Nicolas Masse, chef at Sources de Caudalie, and landscape designer Hugo Jarmasson

As a sign that times have changed, when Les Sources de Caudalie opened in 1999, there was a golf driving range where the kitchen garden is today! Heading up the hotel's two restaurants, La Grand'Vigne and La Table du Lavoir, Nicolas Masse arrived at Les Sources de Caudalie in 2009, after more than seven years at the Grand Hôtel de Saint-Jean-de-Luz. Another setting, another cuisine, for here he is in the midst of the vines - those of the Château Smith Haut Lafitte vineyard - and thus puts his cuisine at the service of the wine. Under the supervision of landscape gardener Hugo Jarmasson, partner of the Conservatoire du goût (an association co-founded by Rachel Lagière working to safeguard the diversity of peasant fruit and vegetable seeds), the vegetable gardens laid outs on the estate flourish in a very bucolic setting, with ducks frolicking in the pond, chickens pecking at the bottom of the garden and horses helping to work the vines.

Gault&Millau: Was there already a kitchen garden when you arrived here?

Nicolas Masse: There has always been a lot of vegetation, but more for aesthetic reasons. The two small squares in the first vegetable garden existed, but they were minimalist. We started to give them life, so that certain plants would be close to the kitchen. Everything grown in small quantities: flowers, herbs, berries, thyme, peas... to be picked before each serving. Further on, the large vegetable garden we call Jardin des Abeilles, created in 2015, is dedicated to larger-volume production: zucchinis, cucumbers, beet... At Château Smith Haut Lafitte, we grow all the plants, yarrow and sage we use to make herbal teas to protect and care for the vines. For me, having our own kitchen garden resonates with the work we do in the vineyard, respecting the environment.

G&M: How many varieties do you grow?

Hugo Jarmasson: In the squares near the kitchen, a good twenty, if not thirty varieties... There's a rotation on all the plants, except for the perennials, i.e. raspberries, redcurrants and certain aromatics such as geranium or lavender.

N. M.: Some areas are more experimental. For example, there's mioga (a variety of Japanese ginger) that we're trying to tame. This is the end of the peas, which we're currently making into a pie, but to have them soft and sweet like this, there's no miracle, it can only be in our garden.

H. J.: In any case, they're of a size that can't be sold. They don't weigh anything, they're not profitable for a market-gardening business. But the whole point is in the taste, the perfect ripeness. Here, we have a variety of Jerusalem artichoke, helianthi, whose rhizomes are longer and less fleshy than Jerusalem artichokes. It's light and takes a long time to harvest, so it's not profitable for a farm. But what a taste! The large kitchen garden is made up of large squares with a passageway of planks.

Our crop rotations take place over a cycle of at least three years, if not five, to avoid disease and so that the plants don't always draw the same nutrients from the soil. We combine plants to create synergies, optimize space and therefore make the most of the ground surface. At the foot of the tomatoes, we put small flowers, such as calendulas, edible flowers or low-growing herbs like thyme, basil or tagetes, which don't grow too much. We never use chemicals; we only fertilize with organic matter or compost directly from kitchen waste. We try to create a virtuous cycle.

G&M: But you're not self-sufficient?

N. M.: No. For the rest of our needs, we do a bit of business with Rachel Lagière from the Conservatoire du goût, who also has a market-gardening business, but it's often produce that's already in our gardens. Otherwise, we work with small producers or artisans who work in the same spirit.

G&M: How do you choose what to plant and test?

N. M.: We both do. I have certain ideas, Hugo others. For example, I'd like to make some plates around cucumbers or eggplants, and he'll suggest some varieties I hadn't thought of. A variety from Japan or a spicy cucumber... It's an exchange. Like mioga, which is a product he suggested to me, or varieties of coriander or lavender that I didn't know. When you discover a product, it also makes you think of dishes you hadn't thought of before.

G&M: Has your cooking changed since you arrived and created these vegetable gardens?

N. M.: It's much more plant-based. It's also more spontaneous. Because we want to offer the best produce at the best time, with the utmost honesty. In other words, if I only have 35 portions of peas that I think are exceptional, I'll only offer those 35 portions, and I won't go elsewhere and give customers something of lesser quality. A dish may only be on the menu for a day or two, because it's the right moment, and then we move on to something else.

Customers never know in advance what's on our menus, because I can't tell them what I'm going to have in the gardens when they visit. There's a creative diversity in vegetables that's a hundred times more important to me than in meat or fish. You can use a tomato from starter to dessert. In sauces, gazpacho, sorbets, tuiles... it's infinite. At La Grand'Vigne, I now offer three or even four dishes out of seven that are essentially vegetable-based. And often as a single product, sublimating it in a variety of ways. But if there isn't a real history of sourcing and harvesting behind it, it doesn't make sense.

G&M: In such an environment, where you also have to take care of the decorative aspect, how do you strike a balance between beauty and yield?

H. J.: I also work as a landscape architect, so I'm just as familiar with plant care and the work of the market gardener as I am with the aesthetic side of planting. Usually, in permaculture, we have little things growing all over the place that we'd like to keep, but which we sometimes have to remove precisely to preserve aesthetics. Here, you can see some bells that are not oyas[porous terracotta water tanks], but which are used, when weeding, to decompose plant waste under cover, without having a visible pile of weeds.

G&M: Do you see a link between market gardening and vineyards?

H. J.: First of all, there's real agronomic work to be done. The ambition of the Conservatoire du goût is to be able to study plants in the same way as we do wine. The Conservatoire's farm is on the right bank of the Garonne, so on clay-limestone soils, tastes don't express themselves in exactly the same way as here, on a gravelly, slightly sandier soil. It's not the same pH, there are subtle differences, and it's interesting for us to work with chefs who are sensitive to the fine nuances of the product.

N. M.: The vine inspires me on a daily basis, and my cooking is at the service of the wine. Hugo says perfectly that a vegetable expresses itself according to its soil, and I'm going to make a dish according to the terroir, I'm an ambassador for the vine. It's often said that I assemble a dish, just as you can assemble a great wine. When you look for the perfect match, you create the dish in the same way as you create a wine, looking for acidity, the sweetness of the terroir, a certain bitterness...

H. J.: For me, this garden is a celebration of what nature has to offer, and a showcase for its produce. There's an atmosphere here around plants that allows us, when we're at the table, to take the time to taste and honor these products. But when you're doing market gardening for the public, let's say for everyday life, there's also this approach of making people want to eat vegetables, of giving children a taste for vegetables. It's all about adding value to the product, but in a different way.

Read the Gault&Millau review