What’s It Like Moving Your Family Thousands of Miles to Live in the Wine Region of Languedoc, France? Steve Hoffman Shares Stories

Natalie MacLean
Jul30th

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Introduction

How can you create a life you don’t need a vacation from? What can we learn from the French about slowing down, savoring meals, and making conversation the heart of gatherings? What’s it like living in the “other southern France”?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Steve Hoffman, who has written an award-winning memoir called A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

 

Giveaway

Three of you are going to win a copy of Steve Hoffman’s terrific new book, A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France.

 

How to Win

To qualify, all you have to do is email me at [email protected] and let me know that you’ve posted a review of the podcast.

It takes less than 30 seconds: On your phone, scroll to the bottom here, where the reviews are, and click on “Tap to Rate.”

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I’ll choose three people randomly from those who contact me.

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Join the live-stream video of this conversation on Wednesday at 7 pm eastern on Instagram Live Video, Facebook Live Video or YouTube Live Video.

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Highlights

  • What do tax preparation and writing have in common?
  • What inspired Steve to write about the Languedoc, which he refers to as the other Southern France?
  • What were the major hurdles to getting A Season for That published?
  • How did Steve shift from an article to a book mindset?
  • What helped Steve find the balance between writing beautifully and the need to move the story forward?
  • What important lessons did Steve learn from his editor, respected cookbook author Francis Lam?
  • What was it like to move across the world with two young children?
  • Are there insights about French parenting and family life that Steve continues to apply?
  • How did Steve choose the specific village he wanted to live in?
  • How do vulnerability and curiosity help with cultural immersion?

 

Key Takeaways

  • How can you create a life you don’t need a vacation from?
    • Steve says that we’re often sold the idea that our lives are boring and that they need relief from their lives. Then we have these escapes, whether that’s retirement for some people, where you’ve worked all your life and you hated your job, but now you’re gonna enter your retirement and be happy. Or there are vacations, where you’re going to have a great time for a week or two. And Mary Jo and I have had a phrase for a long time where we talk about trying to lead a life that you don’t need to vacate. That your life itself, if you are careful about it and a little bit intentional about it, can be the thing that you want to dive into every day.
  • What can we learn from the French about slowing down, savoring meals, and making conversation the heart of gatherings?
    • Steve mentions Thanksgiving as one of the very few occasions where he and his family commits slowing down and making conversation around the table and a great meal. And yet, if you watch most American Thanksgivings, it’s everybody’s talking and watching the football game, and then they all go to the table, and they all eat really fast. It’s all on one plate, all piled up on top of each other. You eat your turkey and potatoes and vegetables, and then you all go back and watch the football game again. There was something about the French willingness to let conversation be the point and to let conversation be patient with a way of passing time that was really refreshing, that we really loved and that we’ve definitely tried to sort of incorporate into our own family.
  • What’s it like living in the “other southern France”?
    • We settled in 2012 as a family for an extended fall semester in the Languedoc region, which I refer to as the other southern France, because it is, to some extent, the poor cousin of what most people think of as southern France, primarily Provence and the Côte d’Azur, the Riviera, which was extensively touristed and a lot of money got brought into that region. Peter Mayle, Princess Grace, F Scott Fitzgerald made it a wealthy playground. Languedoc is the portion of Mediterranean France to the west of the Rhone. So the Rhone divides the country in two, east of the Rhone is Provence, and the Riviera west of the Rhone is Languedoc and eventually Roussillon. We didn’t think we could afford to live for six months in Provence. We had the kinds of experiences that we were able to have because we weren’t in the grips of a tourist haven. I love that.

 

About Steve Hoffman

Steve Hoffman is a Minnesota tax preparer and food writer. His writing has won multiple national awards, including the 2019 James Beard M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. He has been published in Food & Wine, The Washington Post, and The Minneapolis Star Tribune, among other publications. He shares one acre on Turtle Lake, in Shoreview, Minnesota, with his wife, Mary Jo, their elderly and entitled puggle, and roughly 80,000 honeybees.

 

Resources

 

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  • The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.

 

Transcript

Natalie MacLean 00:00:00 How can you create a life? You don’t need a vacation from. What can we learn from the French about slowing down, savoring meals and making conversation? The heart of gatherings. And what’s it like moving your family thousands of miles to uproot and live in the south of France, in the heart of the Languedoc wine region? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in our chat with Steve Hoffman, who has written an award winning memoir called A Season for that lost and found in the other southern France. By the end of our conversation, you’ll also discover what tax preparation and writing have in common. What inspired Steve to write about the Languedoc, which he refers to as the other southern France? The major hurdles to getting a season for that published how Steve shifted from an article to a book mindset. What helped Steve find the balance between writing beautifully and needing to move the story forward? Important lessons Steve learned from his editor, the respected cookbook author Frances Lam. Insights about French parenting and family life that Steve continues to apply.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:21 How Steve chose the village he wanted to live in. How vulnerability and curiosity help with cultural immersion, and why vulnerability is the key to connecting with readers. I’ll say Amen to that. Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:46 Obsessive people.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:47 Hauntingly.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:48 Beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:54 Blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host Natalie MacLean. And each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started. Welcome to episode 348 on CTV Morning Live. I recently talked about celebrating summer’s bounty and pairing wines with Farmer’s market finds. You know, as we dive into summer entertaining, the farmer’s markets are overflowing with fresh fruit and vegetables, so you might be looking for some wines to pair with those local treasures.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:45 I’m here to help. We’re diving into a farm to glass adventure and focusing on Canadian and Italian wines today, as both are known for their zesty, garden friendly styles. We’re starting with something crisp and coastal. It’s Jost Vineyards’ Blue Latitude from Nova Scotia. Blue Latitude is a white wine blend that’s breezy and bright, with notes of green apple, lime zest and an ocean-fresh minerality. This wine is sensational with a farmer’s market sweet corn and cherry tomato salad tossed with fresh basil and goat cheese. Fascinating fact: Jost Vineyards is the oldest winery in Nova Scotia, founded in 1983. It’s located along the Northumberland Strait, and the constant coastal breezes help to keep the grapes dry and healthy. That makes Jost one of the most sustainable vineyards in Canada. Nature’s air conditioning at its finest. Just like shopping at farmers’ markets, it’s all about supporting sustainable local producers who care about their craft and the environment. Side note: you can order Jost wines directly from the winery, from their website, or by calling them, and they’ll ship to your doorstep anywhere in Canada.

