Features

photos by Leif Carlsson

Provence isn’t supposed to be like this. Damp, bone-chilling rain falling from an angry, pewter sky in the land of perpetual sun. But the fall of 2008 is almost bizarre, meteorologically speaking, with rainstorms drenching what’s long been known, because of its range of crops, as the breadbasket of France.

And so I step off the train from Paris into a dark blanket of precipitation. Ominous weather, perhaps, for meeting Nico Derni, known for his imposing, intense style in three decades as a Milwaukee chef and restaurateur. But that Nico appears to have vanished. The man I meet, now 57, has shed some 40 pounds since leaving the States five years ago, and while still robust, moves with a light, assured step. More than 4,000 miles from the old rat race, all of its old burdens and tensions seem to have disappeared.

As for Provence, it, too, transforms itself with the next day’s sunrise, as that famously dazzling sun returns. Soaking up this Prozac from the sky, I’ve fallen several paces behind Nico, who walks with the confidence of someone who has soil under his fingernails – the rich soil of Provençe. I am here to learn about Mas Des Bories, the 12-acre farm where he and wife Roxanne produce their award-winning olive oils.

Just feet from the gravel drive where Nico has parked his Mercury Mountaineer is a stone hut, one of six on his farm. “Borie” is the French term for this primitive-looking house. The ones on the Derni farm date back almost 200 years, when shepherds roamed the fields. Beehive-shaped, the bories were the shepherds’ rudimentary homes. Around the structures, the bushy, 10-foot olive trees add more wildness to the primitive looking topography.

We’re heading toward the best-preserved example of the bories for a tasting of the farm’s oils, all made from olive varietals native to France. In the hazy morning sun, the green leaves glisten, still moist from the rain. Nico’s blue-Croc-clad feet pad softly along the brush and rocky, uneven ground. Fuzzy, gray-streaked hair pokes from the rim of his baseball cap.

Going back home was always Nico’s dream retirement. He’s gone from the pressure-cooker life of a top chef at places like the Elm Grove Inn to a mellow, earthy farmer. He steps into the borie and motions for me to follow. The darkened doorway makes me think of Lazarus rising from the dead. I’m glad Nico goes in first.

The one-room house is cool and damp, but brighter than you’d expect. The Dernis laid a brick and sand floor, but otherwise left this dormant dwelling as it was. A shelf cut into the wall was used as a refrigerator of sorts. The opposite wall is dusted with soot from fires that burned decades earlier. Cracking his warm, gap-tooth smile, Nico pulls away a pale sheet to unveil a wrought-iron hutch stocked with bottles of oil, all attractively labeled and packaged. The couple produces five kinds of oil on their farm, and Nico lines up a row of Dixie-sized cups to taste them.

I’d heard it is better to taste the olive oil with bread, I say. Nico shakes his head. “Better to sip it out of cups.” Plastic cups, to be specific. Metal ones distort the oil’s flavor.

With an almost fatherly insistence, Nico wants to take a photo of me sampling the oils. I pose with a mock-perturbed, “Do we have to, Dad?” facial expression.

“For you to show your friends!” he says cheerfully.

Nico gingerly steps back to observe my reaction to each of the oils, which he’s set up in order of lightest to most assertive. Each of the first four oils comes from four distinctly different olives. Climate and soil – “terroir,” as the French call it – give each olive’s oil its particular flavor. In Provençe, the soil is rich with thyme, laurel and lavender, and the oil tends to be milder in flavor, lighter in hue.

First comes the mellow taste of the Salonenque olive oil. Next, one pressed from the Grossanne olive, which offers a bit more fruit and texture with a smooth finish. The Bouteillan, I’m told, will be flowery. But I taste more fruity notes than in the Grossanne, and also a flash of pepper. It’s really a different experience to taste olive oil on its own, without a starch to sop it up or lettuce for it to cling to, nothing to interfere with the texture or flavor. The Aglandau is the biggest oil I’ve tasted so far – assertive, spicy, almost viscous. The last is what the Dernis call A.O.C., a blend of the farm’s olives. It’s like a crystallization of everything I’ve tasted in the other oils. The texture is velvet.

“Which one do you like best?” Nico asks me.

