Monbazillac: The Sweet Wine of the Dordogne That Was There From the Very Beginning | Food Tour de France

Monbazillac — the extraordinary sweet white wine of the Dordogne and one of the oldest protected appellations in France — has a story that begins at the very birth of the French AOC system. In 1936, six wines in France received the very first controlled designations of origin — the first AOCs in French history. Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Cognac. Tavel. Arbois. Cassis. And Monbazillac. A sweet white wine from five villages on the south bank of the Dordogne, just outside Bergerac, considered important enough to be among the first six things France ever decided were worth protecting. Today's Food Tour de France episode finishes in Bergerac and tells the full story of this remarkable wine — its botrytis-driven production, its extraordinary ageing potential and its perfect partnership with the foie gras and pâté de Périgueux we covered in yesterday's episode from Périgueux.

The episode covers the full story of Monbazillac — from the legal dispute of 1934 that almost prevented the appellation from existing at all, through the extraordinary north-facing vineyards above the Dordogne where morning mists from the river create the humid conditions that noble rot needs to develop, to the harvest done entirely by hand in multiple passes through the vineyard selecting only the botrytised berries at the right moment of concentration. Made from Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Sauvignon Gris and Muscadelle — the same quartet that dominates the white wine vineyards of Bordeaux — Monbazillac at its best carries aromas of honey, acacia, peach blossom and mirabelle that deepen over decades into candied citrus, spices and beeswax. The great Monbazillacs can age for twenty to thirty years or more. Which puts them in the same company as the greatest sweet wines in the world.

The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the 2026 Tour de France on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish. The Monbazillac episode connects directly to the pâté de Périgueux episode from Périgueux — the combination of this sweet Dordogne wine with the foie gras at the heart of the pâté is one of the great regional food and wine pairings in southwest France — and to the broader picture of Dordogne and Périgord food culture this part of the series has been building. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the full series.

As Fabulously Delicious steps into its sixth year, one thing is clearer than ever: five years of French food culture has taught Andrew that the subject is genuinely inexhaustible.

My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Merci beaucoup!

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Pâté de Périgueux: The Five-Hundred-Year-Old Pâté of the Dordogne | Food Tour de France

Pâté de Périgueux — the extraordinary truffled foie gras pâté of the Dordogne and one of the most historically significant preparations in the whole of French charcuterie — has been made in Périgueux since at least 1498, when a group of pastry makers calling themselves fabricants de pâtés swore an oath before the Consuls of the city. Today's Food Tour de France episode starts in Périgueux — the capital of the Dordogne, capital of the Périgord Blanc — and tells the full story of a dish that began as a pastry case filled with red partridge, evolved over three centuries into the truffled foie gras terrine we know today, and is now protected by a Confrérie that requires a strict minimum of three percent black Périgord truffle in every pâté that bears the name. This is French food history at its most specific, its most luxurious and its most deeply rooted in a single place.

The episode covers the full history of the pâté de Périgueux — from the medieval pastry makers of the city through the arrival of the Périgord truffle in the recipe in the eighteenth century, the earliest surviving description of a truffled foie gras pâté dating from 1750, and the Almanach des gourmands of 1803 which described it as food for the gods of the earth. We cover the strict composition rules that define a genuine pâté de Périgueux today — 57 percent grain-fed pork, 40 percent foie gras, a minimum of 3 percent black Périgord truffle — and the extraordinary culinary tradition that surrounds it, including its connection to sauce Périgueux, the classic Madeira and truffle sauce that Carême was already describing in his recipes at the turn of the nineteenth century and that Julia Child included in Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the 2026 Tour de France on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish. The pâté de Périgueux episode sits at the heart of a remarkable stretch of food country — connecting to the Monbazillac wine episode from Bergerac, where the sweet white wine pairs perfectly with the foie gras at the heart of the pâté, and to the broader story of Périgord food culture that runs through this part of the series. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the full series.

As Fabulously Delicious steps into its sixth year, one thing is clearer than ever: five years of French food culture has taught Andrew that the subject is genuinely inexhaustible.

My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Merci beaucoup!