Natalie MacLean 00:04:03 So what if we want some bubbles to go with our market haul? Folonari Prosecco, a sparkling wine from Italy, is perfect for patio sipping and entertaining. It has aromas of white peach, citrus blossom and fresh, fruity bubbles. Try it with peach slices wrapped in prosciutto or a platter of sliced nectarines, cucumber ribbons and burrata cheese. Fascinating fact: The Folonari family has been making wine for over 200 years. Their vineyards are located in the rolling hills of Treviso, where the Glera grape thrives. This extra-dry style is also ideal for spicy snacks and salty cheeses.

So what’s next for our farmer’s market feast? Tidal Bay is Nova Scotia’s signature wine, and this one from 1365 Church Street Winery is a benchmark example. It’s vibrant and aromatic with notes of citrus peel, green herbs and white flowers. Serve it with zucchini fritters, a cucumber dill salad or herbed chèvre on rye crackers. Fascinating fact: 1365 Church Street is one of Nova Scotia’s newest and most innovative producers. Their Tidal Bay uses 100% estate-grown grapes that are aged in stainless steel to retain their fruit freshness and expression.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:27 And what if we’re leaning toward Mediterranean veggies? Well, next we have this delightful Villa Sparina Gavi di Gavi, made from the Cortese grapes grown in the northern region of Piedmont. It’s fresh and clean, with lovely notes of lime and lemon zest. This wine sings with a classic caprese salad made with heirloom tomatoes, basil and bocconcini. Fascinating fact: The iconic shape of this bottle is inspired by an ancient vase found during a renovation of the winery.

And what about red wine lovers at the farmers’ market? The Lamole di Lamole Maggiolo Blue Label Chianti Classico is a bold and structured red with ripe layers of plum, black cherry, violet and a whisper of Tuscan herbs. It’s gorgeous with grilled eggplant stacks layered with ricotta and roasted red peppers or a rustic tomato galette. Fascinating fact: Lamole di Lamole’s vineyards date back to the 1300s and sit at some of the highest elevations in Chianti. That altitude gives the grapes natural acidity and freshness. The estate uses organic farming and amphorae clay vessels for fermentation, a nod to ancient methods meeting modern finesse.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:44 Thank you for showing us how to bottle the farmers market freshness this summer. Where can we find you in these wines online? On Instagram I’m at Natalie MacLean wine and online. My website is at Natalie MacLean. Com I’ve also posted links to these wines in the show notes at Natalie MacLean. 348. Back to today’s episode. Three of you are going to win a copy of our guests terrific new book, A season for that lost and found in the other southern France. I also still have two copies of decanter magazine’s new book, The Ultimate Travel Guide for Wine Lovers. If you’d like to win a copy, please email me and let me know you’d like to win. It doesn’t matter where you live, I’ll choose five winners randomly from those who contact me at Natalie at Natalie MacLean. In other bookish news, if you’re reading the paperback or e-book or listening to the audiobook of my memoir, Wine on Fire Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, defamation, and Drinking Too Much, a national bestseller and one of Amazon’s best books of the year.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:50 I’d love to hear from you at Natalie at Natalie MacLean. Com. I’d be happy to send you beautifully designed, personally signed bookplates for the copies you buy or give as gifts. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide. Natalie MacLean. Com forward slash 348. Okay, on with the show. Steve Hoffman is a Minnesota tax preparer and food writer. His writing has won multiple national awards, including the prestigious 2019 James Beard MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. He has been published in Food and Wine Magazine, The Washington Post, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, among others. He shares one acre on Turtle Lake in Shoreview, Minnesota, with his wife, Mary Jo, their elderly and entitled pug puzzle. He says, and roughly 80,000 honeybees. I forgot to ask a question, but I will about that, Steve. So great to have you join us. Welcome, Steve.

Steve Hoffman 00:08:51 Thank you. Natalie. It’s a huge pleasure. We’ve each read each other’s books, and it feels like you probably know more about me than you wanted to, and maybe vice versa.

Natalie MacLean 00:08:58 I always get that feeling from people who have read books. It’s like, okay.

Natalie MacLean 00:09:02 I’m really not that open person, but know your book is marvelous. I cannot wait to get into it.

Natalie MacLean 00:09:09 But before we get there.

Natalie MacLean 00:09:11 Your career journey has taken you from tax preparation to wine and food. Writing seems as logical as my own path, but what do these two wildly different careers have in common? That attracted you to both of them?

Steve Hoffman 00:09:24 Not much. Honestly, I was originally a language and literature student. That was my first love. Qualified me for zero jobs that would actually pay any money. So I spent a lot of the middle years of my life being a stay at home dad and finding careers that would pay the bills, basically. So the trip we took to France in 2012 was really a rediscovery of an early version of myself. And so the tax preparation and the writing and food writing careers are very separate in some ways. However, the one thing I would say is that they both involve actually being connected to people.

Steve Hoffman 00:09:59 And I know a tax office doesn’t sound like that may maybe is necessarily true, but it’s actually a remarkably intimate place. It’s a place where I talk or meet with 500 of my clients every single year. I’m involved in their lives. I see their lives unfold. They need to tell me details about their lives that are in some ways as intimate as what they would often tell their doctors. I need to know whether they have a job or not, whether they have kids or not, whether one of somebody is sick, how generous they are to charity, where their income comes from, etc. and so to that extent, there might be a little bit of a tenuous connection between my love of being connected to people. And I think writing about them and also being involved in people’s lives in a professional way. I do have a little bit of a story to tell each other.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:40 Yeah, absolutely. I love that connection. And you may have mentioned this on a previous conversation, but did you compare the tax code to grammar?