It’s no contest, I say, gripping my last cup and savoring the satin coating on my tongue. The A.O.C.

Retire and become a farmer in the south of France? Not a bad proposition. Traipse through a picturesque olive grove by day, filling your lungs with air of preternatural purity, and drink up the quiet, coal-black sky by night. The farm, Nico says, was “the wife’s” idea, as he often refers to her in heavily accented English.

My visit to the Dernis’ property gives me ample opportunity to observe the quiet, warm-hearted Nico. Ironically, Roxanne – whose voice cannot hide her Wisconsin roots – was in Milwaukee while I was in France. I later come to realize via trans-Atlantic phone conversations that she is the yang to his yin. And the Derni with all the best stories. Such as: When they moved to France and shipped their cars over, it took almost a year to get the paperwork to change the license plates. So they motored around France with Wisconsin plates.

“We never got stopped! People kept asking us, ‘Is that really where you’re from?’ ” laughs Roxanne.

Nico’s long-range plan was to retire from the restaurant business at 50 and move back to France. His hometown, Draguignan, is not too far from where the couple lives now in Salon-de-Provence, one of the oldest towns in the area, as well as the site where the apothecary and astrologer Nostradamus gave up the ghost. (There’s actually a museum built in his honor.) Provençe was the first Roman province outside of Italy, and Nico’s Italian ancestry is unmistakable in his swarthy skin and dark eyes.

But the couple’s “retirement” in France needed to include some way of supporting themselves. Roxanne, who’d worked for General Electric and had burned out on corporate America, didn’t want to answer to a boss anymore. And Nico didn’t want to be a boss. Roxanne came up with the idea of farming, and Provençe’s fertile landscape seemed perfect. The Dernis considered growing fruit like apricots or lemons (which are common in Provençe), but ultimately decided on olives because, as Roxanne bluntly puts it, they produce an expensive product.

Olives were most likely brought to Provençe by the Greeks, perhaps as early as 600 B.C. While Spain, Greece and Italy surpass France in olive oil production, the French are major consumers of olive oil. Oléiculture (olive cultivation) is perhaps a more fêted industry than wine in Provence, which has 30,000 olive oil producers spread across the Mediterranean Coast, according to the Association Francaise Interprofessionnelle de L’Olive (AFIDOL). This is a private organization that promotes olive oil cultivation in France.

The most difficult challenge for the Dernis was finding the olive farm. Many are passed down in families. The Dernis looked for four years, and when they saw the property they wanted one morning in 2003, they knew it within 15 minutes. The farm included everything – the land, house, farming equipment, etc. The only problem? “We didn’t know squat about farming,” says Roxanne with a lusty laugh.

And while the previous owner agreed to consult with the Dernis for a year, “three weeks before the closing,” Roxanne recalls, “goll-darnit, he dies! We were able to close [the sale], but we didn’t have him to teach us. The wife said that information was all in her husband’s head.”

The new entrepreneurs didn’t have a single customer. Worse, they didn’t have any oil to sell that first year. “The wife sold it!” says Roxanne, wincing at the memory. The Dernis moved to the farm in May 2004, and the next harvest wouldn’t be until November, followed by pressing and bottling. They wouldn’t have oil until the next year, if they even knew what they were doing.

But in the end, Nico’s French connection proved fortuitous. The AFIDOL hooked the Dernis up with an olive training consultant, someone to coach them on pruning, irrigating, rototilling.

Today, the Dernis do all the work on the farm, except during harvest – all of November and sometimes beyond. They actually have two crops – olives and almonds. The nut trees were a surprise when they bought the farm, and now they do a thriving summer business at a local wholesale market.

I follow Nico around the farm’s labyrinth of trees – 1,400 is the formal count – feeling a bit like the kid lost in the maze in The Shining. Except I’m in Provence – the jagged peaks of the French Alps are lovely specks in the distance – and my gentle guide is just ahead, inspecting his trees with a father’s pride, the picture of serenity.

“This looks good,” he mutters, stopping to inspect one of his progeny. “We pruned last year and the trees grow back like weeds.”

