Our Blog - Cadours Purple Garlic Festival

I mentioned this last year when we went to the Pink Garlic Festival in Lautrec ... that we joked with friends who asked us about what we would be doing in our retirement saying "play golf, drink wine, go to pickle festivals". So last year, it was Pink Garlic, and this weekend ... Purple Garlic. The village of Cadours, about 45 minutes from Toulouse, is famous for its Purple Garlic (l'ail violet de Cadours) which has its own controlled appellation.

There are actually over 450 types of garlic (wow, I didn't know this!) Purple garlic is somewhat rare outside of the area in France that it is grown and it tends to have a milder taste and odor than the more traditional white garlic. Supposedly it is helpful in reducing Type II diabetes as it increases insulin synthesis. Some believe it prevents premature aging with the antioxidants it contains. Cadours violet garlic is an "early season" French garlic and comes into the market as early as July. Every year on the last weekend of August, Cadours has a 2-day Purple Garlic Festival and this year, we decided to make the short trek over there.

Cadours is a pretty small town with just over 1,000 people and is pretty much a farm-town, specifically corn, wheat and, of course, purple garlic. It is home to the Cadours-Laréole racing circuit and the Cadours Olympique soccer team. From 1949 to 1953, the Grand Prix of Cadours was held here (and we saw pictures of the race on display during the festival).

As we came into the main square, we saw the large and impressive central market hall, which was built in the early 19th century. They had a set of the festival events inside (the displays) and then the majority of the festival was held in the surrounding roads.

Across the street is L'église de la Nativité-de-la-Sainte-Vierge, or the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. It was built in the 18th and 19th centuries in a Néo-gothic style. We also saw old postcards with the church on it and the tower that you see now is not the original ... the early pictures shows a much shorter steeple. The original clocktower was finished in 1786 and the stained-glass windows date from 1859. We thought the interior was quite nice for such a small-town church. The ceilings were nicely painted and on the left-and-right of the altar were nice frescoes. The big circle you see with just light in the 2nd picture is the round stained glass window that I show later on.

And now, on to the garlic! You can see how they have them lined up on tables in the market hall, tied up in little (or big) bunches.

There was also prizes given for displays that were made from, you guessed it, purple garlic! These first two, a peacock and a horse, won 1st and 2nd prize respectively.

Here are some older ones (perhaps winners in previous years). The first is the market hall (so now you can see the entire hall and compare to the one picture I took of it that I have at the beginning of the blog). The bricks and pavement are made by using the exterior paper of the garlic, and the roof tiles are actual garlic cloves.

And the church that I showed earlier, made of garlic.

Lastly, this is the Hotel de Ville, which I didn't show a picture of. This one had a sign on it that indicated that it took 400 hours to complete.

A couple of the events that were scheduled ... there was a set of farm animals and the farmer would explain things ... it was mostly a kid event :-). In this case, he showed how to milk a goat and the kids could take turns experiencing it. Then he went through all of the various animals that he had (chickens, a goose, ducks, a pig, a pony, donkeys (that the kids could ride), a bunny, and a lamb. He would go through and talk about each, where they lived, what you called the male, the female, and the young (wow, lots of French vocabulary words today!).

There was also a Drum corps that played.