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Bouchon Bordelais: The Sweet That Looks Like a Cork | Food Tour de France

Le bouchon bordelais — the small cylindrical confection shaped like a wine bottle cork that is the most distinctive sweet in Bordeaux — is one of those French regional confections that is almost impossible to find outside its home city and completely synonymous with it inside. Today's Food Tour de France episode finishes in Bordeaux — the UNESCO World Heritage city on the crescent of the Garonne — and tells the full story of a sweet invented by a single pastry chef who went for a walk in a vineyard in 1976 and came home with an idea that turned into a family business now in its third generation. A soft, chocolate-scented almond and raisin paste inside a thin crispy butter biscuit shell, flavoured with Fine de Bordeaux — a six-year-old grape brandy — presented in a round cork-shaped box with golden writing on a green background. A sweet that looks like Bordeaux before you have even opened it.

The episode tells the full story of Jacques Pouquet — the maître pâtissier-chocolatier who created the bouchon bordelais in 1976 after noticing almond trees growing among the vines in a Lussac-Saint-Émilion vineyard and combining them with the raisins of the Bordeaux wine trade in a preparation that captured the identity of the city in a single bite. The name was registered as a trademark in 1977. Awards followed quickly — first prize at the Salon Intersuc in 1980, best petit four in France in 1988, the Cordon Bleu at Salon Intersuc in 1990. When Pouquet died in 1998 his daughter Véronique — a hairdresser by trade — took over rather than let it stop. In 2019 her daughter Julia joined her. Three generations of the same family, making the same recipe in the same workshop in Bruges on the outskirts of Bordeaux, from a closely guarded secret recipe that has never been written down outside the family.

The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the 2026 Tour de France on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish. The bouchon bordelais episode closes this leg of the series through the southwest — from the Tomme des Pyrénées at Les Angles through the cassoulet of Carcassonne, the rouzole of Foix, the haricot tarbais of Lannemezan, the béarnaise and garbure of Pau, the mouton Barèges-Gavarnie above the Tourmalet and the Tursan wines of Hagetmau — arriving finally in Bordeaux with a sweet that tastes of the wine trade, the almond trees and the Fine de Bordeaux brandy that makes this city unlike anywhere else in France.

As Fabulously Delicious steps into its sixth year, one thing is clearer than ever: five years of French food culture has taught Andrew that the subject is genuinely inexhaustible.

My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Merci beaucoup!

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#FrenchFoodPodcast #FabulouslyDelicious #foodpodcast #bouchonbordelais  #JacquesPouquet #Bordeaux #FrenchFood #FoodTourDeFrance #TourDeFrance2026

Vins de Tursan: The Secret Vineyard of the Landes | Food Tour de France

Vins de Tursan — the AOC wine of the Landes that most people outside the southwest of France have never heard of — is one of the most distinctive and most underrated appellations in the whole of French wine. Today's Food Tour de France episode starts in Hagetmau, right in the heart of Tursan wine country, and tells the full story of a vineyard that covers 450 hectares of hillside between the Landes forest and the first foothills of the Pyrenees, produces white wine from the baroque grape — a variety grown almost nowhere else in the world — and whose revival in the 1980s was driven almost entirely by one man. A chef who became a winemaker. A man who already had three Michelin stars and decided that wasn't enough. Michel Guérard, the founding father of cuisine minceur, came to Eugénie-les-Bains in the Landes and changed what people thought about Tursan forever.

The episode covers the full story of Tursan — from its first recognition as a wine of higher quality in 1958, through the fragmented landscape of small farm producers that earned it the name the secret vineyard of the Landes, to the AOC designation that came in 2011 following decades of work by Guérard and the producers who shared his belief in what this corner of the southwest could produce. The baroque grape that defines white Tursan — late-ripening, aromatic, structured, grown almost nowhere else on earth — is the heart of the appellation. Combined with Gros Manseng, Petit Manseng and Sauvignon Blanc in a blend that is specific to this landscape, it produces a white wine of genuine distinction that pairs beautifully with the fish of the Landes and the rich dishes of Gascon cuisine.