There are rows of trees in a square pattern in the center. The surrounding rows are arranged in subtle tiers, a little like an amphitheater. When we reach the top level, which is by no means high, I’m still surprised at how far we’ve wandered from the farmhouse. Through a break in the trees, the white farmhouse – a sturdy set of rooms topped with a clay-colored roof – looks toy-like in the distance.

Harvest is about a month out, and the tree branches hold clusters of plump olives. As Nico walks, he inspects the olives for flies. He pauses and half-turns, his Grape Lakes baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes.

“Do you want to see the trophy tree?” he asks.

I pick up the pace in response. The sky is cloudless, pure azure.

As we move to a different side of the farm, the terrain changes. The sandy soil has turned rocky. It’s getting warmer. Nico removes his multipocketed vest, part of the uniform he’s worn every day since I’ve been here, then peels off his sweatshirt, putting the vest back on over his baggy T-shirt. We’re scaling the grounds in clockwise fashion. Suddenly, he turns to me.

“You ever had a persimmon?”

I don’t think so, I tell him. I’m sweating in my fleece pullover. Ten minutes earlier, I was cold.

“I take you to Lulu’s house.”

As we approach the “10” in our clockwise farm tour, we step off the Derni property and into a small yard with a ramshackle cottage. Nico calls to his friend.

“Lulu? Lulu?”

No one answers, so he marches boldly up to a small tree laden with what looks like yellow tomatoes. Nico rips two persimmons off the tree, and he gives me one. It feels like a yellow tomato, too. I hesitate, expecting Lulu to barrel out of the house cursing at me in French.

Grinning like the Cheshire Cat, Nico waits for me to try the fruit.

Mimicking him, I tear off the bitter peel with my fingers and take a big, juicy chomp of fruity flesh. Our chins dripping with juice and pulp, we drop the persimmon remains to the ground, wipe our mouths with the backs of our hands and exchange a conspiratorial grin. Fruit thievery is sweet.

When we reach the trophy tree, I understand the name. It’s a huge, big-boned brother to the trees surrounding it – long, meandering limbs blanketed with a halo of leaves and grape-size olives.

“Last year, it was almost up to the electric line,” Nico says. “A few years ago, it took a guy four hours to remove the olives from it.”

The branches are luxuriously thick, the leaves healthy and uniformly green. Roxanne later tells me it’s common for olive farms to have a tree like this, one given more space between it and the neighboring trees and not subjected to the same pruning as the others. Another name occurs as I watch Nico gazing admiringly up at it: The Giving Tree.

In 1972, then barely into his 20s, Nico landed in the United States at a time when French chefs were increasingly populating American restaurant kitchens. At age 24, he became the head chef at Brynwood Country Club on 62nd and Good Hope, where he met Norm Eckstaedt, a teenager who parked cars at

the club. Nico, recalls Eckstaedt, encountered a Brynwood kitchen staff that had no interest in making any changes.

“Nico says to them in broken English, ‘Fine, you all gone,’ ” Eckstaedt remembers, laughing. Ultimately, Nico didn’t fire the staff, but the tough chef made it crystal clear who was giving orders from then on.

Nico’s stint at the Stone Manor Restaurant in Lake Geneva resulted in a life-changing meeting. At the time, he lived in Chicago with a fellow chef who introduced him to Roxanne, then a 19-year-old waitress in northern Illinois. They met over lunch at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva. “We had Champagne for lunch!” squeals Roxanne, who married Nico a year later and settled in Brookfield. Later, Nico rose to prominence in Milwaukee as co-owner of the acclaimed Elm Grove Inn (and for a time, the Red Circle Inn in Nashotah). He sold Elm Grove Inn in 2001.

Milwaukeechef Brian Moran knows the pressures of the restaurant business and was struck by how relaxed Nico is in his new life. During a trip to France in the summer of 2006, Moran and his family headed south to visit Mas Des Bories. Chefs share a kind of brotherhood. Moran says that before the trip, he and Nico were mere acquaintances. But the Dernis opened their home to the Morans, Roxanne piloting them through the olive grove, Nico whipping up wild duck salad and roast pork for dinner.

“He has this smile on his face [and] kisses you on both cheeks. I envy that thing that keeps and makes him happy,” says Moran.