Steve Hoffman 00:10:49 Yes, absolutely.

Steve Hoffman 00:10:50 That is to some extent a connection as well, which is my original attraction to languages, came through a love of grammar. That was how I found my entree into English and writing early on. And then taking French is also a very. Taking any foreign language, I think, is a great way to be taught the grammar of your own native tongue. And in that sense, yes, grammar requires you to memorize a certain set of rules and then apply them in a living way to the sentences that you’re speaking or writing. And tax preparation is memorizing the United States tax code to the best of your ability, and applying it to the very specific situations of your clients. So yeah, memorizing and applying a sort of abstruse set of rules is actually a connection between my writing and tax careers.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:37 I love that. So your book A season for that is, as I said, a captivating journey through the Languedoc region of France. What inspired you to write about this region versus, as you say, the other southern France and tell us what the other southern France is for those of us who don’t know.

Steve Hoffman 00:11:54 Sure. So we settled in 2012 as a family for an extended fall semester in the Long Duc region, which I refer to as the other Southern France because it is to some extent the poor cousin of what most people think of as the southern France. And that would be primarily Provence and the Cote d’Azur. The Riviera, which was extensively touristy and a lot of money, got brought into that region by primarily British people who settled it early in the 20th century. And I didn’t settle it, but made it their playground, I would say.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:24 I think of Peter Mayle, A Year in Provence.

Steve Hoffman 00:12:27 The Peter Mail, you know, Princess Grace. Scott Fitzgerald, you know, there’s kind of that wealthy playground element of that part of southern France. So there’s money there. And Languedoc basically is the portion of Mediterranean France to the west of the Rhone, to the Rhone divides the country in two, similar to the way the Mississippi divides America into east of the Rhone is Provence and on the Riviera. West of the Rhone was long and eventually Roussillon.

Steve Hoffman 00:12:52 We settled there in part because we’re a middle class American family, and we didn’t think we could afford to live for six months in Provence. So that’s how we settled in, quote unquote, the other southern France. But I would also say that in the end, we had the kinds of experiences that we were able to have because we weren’t in the grips of a tourist haven that is so good at at grabbing you when you arrive and directing you into experiences that are tourist related rather than sort of human related.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:18 I love that. I love that. So how long did it take to write the book? Is it about ten years? Ten years? Yeah. Ten years. 2012?

Steve Hoffman 00:13:26 Agonizing years. Yes.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:27 Wow. What were the major hurdles? Agonizing. What agonized you most?

Steve Hoffman 00:13:31 Two things primarily. Well, first of all, there was the simple fact that publishing a book, there are a lot of gatekeepers between you and publishing your book. And so getting through those gatekeepers was one of the challenges.

Steve Hoffman 00:13:43 The other challenge was never feeling as if I’d quite done the experience of justice. I knew when we left, Mary Joe and I both knew when we left that something powerful had happened while we were there, more than just simply integrating into a village, something had happened to me personally in my middle aged development that we recognized but couldn’t put words to. So taking those years were necessary for me to actually get to the heart of the story. And then ultimately, it’s as simple as I was a fairly good writer of short pieces, 1000 to 2000 words, and the skills and craft necessary to keep a reader’s interest and tell a deep and rich story over a book’s length, was something that was beyond my skills early on, and it really just took a lot of that time for me to at first admit that I couldn’t do it, and then seek out the help I needed to be able to do it.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:33 Yeah, I found that to the challenge with my first book. At first I just wanted to string together ten long magazine articles.

Steve Hoffman 00:14:40 Exactly, exactly.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:42 This is ten long magazine. You need it through Arc or whatever.

Steve Hoffman 00:14:46 Correct.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:47 Yeah. so that is tough.

Steve Hoffman 00:14:48 I struggled with that same thing with making it cohere. I laugh with and Mary Jo says the same thing. You know, I can cough twice. And 2000 words will appear in a Microsoft word document. Like, I don’t even have to think about it. It’s so natural. And so to unlearn that kind of, oh, let’s wrap everything up with a pretty bow after 2000 words rather than oh no, wait, let’s leave things such that the reader wants to turn the page and find out what happens next. That was a very difficult mental shift for me.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:14 And what would it through works for you or the major through work? Was it your transformation as a human being?

Steve Hoffman 00:15:19 I think the original story that then eventually turned into the memoir, the original story was a very Peter Mayle esque kind of travelogue. We were here. There was a chronology of how long we were there.

Steve Hoffman 00:15:29 We had some kind of very interesting experiences. We got deeper than usual into this part of the world. That was the original story, the parallel story that made it a memoir. The operating word I used as I was trying to imagine what this book should be about was acceptance. And so there is what I think of as the external story of our family’s acceptance into this village. And then there’s the internal story of a middle aged man finding some form of self-acceptance at age 45 that he hasn’t been willing to afford himself for a lot of his adult life.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:59 I love that. Yeah. And that’s what moves people, because, as you know, like with a memoir, I’ll probably never go live in France for six months. But I can identify with your journey of self-acceptance. That’s a journey a lot of people take.

Steve Hoffman 00:16:12 And the other important, difficult part of that was that for that to be a journey, you need to start in a place where you’re not fulfilled, where you haven’t accomplished what you want, where you’re in a state of ignorance and incompletion.

Steve Hoffman 00:16:25 And then you have to guide the readers, but also expose yourself and be vulnerable and show that you don’t know it all at the beginning, or the ending doesn’t have any emotional resonance. So that was the other difficult part, which sort of breaking down my own ego to some extent, so that I could show myself as a very flawed person early in the book, in order for the reader to feel a sense of catharsis or whatever. At the end of the book, when I kind of do step into myself in some ways.

