Matt McClune, coffee roaster extraordinaire at St Romain Coffee Co. in Burgundy’s Côte de Beaune, approaches all his projects in life with an untiring conviction that everything benefits from more thought, more attention and more deliberation. I should know this, because I’m in a village rock band with him (we trademarked the musical genre of […]

Here’s the thing about cider (or hard cider); it’s incredibly simple to make and anyone can do it. I have been consistently making average to disappointing cider for the last five years, but that’s not the point. You don’t need any special equipment or ingredients other than apples.  You crush them, squeeze them and then […]

“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow that house down….” As a man with two small kids, I think a lot about the big bad wolf – he and his cronies crop up a lot in the bedtime stories I’ve been reading every night for the last decade. Sometimes I’m surprised at how much […]

It’s no secret that France, and to be more precise Provence, and to be even more exact Les Alpilles offer some of the prettiest landscapes in Europe. And while they’re fine enough from ground level, they’re even better if you’re a bird – or in this case a drone – expertly piloted by our France […]

The year is 1999, I’m a nerdy 7-year-old obsessed with dinosaurs, planet Earth, and sci-fi video games. I hear the TV talking about some grown-up commemoration on the other side of the ocean, in the United States… some vice-president with a strange name. They’re celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. Nothing too […]

Last week Conde Nast Traveler released its annual Travel Specialists list, kind of like the Oscars of the travel world. And with another record-breaking 7 Trufflepig planners with their names in lights (again), we feel more than usually justified in describing ourselves as the Tiny Company with the Great Big Nose. We are of course […]

When Conde Nast wanted to call Michael to congratulate him for making their global list of Travel Specialists (again), they found his telephone curiously out of range (again). And that’s because Michael’s a man who jumps at an opportunity, as his travels during this Covid year have shown us. While the rest of us responded […]

La Tournée des Grands Ducs (literally, The Tour of the Grand Dukes) is a common saying in France to refer to painting the town red, Dionysian style, or rather … Russian. The term has it roots in the habits of two Grand Dukes of Russia – Vladimir and Alexei –  the mischievous sons of Emperor […]

I’m at heart a wine nerd, but you don’t need to twist my arm to sample other brews and libations, particularly if partaking will gain me deeper insights to a place or a people.  When I travel, my first quest is always to find out what the locals drink and, at times, how they’re supposed […]

Comfortably ensconced on my sofa at home in the small Provençal village of Mouriès, I am enjoying the warmth of both my fireplace and a glass of local red wine. I am listening to the radio announcing that the fight against Covid is possibly taking a turn with the discovery of a vaccine. The future […]

I’ve found that the old dictum “hindsight is 20/20” has taken on new meaning this year. My realization has been that for much of my adult life, travel has defined my most significant moments. I don’t want to come off sounding like some Instagram travel influencer racing around the globe to collect passport stamps for the […]

Look at the picture. Isn’t it lovely to see an image of such unchanging tradition? Cart horses being used to transport grapes picked by hand in Burgundy’s famous Côte de Beaune, with the picturesque village of Pommard in the background, under a beautiful August blue sky… Lovely. But wait, hang on a second… doesn’t harvest […]

After a 7 hour train journey from my home in Provence to Evian-les-Bains on the shore of Lake Geneva, I find myself standing on the side of a road, surrounded by beautiful alpine scenery on one side and the clear waters of the lake on the other. I am holding a piece of cardboard salvaged […]

March 17, 2020. France has just entered into confinement with strict rules: we are locked down for the foreseeable future and limited to 1 hour a day outside our homes and within a 1km radius. Difficult times ahead for keen travelers and nature lovers like me. … May 11. The French government has eased the […]

Don’t worry.  I’ve not gone off the deep end (yet). The title is a rough translation of the hymn to San Sebastian, aka Donostia, aka one of the Coolest Coastal Towns in Spain.  It’s also much more readable than the original Basque: Sebastian bat badu zeruan, donosti bat bakarra munduan. But Basque aside, I’m not hot […]

We’ve been out on the road this year…. a lot. At half-time on 2019, our trotters are worn smooth, and it’s time to take stock. The pictures above flooded my inbox when I naively wrote to our planning team to ask for a few shots from recent research trips. I was struck by the awesome […]