Customer Reviews

Extremely Pale Rosé: A Very French Adventure

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Extremely Pale Rosé is a wonderful book for anyone who loves Provence or for anyone who wants to learn more about this special part of France. I'm one of the former and reading this book made me wish I was back there right now. Jamie's writing style is easy to read and the story holds your interest. There's lots of good, accurate information and you really feel you get to know Jamie, Tanya and Peter as you go along for the ride on their quest. Once you open this book and start reading, it's easy to forget the world around you. So, pour yourself a nice chilled glass of Provencal rosé and lose yourself in this fabulous book.

i tell you, this book was the surprise hit of the summer for me. i picked it up as i like travel and drink and liked the premise of the challenge in the story. i thought it'd be a gentle read that i'd dip in and out of, but i found i couldn't put it down. you get really involved in the characters as they search through france on their quest. before you know it you've found out a great deal about wine, france, how comic/kind/annoying/helpful the french can be. i didn't expect it to be as amusing as it is - from beginning to end, it kept me chukling to myself. it was beautifully written and i think anyone who's ever dreamt of searching for a better and more uplifting alternative to their daily drudge should give it a go. uplifting! more please, mr ivey!

While in Provence one summer, a French lady mistook a conversation about Jamie Ivey's niece Rosie for a conversation about rosé. In a quirky way, this conversation leads James Ivey, his wife Tanya and their friend Peter to a journey to find the palest rosé in France. This is a marvelous road book with three distinctive characters visiting the main rosé-producng areas in France: Champagne, the Loire, the Jura, Bordeaux, Dordogne, the Rhône, Provence, Languedoc and Corsica.

Ivey is a lapsed attorney and his first book is written in an offbeat way. The three wander through tiny bars, local bistros, wine fairs, many chateux and vineyards, and wine shops. There's an important sideline: Peter's attempts to find particularly smelly cheeses. This is charming British style travel writing from someone who clearly loves France, wine, food and people.

Ivey claims that according to French lore, rosé should be the pink of a baby's skin. These two extracts will demonstrate the extremes you will encounter in these pages:

"Why is pale rosé so popular", asked Tanya?
"Because people like you don't know a good wine from a bad one."

Tim: "Historically, rosé was a dreadful wine. It used to be made from re-wine leftovers. It would be put in a forgotten vat in the corner of the cave and sold for next to nothing to anyone foolish enough to buy it.

"But that's not true any more. There's not a great winemaker in France who hasn't learnt his trade by producing a good rosé. It's the hardest wine to make, much more complex than red or white. France is making some fantastic rosé now, and it's real wine that can accompany food. Anyone who is still snobbish about it is wrong."

____

The authors have now created an excellent blog describing their further adventures in the wine world; Google extremelypalerose . The subtitle of the blog tells the tale: "From London lawyer to Provencal wine merchant,author and now travelling salesman - the continuing story of pale pink wine and life in the south of France."

The introduction to the blog carries on the appeal of the book:

"Just to update those who have read Extremely Pale Rose: A Very French Adventure, Tanya and I are now running our own wine business in the south of France. We live near the village of Lourmarin and our shop front is the local markets. When we started trading in October last year one of the locals observed that we would be "living on love and cold water." They were right. We survived a long cold winter and sold practically no wine. But we made friends with the other market traders and secured our pitches in three local villages for the summer and now at last the tourists and the sun have arrived."

Robert C. Ross 2007 2008

EXTREMELY PALE ROSE: A VERY FRENCH ADVENTURE will appeal to any who love France and French food and travel. It recounts the author's journey as he and his family travel the south of France in quest of rose wines. Rose is commonly viewed as a poor man's wine, but the paler it gets the more the Brits relish it and the more the French scoff. A translation problem sends Jamie on a quest for the palest rose in France, and their visits to wineries, rose-producing regions and local byways provide a lively, fun story of a hilarious quest.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

What a delightful read for a Francophile. One gets a marvelous sense of the country, its ordinary (and extraordinary) people and how they live their lives. Really didn't want it to end and the good news is there's a sequel: La Vie en Rose and a delightful website. So it really doesn't have to end.

This is a very entertaining and quick read. I learned loads about French rose wines while reading it.

Perhaps it's because I've never traveled in France or because I'm not a wine lover, but I found this book uninteresting on all levels. The anecdotes were not funny to me nor did the characters ever get fleshed out enough for me to care about them. I'm in the minority here at Amazon.com, so I'll just chalk it up to personal taste rather than slam it as a bad book overall. I don't know if there will be another edition at some point down the road, but if ever there was a book that would have benefited from having photos and maps included, this is it. Maybe I would have felt more affinity for the travelers and their travels if I could have followed their journey and met some of those they encountered through some picures.