Natalie MacLean 00:16:50 And that’s also what people identify with are human vulnerabilities and frailties and correct. Yeah.

Steve Hoffman 00:16:56 Yeah. Correct.

Natalie MacLean 00:16:57 You did it well. Thank you. Yeah. So how did your experience change the way you approach food and wine writing in the Languedoc being there?

Steve Hoffman 00:17:05 Well, it’s a very stark before and after story. I was not a food and wine writer at all when we arrived. I had kept journals during our travels over the years. I had dabbled in writing at various times when I was a stay at home dad.

Steve Hoffman 00:17:17 Specifically, I tried writing some short fiction and poetry. That was terrible, and I hope it never sees the light of day. What happened in 2012 was that I kept an extensive journal that ended up being over 100,000 words, describing what was happening to us on a day to day basis, and trying to make scenes and stories and vignettes out of the little adventures that we were having daily. And it was three of those journal entries that eventually got crafted into three food writing pieces for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The year we came home. Those pieces ended up winning a national food writing award. And suddenly I realized, oh wait. This dream since my adolescence of being a writer might actually be within my grasp. And that really began my food writing career. So that journal is the start of my food writing career. There was not such a thing prior to our arrival.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:07 Wow. So you basically started at the top with winning the MFK Fisher and then reverse engineered your way back to.

Steve Hoffman 00:18:13 I didn’t quite get to.

Steve Hoffman 00:18:14 MFK Fisher immediately. That was several years down the road, but yes, it was. It was a different award. But yes, it was a crazy sort of. And again, that sounds like a Cinderella story, you know. Oh, he he writes in his journal and then suddenly he’s an award winning food writer. But to be honest, that was the result of an awful lot of work in my very young adulthood, in college and after college, studying literature, paying attention to good writing, reading lots of writers that I loved, writing in a careful way Almost my entire life. And so when I took it back up and wrote those journal pieces. That was not somebody with straw behind his ear who had never written anything before, or had never been interested in writing, I was deeply interested in that whole world for a time, and then just couldn’t follow through on it because there was no way to, like I said, pay all the bills and try to be a writer early in my life.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:04 Okay. And how did the experience of the Languedoc improve your understanding kind of of sensuality? You talk about this and how to capture that into words.

Steve Hoffman 00:19:14 That’s a great question. And I think it really came from that journal. You know, we would have an adventure, we would go to a butcher shop, or we would go to a market, or we would meet a winemaker, and I would write about it, and then we would do the same thing, or I would make a similar dish that I had made previously that I described earlier in my journal. Now suddenly I have to describe that again in a way that doesn’t simply repeat the way I did it previously, and that so that daily ness of journaling and the requirement that I describe things once and then again and then maybe again require me to see and feel and pay attention to the experience of eating and of experiencing wine. You know, it made me go several layers deeper. And often those third or fourth descriptions were the best because I’d gotten beyond the initial.

Steve Hoffman 00:20:00 You know, you tend to leap to cliches first, and then you think beyond those cliches and ask yourself, well, what am I actually feeling? What are the sort of chords of memory that are actually being struck for me personally, rather than just this taste funky or this taste like cherries or, you know, this was delicious. So I really think it was that writing over and over. It was it became a kind of practice that really made me a better writer.

Natalie MacLean 00:20:25 That’s great. Well, it’s like for many artists, like Picasso had his blue period, and they’ll go at one topic, or like the bales of hay or whatever in the fields for was it Van Gogh or somebody? And he kept doing it and doing it with different light at different times of the day. And you’re right, it’s well, it’s like what ballerinas do at the bar, Like you know. Please. Please. Please. Please.

Steve Hoffman 00:20:45 Yeah.

Steve Hoffman 00:20:45 Monet’s water lilies. Right. It’s obsessive attention to the same thing and taking small things seriously enough and with enough respect that you try to describe them as absolutely accurately as possible.

Steve Hoffman 00:20:56 And that training really began in that journal.

Natalie MacLean 00:20:59 Yeah. And it’s those small little gems that build the beautiful.

Steve Hoffman 00:21:04 Piece will make a whole.

Steve Hoffman 00:21:05 Scene come alive. You know, you can describe it well and it can have forward sort of narrative momentum. But for me as a reader, it’s those moments of magic where the prose just sparkles and fires something in your brain where you make a connection like, oh my God, I’ve never thought of it that way. That’s such an exciting moment for me that I love trying to create that myself.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:22 It is. And MRIs show that different parts of our brain fire up depending on which sense we’re evoking or like, even reading about. So yeah. Yep, yep. Using different parts. Now, speaking of beautiful writing, you’ve referred unkindly sometimes to your own writing as circus writing and your love of beautiful phrases, some of which had to go because they didn’t move the story forward. How did you learn to kill your darlings? I guess some people attributed that to Hemingway, but I believe it was Arthur Quiller Couch.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:51 How did you learn to have that balance of the beautiful phrases and the keeping the story going? Or was it just practice and.

Steve Hoffman 00:21:58 No.

Steve Hoffman 00:21:59 There were a couple of turning points there. There’s a parallel. The story of our time in France is, to some extent, a story of me slowly having my ego ground down. There’s a kind of arc that goes down to a certain amount of crisis, or a certain loss of faith in myself, or loss of who I thought I was. That then is rebuilt later and that process. And Mary Jo, my wife, is a sort of lovingly strict taskmaster when it comes to showing me myself, when I’m full of myself. And one of her phrases is to get over, get over yourself, Stevie. You know, you have to get over yourself. And so I had to get over myself as a French speaker and lover of France.

Natalie MacLean 00:22:39 Was there a moment when it came to that sort of crisis or whatever? Or did she say something that sort of was the turning point?