The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the 2026 Tour de France on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish. The Tursan episode connects directly to the garbure episode from Pau — white Tursan is one of the finest wine companions to the great slow-cooked soup of Gascony — and to the broader picture of southwest French food and drink culture this series has been building stage by stage. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the full series.

As Fabulously Delicious steps into its sixth year, one thing is clearer than ever: five years of French food culture has taught Andrew that the subject is genuinely inexhaustible.

My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Merci beaucoup!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

#FrenchFoodPodcast #FabulouslyDelicious #foodpodcast #VinsdeTursan #MichelGuérard #Hagetmau #FrenchFood #FoodTourDeFrance #TourDeFrance2026

Mouton Barèges-Gavarnie: The Finest Mutton in France | Food Tour de France

Mouton Barèges-Gavarnie — the extraordinary AOP mutton from the high mountain pastures above the Tour de France route today — is one of the most remarkable and most misunderstood meat products in France. Today's Food Tour de France episode finishes at Gavarnie-Gèdre at the foot of the Tourmalet, and tells the full story of the only mutton in France to hold an AOC designation — a distinction it earned in 2003 after eight years of applications, legal battles and the determination of a small group of Pyrenean farmers who refused to let their breed and their tradition disappear into the cheaper imported meat market. The Barégeoise sheep — hardy, fine-boned, a good walker — spends its summers grazing in total freedom on 25,000 hectares of wild alpine grassland between 1,600 and 2,600 metres. And the flavour of those high pastures — the wild thyme, the gentian, the dozens of aromatic mountain plants — ends up directly in the meat.

The episode covers everything that makes Mouton Barèges-Gavarnie unlike any other mutton you have encountered — the specific Barégeoise breed that developed in isolation in the upper valley of the Gave de Pau, the precise breeding cycle that follows the mountain year from estive to valley and back again, and the two specific types of animal that produce the AOP meat. The jeune brebis — a young ewe between two and six years old — and the doublon, a castrated male that has spent at least two summers on the high pastures and is considered by those who know it best to be the finest expression of what this landscape can produce in a single piece of meat. Available from June through January and nowhere outside that window. Seasonal in the most absolute possible sense.

The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the 2026 Tour de France on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish. The mouton Barèges-Gavarnie connects directly to the haricot tarbais episode from Lannemezan — the classic regional pairing of mountain lamb and Pyrenean beans is one of the finest in all of southwest French cooking — and to the broader picture of Pyrenean food culture this series has been building stage by stage. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the full series.

As Fabulously Delicious steps into its sixth year, one thing is clearer than ever: five years of French food culture has taught Andrew that the subject is genuinely inexhaustible.

My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Merci beaucoup!

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Garbure: The Great Slow-Cooked Soup of Gascony | Food Tour de France

Garbure — the thick, slow-cooked cabbage and duck confit soup of the Gascon and Béarnais tradition — is one of the great dishes of southwest France and one of the most honest expressions of what French mountain cooking actually is. Today's Food Tour de France episode starts in Pau — the second of two consecutive episodes in this elegant Pyrenean city — and tells the full story of a dish that has been feeding the people of Gascony for centuries. Born in the farmhouses and field kitchens of the rural southwest, built from whatever the season provides — green cabbage, haricot tarbais beans, duck confit, dried pork, potatoes, leeks, garlic — and left to simmer slowly on the stove from morning until evening. Théophile Gautier put it in a novel. Alexandre Dumas gave recipes for it. And the rule for how thick it should be has never changed — thick enough to stand a spoon in.

The episode covers the full history and tradition of garbure — from its Occitan origins and first written references in the sixteenth century, through its role as the daily food of Gascon peasants, to the modern fermes-auberges and village festivals where it is still served today in enormous shared pots. We cover the regional variations — the horse cabbage of the Landes version, the duck confit and tarbais beans of the Gers version, the slow reduction of the Béarnais version that Anatole France described as having remained twenty-four hours on the fire — and the wines that belong alongside it. Madiran, Irouléguy, Pacherenc-du-Vic-Bilh. And finally the great tradition of the chabrot — pouring red wine directly into the last of the broth in the bowl and drinking it together — which the etiquette books ignore and the Gascons have always done anyway.

