The photo in October’s Advocate CliffDweller shows François Chandou holding a crate of Domaine de Barbeyrolles. That’s the wine created in the French village of La Fleix, François’s hometown one hour east of Bordeaux. The grapes are grown in a Bergerac vineyard that has been in his family for 200 years. Domaine de Barbeyrolles is sold exclusively by his family in France and at La Cave in the United States.
Speaking of home, I also loved the story François told of how he and Anne happened upon their Kessler Park home of 28 years (the couple met, by the way, when Anne began frequenting the La Cave Wine Shop on Henderson in the late ’70s):
"When Anne and I, in the early part of 1980, were going to visit Anne’s parents, who at the time lived in South Oak Cliff at Ledbetter and Kiest, I recall cruising around this neighborhood, and we came around the corner, and there was a for sale sign in the yard. At the time, it was a lot more house than we were looking for, but I kind of fell in love with it. When we look back, with the kids going to private school up north, we thought numerous times about selling and moving to where the shopping was, where the kids school was, and that never happened. Every time we came back to the same conclusion: How are we going to find a house like this with this kind of charm and character, the rolling hills, the big huge trees, the sense of neighborhood where everybody knows each other and they knock on each other’s door to borrow a couple of eggs or a cup of sugar? There was so much about this house that was an extension of what I had experienced in Europe, and I must say that to have a five- to six-minute commute to work is a luxury these days, and when we leave work and arrive home, we have the feeling of leaving town."