Steve Hoffman 00:22:46 There was an early turning point in the story, and in our experience where I thought things were going great and I was looking forward to sitting in cafes and speaking beautiful French and charming my neighbors.

Steve Hoffman 00:22:57 And she said, Stevie, this isn’t working. And what she meant was, you’re turning this into The Steve Hoffman show, and I and the kids are starting to feel like extras. You need to make something happen here. The kids speak French, but they can’t do this. They’re not adults and I don’t speak French. So if you want to continue this love affair you have with France, something has to happen this time. Or I’m not interested in France. I can go to Madrid. I can go to Austria, I can go to Spain. I could be happy anywhere. So that was very much a turning point. And then there were several efforts to sort of cook my way into the village and to try to charm my way into the village, and those eventually just failed in a very transparent way. And I was faced with that kind of I call it the 12 step rock bottom moment. You know, where you where you admit that you have a problem and you have to change the way you think about things in order to pull yourself out of that.

Steve Hoffman 00:23:46 So that happened in the story itself, in terms of our journey from arriving as strangers and leaving as friends. But it also happened as part of the writing of the book, which was I was in love with my own ability to say things beautifully, and at some point that had become a form of showing off, not a form of connecting with readers or communicating to readers. And so there was one very specific turning point. This is seven years into the book. Now I believe I’m just around the corner, and I just simply can’t believe that the American publishing industry hasn’t recognized my genius yet. And I had a coach who said, Steve, you’re a beautiful writer, but nobody cares. And they don’t care because I know, I know, as always, it’s like, that’s a bad moment. That’s a bad thing to hear seven years into a project. But it was really the turning point that turned it into a publishable book and a book that I could be proud of because she was saying, similar to Mary Jo, you need to get over yourself.

Steve Hoffman 00:24:38 You need to get over how in love you are, with your own words and your own ability to describe things and your turns of phrase. You need to start giving the reader the respect and the service they deserve of offering yourself in process, of offering yourself incomplete, and of being much more vulnerable and much more open, and either telling the truth or being in the process of trying to understand the truth about yourself. And that was really the difference between, again, this being a very light toe dip into Mediterranean France like Peter Mayo, and it being what I think it turned into, which is kind of a rich story about a man and a family.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:13 Yeah. You’re right. Absolutely. I so identify with that, using the beautiful phrases as a shield. I did and still do, unless I catch myself, try to use sort of slapstick humor as a defense. And it’s a way of of not being vulnerable, of not presenting your whole self. And just like, you know, again, tying everything up in a lovely, beautifully written bow or a whatever.

Steve Hoffman 00:25:36 Right? Yeah. It’s a kind of defense mechanism. It’s a shield. But that shield then stands in the way of you connecting with other people. And at some point, if you’re going to write a memoir, you can’t be that person. You have to be a different person.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:45 Exactly. It’s about that human experience. Now, what was the most important thing you were? Editor, a much respected cookbook author. Francis Lam taught you well.

Steve Hoffman 00:25:56 He taught me that you can always cut more.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:58 Oh. Cruel things.

Steve Hoffman 00:26:01 There’s always something else you could cut. And I am still embarrassed to admit the length of manuscript I originally turned into him, thinking that there.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:10 Was some way to.

Steve Hoffman 00:26:11 Make something. It was twice the length that I had been hired to write. Oh no. Not quite. No. Not quite. It was a one and a half times.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:17 Okay, so what was that length like versus what was the final book?

Steve Hoffman 00:26:21 My contract asked for a 90 to 100,000 words and I turned it.

Steve Hoffman 00:26:24 Actually, no, it was twice. I turned in 180,000 words. I turned in more two times the number of words, again in love with my ability to say things. At first he literally said, I can’t even look at this like, I don’t have time to look at this. You need to get it. And so my agent and I said, this has to change. So I went back to the drawing board. I cut 50,000 words, got it down to 130,000. And then I believe the final manuscript was 115,000 words. So we got very close. But, you know, he delivered some very bad news over and over and did it in such a smart and caring way. He’s such a brilliant editor in that way that he was able to deliver this, these just hammer blows of note that we got to get rid of that or nope, I think we can get rid of this or nope, I know how much you love this, but it can go. It’s not serving the story.

Steve Hoffman 00:27:10 And I would fight internally, but I eventually find that he was right. More often than not, there are a few things I fought back on and insisted on, but he was very good at showing me how cuts could continue, and it wasn’t going to make this into something I wouldn’t recognize.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:24 Yeah. The only way I could cope with that when I was writing is create another document called Future Book. And I thought, I’m going to use all this stuff, you know, they’ll come calling, wanting a sequel. It’s like I haven’t looked at it in years anyway.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:37 Nope. And yeah.

Steve Hoffman 00:27:38 That’s absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good strategy. And I did some similar things. You know, I actually literally went through and had a hashtag where I would highlight passages, call them darlings.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:49 Yeah.

Steve Hoffman 00:27:50 And then put them off to the side and figured, oh yeah, I’m gonna get back to my darling someday. And I have not. In fact, the interesting thing is I now read the book.

Steve Hoffman 00:27:58 I feel as if I can still find places where I could have cut a little bit more.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:02 Yeah, yeah, it’s that distance that you need. So I think we’ve kind of covered this, but I was listening to another conversation you were in and you said you needed to become not just a better writer to finish the book, but a better human. I guess that was more about your self journey of getting over yourself and just.

Steve Hoffman 00:28:20 Yep, that’s very much what we talked about just a minute ago, which is this idea of of having to be vulnerable, having to accept your flaws and accept that people are willing to look at your flaws and still think you’re an okay human being.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:31 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I also love your concept of travel. You talk about it that it’s become for many people, consumption rather than sort of staying put and experiencing the place. You have a great phrase called collecting capitals. Like been there, done that. Okay, there’s the Leaning Tower of Pisa and whatever.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:52 Is it just part of our consumer culture, our instant gratification? What’s going on with that?

