from knight to officer, in a formal ceremony held at Château de Brissac in September 2015. The order has some 1,200 knights, but only 12 hold the prestigious rank of officer, which made it a real honor.
The order holds two major gatherings each year: one at the end of the harvest season in September, and another for Saint Vincent’s Day, the patron saint of winegrowers and winemakers, at the end of January.
In recent years, apart from the two years of the pandemic, my wife and I have made a point of traveling to France and the Loire Valley to take part in the harvest celebration, each time at a different historic palace or château in the region.
At that gathering, new knights and lady knights are inducted into the order, and everyone sits down to a rich lunch with delicacies for refined palates and wines for discerning tongues, and sings the order’s anthem:
Glass held high, glass held low,
pity the one whose glass isn’t full.
Glass held high, glass held low,
we pity the one whose glass is empty!
The “Elisheva” Wine from the Jordan Valley Comes to Ein Karem, Thanks to the Loire Valley
In the eyes of the order’s knights, I serve as an ambassador for the wines of Anjou in Jerusalem and the Holy Land. Last year, when the Saint Vincent’s Day celebration was canceled because of the pandemic, each knight of the order was asked to mark the day wherever they lived and document their part in this distributed gathering.
I had my picture taken by the spring in Ein Karem, the place where, according to the New Testament, Mary the mother of Jesus met her cousin Elisheva, the mother of John the Baptist, while both women were pregnant. I raised a glass of “Elisheva” rosé, from the Orna Adam winery, made from grapes grown in the Karnei Tzvi vineyard near the Jordan Valley, a wine whose color and taste resemble those of the Loire Valley, to the health of the order’s knights.
My story and photographs later went on to win third place in a competition among the Knights of the Fine Palate, though I had no idea beforehand that such a competition even existed. It’s worth noting that the winemaker, Orna Lev, is the daughter of the late Major General Kuti Adam, who spent two years studying at the War College in Paris in the 1960s, a course later completed as well by her brother, Major General (ret.) Udi Adam. Another French connection…
And to close, back to Doué-la-Fontaine: for anyone planning a visit to this wonderful town, especially in July during the rose festival, another attraction awaits: a unique zoo, housed in the ancient complex of cave dwellings, part of which has been converted to shelter exotic animals.
The “BioParc,” Doué-la-Fontaine’s zoo, was established about two decades ago within the old troglodyte settlement.
Yoel Sher, Jerusalem, January 22, 2022