I am in Southwest France lounging on the deck of a comfortable barge that is floating down a canal flanked by poplar trees. There is a large quantity of excellent wines on board and in the evening I'll share another gourmet dinner with stimulating companions. It sounds like the ultimate indulgence – and it is.             

Photos by Kate Hill

Somewhere along the way, the French decided that life is worth living. Rather than rush through the pleasures of existence – food, romance, relaxation – they made an art of them and decided, in the main, to compress instead the necessary activities, such as work and sleep.  

There is no more leisurely way to experience these pleasures than a barge cruise. France, like Holland and to a lesser extent England, is laced by canals, constructed over a period of some 200 years. The canals were completed just as the railroads began to take over commerce the canals were designed to bear. A few commercial barges still ply these waterways, but most of the boats on the canals these days are there for pleasure. People have been enjoying the experience for a long time (after a trip on the Canal du Midi, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Of all the methods of traveling I have ever tried, this is the pleasantest") but only in the past dozen or so years has it become popular. 

Passenger carrying vessels range from barges to small cruise ships. You can rent do-it-yourself boats, but unless you are already familiar with the landscape or have some local contacts, you will miss a lot. I set forth on a 85-foot-long Dutch-built commercial barge built in 1916 and converted to yacht standards in 1986. 

This barge has two comfortable cabins that accommodate up to four passengers. Owner-operators describe it as a floating two-room hotel with a one-table restaurant. There are barges that carry as many as 22 passengers.   

The barge is based on the Canal Lateral a la Garonne. The Garonne River begins in the Pyrenee Mountains and flows north and then northwest until it joins the Dordogne just beyond Bordeaux.  At Toulouse, the Canal Lateral meets the Canal du Midi, making it possible to get from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean without going around the Iberian Peninsula. 

We begin the journey just outside Agen, prune capital of the world. Among the wrinkles here are prunes stuffed with chestnut paste or doused in Armagnac. 

After a champagne reception we shove off at barge speed -- five knots per hour. Still, it isn't long before we tie up for a side trip to the tiny village of Clermont-Dessous, which boasts a 12^th-century church, the ruin of an equally old fortification, a three-room hotel, an auberge and a creperie. People from Agen come here to eat and enjoy the view of the Garonne Valley. 

All the passenger barges provide side-trips to towns and attractions en route. Most will customize these excursions, emphasizing wineries, historic places, cathedrals, markets or even children's activities. One man just wanted to sit on deck with a bottle of a good '82 Bordeaux and watch the trees go by.  

In food heaven 

That night we enjoy the first of a succession of first-rate dinners. Meals are prepared with provisions bought fresh along the way. The Garonne Valley, an agricultural wonderland, produces fruits and vegetables, wild mushrooms, garlic, corn (which the French feed only to animals), ducks, geese, lambs and pigs. This is the home of fois gras, magret du canard, jambon du canard, confits, and cassoulet.  (Pigeons, still seen in some markets, seldom make it to restaurants, but most farmhouses still have a pigeonnier.) 

Each town has its own charcuterie whose butchers buy their meat fresh from local farmers. Of course, each town also has a boulangerie and every morning before the passengers awake, the cook purchases the fresh croissants and baguettes, and chocolate du pain for our extended petit dejeuner.

The next day, vineyards march on the landscape. We are in Buzet. This was once part of the Bordeaux appellation, but got left out in a realignment. It was declared AOC (Appellation d'Origine Contrôllée) in 1973. The grapes are the standard Bordeaux varieties and the wines, while not up to the finesse of the great Bordeaux, are excellent values. They are produced by some 400 growers organized into a co-op, and one crusty loner. 

Everyone is welcome to visit the co-op to taste and purchase the wines and view the old winery implements in their mini-museum. Some Cotes de Buzet is shipped to the United States, but their biggest customers are the people in the immediate neighborhood who bring in their own jugs to be filled. 

To visit the crusty individual in his farmhouse-winery, however, you have to know someone, like our barge owners. M. Rykman makes all his wine himself and bottles it with the help of his wife and sister-in-law.  He spurns oak. "If you want to taste wood," he tells a visitor, "I have some out back." He also uses only half the dosage of sulfur allowed by the regulations and offers us some of his '78 which proves still fresh, with plenty of fruit. The '87 is not at all astringent, but is very well balanced with cherry, berry and lavender notes. 