Steve Hoffman 00:28:57 I think it’s partly that I think it’s also that people are being sold the idea that their lives are boring and that they need relief from their lives. And so we have this duality where we have our lives, which we’re taught to believe are not worthy. And then we have these escapes, whether that’s retirement for some people where you’ve worked all your life and you hated your job, but now, dammit, you’re going to enter your retirement and be happy. Or there are these vacations, or travel is another form of that where, okay, your life sucks, but you’re going to go have a great time for a week or two. And I feel as if, you know what. Mary Jo and I have had a phrase for a long time where we talk about trying to lead a life that you don’t need to vacate. That your life itself, if you are careful about it and a little bit intentional about it, can be the thing that you want to dive into every day.

Steve Hoffman 00:29:51 So yes, I do think there’s a consumer element to it. I think there is an element of people believing somehow that they need to escape their lives, and that there’s some better life over here if I just show up there, and then I just think there’s a certain fear of boredom. Like Americans really want to go have fun. They want to be entertained. They like manufactured entertainment. Or, you know, Las Vegas is like that, or Disney is like that, or even many resorts are like that. You’re going to play pickleball, and then you’re going to go have your mai tai, and then you’re going to go by the pool. And your day is sort of almost planned for you from the start. Most people think they’re going to go have the travel experiences that we had, but they set themselves up in such a way that they will never have that experience, because they’re too afraid that they’re not in the right place, that they’re going to get bored. That staying in one place is not going to be fulfilling or rich.

Steve Hoffman 00:30:40 And I had the opposite experience, which is I would much rather talk to my next door neighbor in the village that we lived in, who has lived in the same house for his entire life, but who can talk endlessly and beautifully about what it means to live in that place, to grow vines in that place, to make wine, to participate in that southern French Mediterranean culture. I would spend all day talking to him rather than listen to somebody else tell me about the things they did in Moscow or Paris that a million other people have done to exactly the same degree of depth.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:11 That’s true. That’s true. Yeah. And that also can be what a bad memoir is. I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this, and then I did that.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:20 Correct.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:20 Correct. No one cares.

Steve Hoffman 00:31:22 Right.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:22 Right.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:23 Yeah. You also said it was a journey about coming back to yourself. Some really interesting observations. You also mentioned Richard. Only the late, great American cookbook writer who you admired.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:34 And he lived in Provence. The other? Or the main southern France for 30 years. And he said, go somewhere else and be somewhere else to recommit to where you’re from after you travel. I think that happened for you, but maybe you can elaborate. Did you recommit to Minnesota or to who you were, but in a new way or.

Steve Hoffman 00:31:55 It’s a great quote, and I do love, love, love Richard. Only we can maybe talk about that at more length at some point. He’s an idol of mine. I’ve actually visited the home where he lived in Provence. It’s still there. It’s being kept up by a groundskeeper, or sort of a maintenance guy who lives there and takes care of it. I’m friends with his brother, who still lives in Minnesota, actually. But anyway, yes, that definitely happened. In my case, I would say I didn’t go with that intention. I went with the intention of trying to escape myself. I thought I was an uninteresting, you know, upper midwesterner who was going to escape himself and step into his fully formed identity as a French villager.

Steve Hoffman 00:32:33 I didn’t have the wisdom to that of the of that quote, which is you go, but then you come back to yourself against my will. To some extent that did happen, and I would say what I recommitted to, or had recommitted to by the end of that book was the core of the most important people in my life, which were the people who were surrounding me while I was there. It was Mary Jo, my wife and my two kids, and I thought we were going to all discover how wonderful it was to be someone other than ourselves. And by the end of the book, I’m cooking for and valuing, and then essentially agreeing to leave France for these people, because a season for that really refers to the ending of the book, where I’m accepting that there are not just seasons to the year, but seasons in a person’s life. And this is my season to be a father and to be a husband. This is not my season to be a French villager. Maybe that will happen someday, and if so, there will be a season for that.

Steve Hoffman 00:33:29 But that acceptance, that coming back to yourself that you’re talking about and that only quote did very much happen. And in that way, the part of what the village taught me and my experience there taught me was that nothing matters if the core doesn’t matter. All of the beautiful experiences on the perimeter of your life don’t matter if the core isn’t strong, and there is a recommitment to those core relationships by the end of the book.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:51 Absolutely. I don’t know if it’s Tennyson, but somebody said to begin where we started and know that place for the first time or something.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:57 Absolutely, yes.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:58 Sort of.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:58 That circular.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:59 Thing. Absolutely. Yeah. So you took your two children with you, as you mentioned, who at the time were nine and 14. How did they react to being uprooted and going to rural France for six months?

Steve Hoffman 00:34:10 Well, one was a pre-teen or one was an early teenager and the other was nine years old. So they reacted very differently in the sense that she was a teenager with all the self certainty of a teenager, believing for sure that she was being put upon by being forced not to have lunch at her school lunch table, but actually be in southern France.

Steve Hoffman 00:34:28 Then Joe was a The pliable, sensitive, nature loving young boy. And I think he was kind of ready to do whatever he could to be with us, basically. The interesting thing about that question, though, I think I think, again, we often think of travel as a way of being somebody else or being somebody new, reinventing ourselves. And what I observed in the two kids was that what they actually did was adapt the circumstances to who they already were. Joe was already a little budding scientist and naturalist and nature lover, and he plunged into the nature of this place. And Eva was already a strong willed, self-assured young person who imposed that will on her surroundings. And I think it was fun to watch them actually be themselves in a new location, rather than change, to try to be with what the location wanted them to be. If that makes sense. And in some ways there was almost more wisdom to that in in for them than mine, which was I did really believe I was going to leave and become a new person.