The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the 2026 Tour de France on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish. This episode connects directly to the haricot tarbais episode from Lannemezan — the bean that is essential to any serious garbure — and to tomorrow's béarnaise episode, which tells the story of the other great food associated with Pau. A city that has given two episodes and two very different expressions of southwest French food culture to this series. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the full series.

As Fabulously Delicious steps into its sixth year, one thing is clearer than ever: five years of French food culture has taught Andrew that the subject is genuinely inexhaustible.

My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Merci beaucoup!

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

#FrenchFoodPodcast #FabulouslyDelicious #foodpodcast #garbure #goudale #chabrot #pau #FrenchFood #FoodTourDeFrance #TourDeFrance2026

Sauce Béarnaise: The Classic French Sauce That Isn't From Béarn | Food Tour de France

Sauce béarnaise — one of the great sauces of classical French cuisine, named after the Béarn region of the southwest and associated with the city of Pau — was not actually created in Béarn at all. Today's Food Tour de France episode finishes in Pau and tells the full and rather wonderful story of a sauce invented in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, just outside Paris, by a chef called Jean-Louis-François Collinet who looked up at a bust of Henri IV on the wall — the king who was born in Pau — and named his accidental creation after the king's hometown on the spot. A hot emulsified sauce of clarified butter, egg yolks, shallots, tarragon and chervil that became one of the defining preparations of French gastronomy. Named after a place it has nothing to do with. Which is, in French food history, not even slightly unusual.

The episode covers the full origin story of béarnaise — the failed shallot reduction that became a classic, the involvement of Alexandre Dumas as possible co-inventor, the specific role of tarragon that makes béarnaise béarnaise and nothing else — and the technique that Fernand Point, whose episode we covered earlier in the main Fabulously Delicious series, described with characteristic precision. A béarnaise, he said, is nothing but an egg yolk, a shallot and a little tarragon — but it takes years of practice before the result is perfect. The episode also covers the small family of derivatives that béarnaise has spawned — sauce Choron with tomato, sauce Foyot with meat glaze, and the sauce paloise of the Basque country, where mint replaces the tarragon and the result is served with lamb.

The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the 2026 Tour de France on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish. Pau gets two episodes in the series — yesterday's garbure episode covered the great slow-cooked cabbage and duck stew of the Gascon tradition, and today the béarnaise completes the picture of a city whose name is attached to two of the most celebrated things in French food culture — one of which it actually produced, and one of which it definitely did not. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the full series.

As Fabulously Delicious steps into its sixth year, one thing is clearer than ever: five years of French food culture has taught Andrew that the subject is genuinely inexhaustible.

My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Merci beaucoup!

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#FrenchFoodPodcast #FabulouslyDelicious #foodpodcast #saucebearnaise #Béarnaise #pau #FrenchFood #FoodTourDeFrance #TourDeFrance2026

Haricot Tarbais: The King of French Beans | Food Tour de France

Haricot Tarbais — the extraordinary white bean of the Hautes-Pyrénées and one of the finest ingredients in the whole of southwest French cooking — has a story that starts in Peru, crosses the Pyrenees in the sixteenth century, nearly disappears entirely in the 1950s and comes back stronger than before. Today's Food Tour de France episode starts in Lannemezan — right in the heart of haricot tarbais country — and tells the full story of the bean that cassoulet was made for. Large, white, with an exceptionally thin skin and a flesh that is melting, soft and completely without the floury texture that puts people off lesser beans. The only variety authorised for the Label Rouge is the Alaric seed line, selected from 24 varieties sourced from farms across the Hautes-Pyrénées in the 1990s. One bean. Carefully selected. Tightly controlled. Which is the French way of protecting something worth protecting.

The episode covers the full history of the haricot tarbais — from its origins in Peru to its arrival in the Tarbes plain at the beginning of the eighteenth century, through the agricultural revolution of the 1950s that nearly wiped it out entirely, to the 1986 revival that led to the Red Label in 1997 and the PGI in 2000. We cover the growing process — sown in mid-spring, climbing its nets through summer, harvested entirely by hand from late August through November — and the extraordinary level of care that goes into protecting the seed grain over winter, including freezing at minus 35 degrees to kill any insects before the following year's planting. The patience and the precision that goes into producing a single haricot tarbais tells you everything about why it tastes the way it does.