If you want to buy some of Rykman's Domaine de Versailles (he battled the authorities to use the name), you have to visit Buzet because he sells the entire 50,000 liters he makes a year out of the winery and a few local stores.  

Then it's back to the barge in time for an aperitif. We are introduced to floc (Armagnac sweetened with grape juice). The lounge features a picture window, a well-stocked library, antiques and art work. There is an actual wine cellar on board and a small but efficient kitchen. 

Market days were assigned to the various towns in the middle ages and the schedule is still observed.  Saturday is market day in Nerac and we are off in the van to feast our senses on an outdoor arena of stands that is a carnival of fresh and prepared foods.  As a bonus, we get to see the castle where Henri de Navarre lived before he converted to Catholicism and became King Henri IV. ("Paris is worth a Mass," he confessed). Our lunch is a picnic outside the 13^th-century walls of Vianne. 

Before the trip, the serpent I feared in this floating paradise was boredom. Would it prove to be merely an expensive way to catch up on my reading? The canals are low, one person warned me, and all you'll see are the tops of the banks. That did not prove true. The banks, at least along the Canal Lateral, are not more than a couple of feet high and from the deck of the barge one can usually see out over the countryside. On the banks, we saw people fishing and one woman doing her laundry in an old lavoir.  Knowing what went into the canal, we would not have done either. People also go horseback riding and bicycling on the tow-path. The barge carries bicycles and passengers can ride down to the next lock or off to the nearest village. 

While barging through Bordeaux is pleasant, however, it is the side trips that are fascinating. Besides wineries and old fortified towns, we visited a small church, St. Vincent du Mas d'Agenais, that has a genuine Rembrandt, had a feast in a French farmhouse, and marveled at the sound and light shows at Chateau Duras, a castle built between the 14th and 16th centuries that is still undergoing restoration. 

We took a full day to explore St. Emilion, beginning with a visit to Chateau Cheval Blanc, a premier grand cru classe `A' property.  (There are 11 premier grand cru in St. Emilion, but only Cheval Blanc and Ausone are classe A.)  The St. Emilion area borders Pomerol where merlot is the dominant grape, but the Cheval Blanc blend – straight from the field – is 66% cabernet franc, 33% merlot, and 1% malbec.  Typical Cheval Blanc is drinkable young but still ages well. The '90 is velvety smooth with olive and plum flavors, and a very long finish.   

The picturesque town of St. Emilion was founded by an 8^th-century Benedictine monk who slept on a stone bed in a one-star limestone grotto on a plateau above the Dordogne Valley.  Whatever the bed lacked in comfort, it made up in durability. You can still see it. 

Emilion attracted a following that spent the next three centuries chiseling out an impressively large church, mostly underground, from the solid rock. The monolithic church they created still dominates the town. 

In the years since, wine and religion became the pillars of the town. The English were such good customers for the region's wines that local loyalties were divided during the Hundred Years War and in the 14th century St. Emilion was sometimes an English town. Some of the streets are cobbled with stones that English ships used for ballast.

You can buy 20-year-old vintages in St. Emilion's several wine shops, but the prices are not cheap. Even the 1990 Cheval Blanc was priced at 400 francs ($60). 

The canal ends at Castets-en-Dorthe, about 20 miles south of Bordeaux. The Garonne is navigable from there. On the other side of Bordeaux it joins the Dordogne and forms a long estuary called the Gironde.  At Castets, in the shadow of a chateau in disrepair (occupied by a duchess who welcomes no visitors), our barge journey also came to an end.   

The van takes the barge passengers into the city. Bordeaux has monuments and wide boulevards to rival Paris, and of course the rest of the Bordeaux wine country spreads out from there. It can be explored by car or helicopter, and many of the area's wines can be tasted at the Maison du Vin in Bordeaux. 

The crew meanwhile prepared the barge for new passengers who would cruise slowly back to Agen. I envied them. 

This article first appeared in Wine Enthusiast magazine.