Steve Hoffman 00:35:31 I believed I was going to inhabit this young man who lived in Paris in my 20s and who was, you know, speaking French and operating competently in a world capital. That’s who I wanted to be. And that was somebody other than who I was at the time. So I just thought it was interesting, you know, this idea of travel being an escape versus travel being a place where you are yourself with new experiences in a new location, and that you get to be yourself in an in sort of wondering and investigatory way in a new place.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:02 Yeah, absolutely. Living, as you say, with an openness of vulnerability and a curiosity. Living, as they say. Maybe it’s cliche, but living the questions, not the answers.

Steve Hoffman 00:36:12 No, I think curiosity is one of the keys to this whole experience. Absolutely.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:15 Yeah. All right. And as you said, you were trying to live a life or not just living a life, but trying to model it for your children. Like that must have been pretty profound for them to see the transformation, even if they weren’t as acutely aware of it as you and your wife were.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:32 They would have known something was happening.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:34 And.

Steve Hoffman 00:36:34 I think they recognized that something happened. Yeah, absolutely.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:38 Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:38 And can you share any insights about French parenting or family life that struck you as, as very different from American parenting?

Steve Hoffman 00:36:47 There was a book about French parenting that came out a number of years ago that talked about that in France. They refer to it as LA, which is a frame. I don’t know if you’ve seen that. So I read about this idea, but then I did very much see it in action, which is the French parenting style. And of course, this is a this is a gross simplification of a huge, diverse country. But the French attitude about parenting is that inside the frame, there’s all kinds of behavior that’s normal for kids, and that can even be a little bit disruptive. And anything inside that frame is allowed, but you cannot step outside the frame. So there are certain things that are absolutely forbidden. And we did very much watch that. Kids were really allowed to be kids there.

Steve Hoffman 00:37:25 But then you would see that they they understood that in certain settings, certain things were not allowed. We would often watch, you know, we’d go out for a lunch on a weekend and there would be an entire French family at a table nearby with kids from very young, two, three years old, up to teenagers who were quiet, well behaved, talking, participating, not unhappy. Not sulking. Eating a fairly broad range of what was served to them. And it didn’t look like they were little automatons who were being, you know, their whip was being cracked over their heads. It was that this is what life was. You get to be a kid. You can be a kid to whatever extent you want to be within the frame of this setting, but you can’t go running around and screaming, and you can’t refuse what’s put in front of you. And if your grandmother asks you a question, you answer her. It was beautiful in many ways. The other thing I would say that I really loved and witnessed a couple of times is the tradition of the Sunday lunch, where multiple generations of a family would gather most Sundays around a table, and that was sort of the hallowed and sacred family time.

Steve Hoffman 00:38:31 It was just something really beautiful about that gathering and about reconnecting. You know, that often with the people in your life.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:38 Did you take some of those traditions or rituals back with you? Maybe adapted them, but back home?

Steve Hoffman 00:38:44 I think we had tried to adapt some of that frame idea into our own parenting, and we definitely, if we haven’t really done Sunday lunch, because it just doesn’t lend itself well to American life. But certainly the idea of some regular gathering around the table and eating something that we have cooked together and where the conversation is the point, rather than the meal being the point. And then you all go off to your separate corners of the house. That really did linger, and I think is still a part of our family in a good way.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:13 I’m getting some great ideas here too. Canadians can be very rushed as well. So like fueling versus you know.

Steve Hoffman 00:39:21 Yeah, I mean, Mary Jo and I talk about Thanksgiving in the US, which is supposedly the feast where we all gather and sit around a table.

Steve Hoffman 00:39:26 It’s one of the very few occasions where Americans sort of commit to doing that. And yet if you watch most American Thanksgivings, it’s everybody’s talking and watching the football game, and then they all go to the table and they all eat really fast, and then there’s no courses. It’s all on one plate, all piled up on top of each other. You eat your turkey and potatoes and vegetables, and then you all go back and watch the football game again. It’s like, so yeah, there was something about the French willingness to let conversation be the point. Be patient with conversation as a way of passing time. That was really refreshing, that we really loved, and that we’ve definitely tried to sort of incorporate into our own family.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:00 That’s great. So why did you choose the Village of Nyack? I think.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:05 It’s called.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:07 Why that one? Like there’s lots of little French villages in Languedoc.

Steve Hoffman 00:40:10 So it was somewhat random. There was a certain sort of intentional randomness about it. Mary Joe and I have always liked to challenge ourselves by kind of going underprepared to places and then figuring out what the place wanted to tell us.

Steve Hoffman 00:40:23 So there was a bit of that. We knew we wanted to be somewhere south because we’re from the north, we’re from Minnesota. And so we wanted there to be relatively warm. So it was going to be Mediterranean. France longer, doc was more affordable, was the only thing we could probably really afford. And then it was a question of sending a bunch of emails and hoping to get a response preverbal pre Airbnb. The other thing I would say though, is that we had had an earlier experience in Brittany in the early 2000, and as part of planning that trip, there have been several villages or cities, small cities in the guidebooks that looked really interesting, and there were some kind of impressionist artists who lived in some of the cities along the Brittany coast. And in the end, we had not gone to those places. We’d gone to a place that was about 1200 people. And what we discovered while we were there was that that was about the right size for us to many fewer people, was just going to be like it was going to be like living with an extended family.

Steve Hoffman 00:41:16 There probably weren’t going to be merchants and butchers and grocers, etc. but to much more than that, you start suddenly getting maybe into the territory where this is a city that shows up in guidebooks. And then you have an entirely different makeup of the sorts of people who would visit there. So we did also try to limit our search to villages between about 800 and about 1500 people, and we figured about 1000 was the was the golden mean. That was kind of our target. And it turned out to be about right. 800 people, which was the population of Oceania, was a little bit small. It wasn’t quite enough to sustain all of the commerce that ideally you would want to be reliably permanent in a village, but it was really close. It was still about the right size for us.

Natalie MacLean 00:41:59 Cool.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:00 Now let’s see the scene at the cafe de Commerce. Sets the tone for the cultural differences. Maybe you can tell us about that and how these initial experiences shaped your approach to immersing yourself in that local culture?