The haricot tarbais is the bean of the great dishes of the southwest — cassoulet, garbure, and alongside Pauillac lamb in one of the finest regional pairings in all of French cooking. The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the 2026 Tour de France on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish. Go back and find the Carcassonne cassoulet episode to hear the full story of the dish this bean was made for, and the Pau garbure episode to hear how the tarbais works in the other great slow-cooked stew of the southwest. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the full series.

As Fabulously Delicious steps into its sixth year, one thing is clearer than ever: five years of French food culture has taught Andrew that the subject is genuinely inexhaustible.

My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at ⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at ⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at ⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠

Merci beaucoup!

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La Rouzole: The Forgotten Dish of the Ariège | Food Tour de France

La Rouzole — the largely unknown farmhouse pork cake of the Ariège department in the French Pyrenees — is one of the most fascinating and most overlooked dishes in the whole of southern French cooking. Today's Food Tour de France episode finishes in Foix — the medieval capital of the Ariège, with its extraordinary château perched on the rock above the town — and tells the full story of a dish that has been feeding the mountain people of this valley for centuries. A thick, pan-fried cake of minced pork, eggs, soaked bread, garlic and parsley, cooked slowly in duck fat until the exterior is deeply golden and the interior is completely yielding. The dish most people in France have never heard of. And one of the best things you can eat in the Ariège.

The episode covers the origin, the tradition and the specific logic of la rouzole — a recette anti-gaspi, a no-waste recipe, born from whatever was in the farmhouse pantry on any given day. The name comes from the Occitan word rousolo, and the dish originates from the old County of Foix — the historical territory centred on today's stage finish — where every family kept its own recipe and every household made it differently. Jambon de pays, ventrèche, soaked bread, eggs, garlic, parsley, duck fat and patience. That is the whole list. And the steel pan — never non-stick, never washed, reserved exclusively for this dish — is as essential to the result as any of the ingredients.

But la rouzole does not exist alone. Its great partner is l'azinat — the national dish of the Ariège, a substantial slow-cooked cabbage stew of salted pork ribs, duck confit, sausages, potatoes, carrots and onions, cooked in ham broth for two hours. Approximately thirty minutes before the azinat is ready, the rouzole is placed on top — absorbing the broth, softening from underneath, infusing the stew with its flavour — before the whole thing arrives at the table together. The mythic duo of the Ariège, eaten at harvest time and village festivals and the kind of communal gatherings that mountain communities have been having for centuries.

The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the 2026 Tour de France on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish, covering the food of the places the race passes through. This episode sits alongside the cassoulet episode from Carcassonne and the Tomme des Pyrénées episode from Les Angles as part of a growing picture of the extraordinary food culture of the southwest and the French Pyrenees. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the full series.

As Fabulously Delicious steps into its sixth year, one thing is clearer than ever: five years of French food culture has taught Andrew that the subject is genuinely inexhaustible.

My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Merci beaucoup!

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Cassoulet: The God of Occitan Cuisine | Food Tour de France

Cassoulet — the slow-cooked white bean stew that the gastronome Prosper Montagné called the God of Occitan cuisine — is one of the most celebrated and most fiercely contested dishes in the whole of French gastronomy. Today's Food Tour de France episode starts in Carcassonne — one of the three cities at the heart of the great cassoulet debate — and tells the full story of this extraordinary dish. From its disputed medieval origins during the Hundred Years' War to the three-way rivalry between Castelnaudary, Carcassonne and Toulouse that has been running for over a century without resolution, this is French food history at its most passionate, most specific and most gloriously argumentative.

