La Vie En Rose: A Very French Adventure Continues

I loved this book. It brought back memories of a teriffic week in Provence. Jamie's description of the French countryside and cobbled villages built into hillsides were as good as my travel photos. Remembering the food, the wine and my own adventures as the Ivey's story progressed just made me salivate to go back.

If you've read the first La Vie en Rose, and you didn't book your flight to France, this one will do it! Incredibly sweet and entertaining. I'm now a huge rose fan! Charming, real and down-to-earth. If we never get to sell rose in France, this is the next best thing. Looking forward to hearing more from Jamie.

Jamie Ivey's Extremely Pale Rose: A Very French Adventure is a delightful travelogue about three wine lovers in search of the palest rosé wine in France. This sequel is devoted to seeing if it is possible to run a successful rosé bar in the Luberon. The odds seem long: customers will be largely men; rosé is considered a woman's drink; rosé is a summer drink; and most bars make their money from food, and matching food with rosé is considered very difficult. Rosé seems to be an in drink in France these days -- domestic sales of red and white wines are stagnant, while rosé sales are growing. Ivey works with bars in Uzes, Aix en Provence and Nimes to sell rosé, and does some useful market research. Encouraged, he visits some of the vignerons he met in the first book. He buys a bar in the hills of the Luberon, and plans to remodel during the winter. Hopefully, summer sales will keep his family through the the rest of the year. Ivey's writing is as charming as ever. This extract from his web site is an example of his style and his insights into French culture: "By the time that Tanya was four months pregnant we began to notice what can only be described as peculiarly French attitude towards her bump. Women who barely knew us came up and rested their hands proprietarily on our growing baby. To begin with we assumed that this was just the natural motherly urge exerting itself, the type of thing that could happen anywhere. "Then the inquisition began. "You're still very slim," "Did your mother put on weight when she had you?" "Bien, bien, nothing at all on your legs." "The statements, come questions, were complimentary, but there was an almost forensic level of interest in the changes that pregnancy had on the female form. The size and shape of Tanya's bump was closely monitored by the women of the village but it was only after the birth that I began to appreciate their perspective. They spent an obligatory minute or so cooing over our new baby and then they turned to Tanya. Hands were pressed against her stomach, and appraising glances cast upon her silhouette as she walked. "As much as French women love babies there is one thing that they love more - their bodies, and as much as they made out they'd been monitoring the development of our baby, subconsciously at least they'd been keeping a keen eye on Tanya's body." Ivey is planning a magazine "BlueSky Living" and another book on rosé, in both cases based in Provence. My guess is that both will be just as successful as his first two books at communicating his exploration of France. Robert C. Ross, 2008