Steve Hoffman 00:42:14 Yeah, I feel like that first scene is sort of the first tolling of the bell that I don’t recognize for.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:20 What it is.

Steve Hoffman 00:42:21 Which is this is not going to be what you thought it was going to be, Steve. You imagined something a little bit romantic. You imagine something that would fit itself into your existing skills as a French speaker and a human being. And this whole book is the process of unlearning those things and then relearning the way I think of it, I guess, is that I arrive with a preconception of what this should be. There’s a lot of breaking down of that preconception in the first part of the book, until I sort of stop talking and start listening, if that makes sense. I stop imposing and begin accepting. And the turning point really, in that process, in that movement, is more toward the middle of the book. When I ask to be part of a great pick and crew and start working in the vines and working in a village winery, that is the moment where I feel as if I stopped trying to tell the place what I thought it should be, and started listening to what the place wanted to tell me about what it was.

Steve Hoffman 00:43:19 And then at that point, it wouldn’t shut up. There was sort of an eloquence about everything around us that wanted us to know more. Our friends, our fellow great pickers, the winemakers that we made, the merchants and vendors and, you know, the fishmonger and the shellfish monger. Once we start asking questions and being ignorant and full of wonder and expressing not just with our words, but with our whole attitude how interested we were in this place. Everybody started wanting to tell us more about this place. And so, you know, in the end, it’s this sort of irony that you feel like you’ll learn the most by showing people how much you know, so they’ll respect you and want to share their information. And in fact, it was just the opposite. It was when we were our most openly vulnerable and wondering and full of wonder that we gained the most knowledge, true knowledge about what this place was about.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:10 Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:16 Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Steve.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:19 Here are my takeaways. Number one. How do you create a life? You don’t need a vacation from? Well, Steve says we’re often sold on the idea that our lives are boring and we need relief from them. So we have these escapes, whether it’s retirement for some people or, you know, you’ve worked hard all your life, hated your job, but now you’re going to enter your retirement and be happy. And then there are vacations where you’re going to go and escape that dreaded job and have a great time for one week or two. He and his wife had a phrase for a long time that they were determined to lead a life that you don’t need to vacate. That your life itself, if you are carefully crafting it and are intentional about it, can be a thing that you want to dive into every day. I love that. Number two, what can we learn from the French about slowing down, savoring meals, and making conversation? The heart of gatherings. Steve talks about Thanksgiving is one of the very few occasions where he and his family commits to slowing down and making conversation around the table, and a great meal.

Natalie MacLean 00:45:20 The point of getting together. And yet, if you watch a lot of Thanksgivings, whether it’s in Canada or the US. Everybody’s talking watching a football game, and then you go to the table, you eat really fast. It’s all on one plate, all piled up and, you know, gobble, gobble, gobble and it’s over. There’s something about the French willingness, he says, to let conversation be the point. And to be patient with the conversation as a way of passing time. That’s really refreshing. I love that, too. And number three, what’s it like living in the other southern France? So Steve explains that he and his family went in 2012 for an extended fall semester to the Languedoc region, which he refers to as the other southern France because to some extent, he says, it’s the poor cousin of what people think of as southern France, primarily Provence, the Cote d’Azur or the Riviera, which is extensively touristic and gets a lot of money brought into the region. Of course.

Natalie MacLean 00:46:21 Peter Mayle, Princess Grace. F Scott Fitzgerald made it famous. A wealthy playground, Languedoc is the portion of the Mediterranean France to the west of the Rhone. The Rhone river divides the country in two. East of the Rhone is Provence and the Riviera. West of the Rhone is Languedoc and eventually Roussillon. They couldn’t afford to live in for six months in Provence, so in the end they went to Languedoc, and he firmly believes he had better experiences not being in the grips of a tourist haven. In the show notes, you’ll find a full transcript of my conversation with Steve Links to his website, the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now, no matter where you live. If you missed episode 115, go back and take a listen. I chat about Bordeaux with award winning author Jane Hanson. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite. You’ve also mentioned that 70% of wine in Bordeaux used to be white or sweet.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:26 So was it the British influence that caused the flip to the red?

Jane Anson 00:47:32 I love that question. So those 300 years when it was English, it was mainly red. The English basically preferred red wine, drank more red wines. The switch in Bordeaux came after the English left when the Dutch came, because the Dutch have always been much more interested in white wine. But then from 1972 or 3 and it switched to red. And today Bordeaux is 90% red wine. We tend to think of Bordeaux as being such a kind of traditional, unchanging region. But then just that one statistic tells you Bordeaux is perfectly capable of changing and adapting to what consumers want.

Natalie MacLean 00:48:05 Oh, that’s a great insight to draw from it. And the fact that they remain outward focused with an international focus.

Jane Anson 00:48:12 You’re right. That’s a really good point.

Natalie MacLean 00:48:18 You won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Steve. If you liked this episode or learned even one thing from it, please email or tell a friend about the podcast this week.

Natalie MacLean 00:48:29 Especially someone you know who be interested in learning more about getting the most from living abroad for an extended period. It’s easy to find the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, their favorite podcast app, or they can listen to the show on my website at Natalie MacLean. Email me if you have a SIP tip question, or if you’d like to win one of five copies of the books I have to give away. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this episode, or if you’ve read my book or are listening to it. Email me at Natalie at Natalie MacLean. Com in the show notes, you’ll find a link to tick a free online food and wine pairing class with me called the Five Food and Wine Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your dinner. And how to fix them forever at Natalie MacLean. And that’s all in the show notes at Natalie MacLean. Forward slash 348. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week.

Natalie MacLean 00:49:35 Perhaps a wine that you paired with a long and deeply satisfying conversation. You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast. Especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at Natalie MacLean. Meet me here next week.

Natalie MacLean 00:50:05 Cheers!

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