Travel guide Dordogne

Blanche is the brandy obtained from the grape marc, also called drop or fine. It is often perfectly translucent, but can be colored after a passage in oak barrels. Note that in Périgord, brandy was made with all the local fruits, especially mirabelle plum and cherry, especially in order not to waste.

It is a traditional "blower" to fan the fire. It is a long wooden tube, in which one blows to direct the air towards a precise place of the hearth that one had lit. A remarkably efficient precision tool, its use can sometimes produce a farting noise that does not fail to amuse young and old alike!

The word cavage is derived from the Latin cavus which means hollow. It gave the words cavern, cavity. The verb caver is borrowed from the Latin cavare which means to dig. It is a vocabulary now associated with truffles. To caver is to extract the truffle from the ground. The caveur is the person who looks for it using the cavadou, or truffle pick.

Faire chabrot, or chabròl in Occitan, is a local custom which consists of adding red wine to the plate to dilute the liquid when there is a soup or soup stock left. The idea is then to bring the whole thing to the mouth, and to swallow it in large gulps, making as much noise as possible. No, that's a grandfather joke!

The term "cingle" represents a hill that follows the meanders of the Dordogne, Vézère or Lot rivers. Its slope facing the river is generally steep. From Trémolat, you will admire a unique panorama on the cingle of the Dordogne. Moreover, the term of cingle also indicates a large snake, reptile living in the wood.

The gabarre, from the Occitan gabarra, was a flat-bottomed boat called a "sol", with a shallow draught, which was used to transport goods. The Dordogne River thus became a primary commercial route between the Périgord and the Atlantic coast. It made the wealth of the merchants by conveying wine, wood, minerals and food.

It's the commonly-used Frenchization of an Occitan term for a little boy. The term is declined into gouya for teenager and gouyate for teenage girl. Both terms have somewhat pejorative connotations in their contemporary usage. Before being a gouyassou, the youngster is a drôle and the girl a droléta. So be careful.

In the not so distant past, each family killed its pig between Christmas and February. Then, the neighbors would come and dip the jimbourat, the broth used to cook the pigs, in which vegetables and bones were simmering. This broth was poured on slices of bread and made a very fatty and comforting soup, for a nice moment of conviviality.

It is the roofing system, specific to the traditional dwellings of the Périgord Noir and to the dry stone huts in the vernacular architecture. The lauzes are flat stones, roughly flattened. The basic stone is limestone. There are still craftsmen in the Périgord who are able to make this type of roofing.

"Half dogs, half pigs". This expression, far from being an insult, was used to designate the Périgourdins, referring to their resourcefulness during the struggle between the State and the Caussenards. Taxes, salt taxes and requisitions were at the origin of this insurrection. It was not good to be a tax collector at that time!

Summer snack, which consisted in drinking a bowl of red wine cut with ice water and sweetened, in which we dipped bread. The dip had the property to requinish, satiate, refresh and quench the thirst at the same time, for adults as well as for children at snack time. Other times, other customs... far from the food industry.

Verjuice is the very acid juice extracted from grapes that have not had time to ripen. In the kitchen, it was a good substitute for lemon juice (rare here in the past) or vinegar in vinaigrettes, mustards, in the preparation of meat or fish dishes and sauces. It was emblematic of the traditional Perigordian cuisine.