The episode covers everything you need to know about cassoulet — what it is, what goes in it and why the answer to that question depends entirely on which city you are in. Castelnaudary's version — white beans from the Lauragais, goose confit, pork shank and sausage, finished in a baker's oven fired with black mountain wood — is considered by its makers the only authentic original. Carcassonne's version adds red partridge and a piece of lamb, which Castelnaudary regards with undisguised suspicion. And Toulouse's version contains duck confit and Toulouse sausage, sometimes covered with breadcrumbs, with a serious ongoing debate about how many times the crust should be broken during cooking. Between six and eight, depending on who you ask. This is the level at which the cassoulet argument operates.

The story of the Grande Confrérie du Cassoulet de Castelnaudary — founded in 1970, its members wearing robes and cassole-shaped headdresses, counting Jacques Chirac, François Mitterrand and the French national football team among its formally inducted dignitaries — is one of the most entertaining in French food culture. The episode also covers the history of the tarbais bean, the cassole terracotta pot that gives the dish its name, the wine to drink alongside it, and why eighty percent of France's industrial cassoulet production comes from six producers in a single city that calls itself, with magnificent confidence, the World Capital of Cassoulet.

The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the 2026 Tour de France on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish, covering the food of the places the race passes through. This is French food culture told through the greatest race in the world. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the full series — and if you want the full story of the haricot tarbais bean that is one of the great ingredients of cassoulet, go back and find the Lannemezan episode earlier in the series.

As Fabulously Delicious steps into its sixth year, one thing is clearer than ever: five years of French food culture has taught Andrew that the subject is genuinely inexhaustible.

My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at ⁠⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ 

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at ⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠⁠

Merci beaucoup!

⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠

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The Alpine Cheese of the Pyrenees | Food Tour de France

Tomme des Pyrénées — the ancient Alpine cheese of the French Pyrenees — is one of the most distinctive and most underrated cheeses in France, and today's Food Tour de France episode tells its full story. As the Tour de France finishes at Les Angles in the Pyrénées-Orientales, we explore the cheese that has been made in these mountains since the twelfth century, when the monks of the Abbey of Lucelle first introduced fish farming to the region — and when the farmers of the Pyrenean valleys were already producing the semi-hard pressed cheese that carries the name of these mountains today. This is Pyrenean cheese history, Pyrenean food culture and everything you need to know about one of the great cheeses of the French mountain tradition.

The Tomme des Pyrénées is a semi-hard, pressed, uncooked cheese made from cow's, goat's or sheep's milk — or a mixture of those milks — produced across the entire Pyrenean chain from the Pyrénées-Atlantiques to the Pyrénées-Orientales. It comes in a cylindrical shape with rounded edges, a supple texture, and a flavour that moves from mild and creamy when young through to complex and aromatic with age. And it comes in two visually striking versions — a natural orange-tinged rind, or a dramatic black or gold wax coating that makes it one of the most visually distinctive cheeses in France. It received its Protected Geographical Indication in 1996 — but the story of this cheese goes back eight hundred years before that, to the high summer pastures above the Tour de France route.

The episode covers the full history of Tomme des Pyrénées — from King Louis VI tasting Pyrenean cheese in the twelfth century to the cooperative fruitières established by Auguste Calvet in the 1870s, from the first gold medals at agricultural competitions in Paris and Toulouse to the PGI battles of the 1990s and 2000s that finally brought raw milk, goat milk and mixed milk producers under the protection of the designation in 2020. A story of mountain cheese culture that is inseparable from the landscape, the climate and the extraordinary variety of the Pyrenean valleys — where each valley has its own method, its own tradition and its own expression of the same fundamental cheese.

The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the Tour de France 2026 on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish, covering the food, the drink, the ingredients and the producers of the places the race passes through. This is French food culture told through the greatest race in the world. Search Fabulously Delicious on Spotify and Apple Podcasts for the full series — and follow along stage by stage.

As Fabulously Delicious steps into its sixth year, one thing is clearer than ever: five years of French food culture has taught Andrew that the subject is genuinely inexhaustible.

My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at ⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠ 

For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at ⁠⁠⁠andrewpriorfabulously.com⁠⁠⁠

You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at ⁠⁠⁠Substack ⁠⁠⁠

Merci beaucoup!

⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Website ⁠⁠⁠

#FrenchFoodPodcast #FabulouslyDelicious #foodpodcast