Notes from the Haut Languedoc

I'm writing this from Lodeve in Herault, France, a place I've known since I was twelve, when my estranged mother bought a steep terraced vineyard on the road from here to the hamlet of Les Plans (The Maps). We used to camp there in the two mazets (shepherds' huts) in summer holiday, getting to know her. The vineyard was a Christmas present to my brother and myself, just a drawing on a card which had advent type windows with maps she'd drawn of a half-hectare of land with a stream, huts...