Clearly delighted to put one over on a hapless American, Nico led his guests through laps on a dreaded French roundabout, which should have its own user manual.

“We’re following Nico and Roxanne in our rental car,” Moran remembers, “and I can see Nico in the mirror laughing as we go around and around and around.”

Thiensville caterer Scott Shully, a friend of the Dernis, stayed with them three years ago while on a European trip. Roxanne played tour guide through the olive trees. “A live wire of energy,” Shully says of Roxanne, who with her tall, reedy frame reminded him of the cartoon character Olive Oyl (no pun intended, he adds).

Shully brought along his daughter, Nina, who was then well into a study-abroad program in France. She got a memorably warm welcome from Roxanne.

Roxanne “jumps out of the car,” recalls Shully. “ ‘It’s so nice to meet you!’ she says to Nina. Roxanne’s arms are flapping – she’s just so enthusiastic. Nina says to me, ‘Hearing [Roxanne’s strong Wisconsin accent], I got so homesick!’ ”

Roxanne and Nico have had to work at their teamwork running the farm. “It took a lot of arguments,” she says. “Both of us were used to giving orders. It was a process of each of us figuring out we’re partners.”

That means knowing their respective skills. Nico, for example, is not allowed near his wife’s tool box. “The most unhandy man in the world,” she quips. “I do all the repairs.”

When more crazy weather dumped a very rare 6 inches of snow on Provence last January, causing the Internet signal to vanish, Roxanne climbed a ladder to the farmhouse roof and shoveled like a true Midwesterner. That was necessary, she says, “So Nico could watch his French TV.”

The day I arrive at the farm, a big gray tabby is stationed outside the patio door trying every cat trick in the book in a futile attempt to get inside and perhaps curl up near the Asian-accessorized living space. (Nico and Roxanne shipped over all their furnishings – and three cars – from their old Brookfield home.)

Nico calls the animal “Minou” (that’s French for “pussycat”) and rolls his eyes at it. Minou came with the property and has yet to worm his way into his new master’s confidences. Empty nesters with two grown children living back in the States, the Dernis have channeled their nurturing instincts into the olives, not domesticated animals.

Then there are the undomesticated ones. One morning, Roxanne recalls, she shot out of bed after seeing a wild boar prancing outside her bedroom window. The boars like to chew on the irrigation hoses, creating a nuisance for Nico, who has to repair them.

When the olives are close to maturing, as they were when I was there, they can look beautiful – some are a lovely pale green with a purple blush. They look good enough to eat. But they’re not, even when fully ripe. It’s one of the first things Nico warns me: Don’t eat the olives raw. People who haven’t listened inevitably spit the bitter fruit onto the ground.

The olives are grown for one purpose: oil. And to make good – no, great – olive oil, it’s all about soil, sun, water and pruning shears. The Dernis belong to an organization called L’Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée d’Aix en Provence, which acts as a watchdog and assures consumers that a product is of premium quality. Farming methods are monitored, and before the oil is bottled, the A.O.C. takes samples to test acidity and peroxide levels. The lower the acidity, the better the oil. And oil with the lowest acidity (less than 1 percent) is extra virgin. All of Mas Des Bories’ oils are extra virgin.

Moran is crazy about the Dernis’ Salonenque oil. “We kind of horde it,” he says of his family. Milwaukee restaurateur Sandy D’Amato uses the farm’s A.O.C. blend at Sanford Restaurant, mostly for garnishing because of its premium quality. He calls it “not just kind of good. It’s really good.” The oils have won awards at competitions in Germany, the U.S. (for three years running, at the Los Angeles County Fair) and France, including a 2005 gold medal in the prestigious Concours Général de France.

During harvest season, the Dernis’ house swells to include more people. Nico’s niece and nephew come to help pick the olives. Even Roxanne’s parents are in from Wisconsin. This year presented a bigger challenge because of the historically high amount of autumn rain. Too much rain can make the olives watery and weaken the oil, so Nico started picking the Salonenque olives before all the help arrived. It was their saving grace. As a result, they got their harvest to the mill for pressing before the other olive farmers arrived and backed up the mill. Nico’s haste resulted in the best Salonenque oil the Dernis have ever produced, Roxanne says.

When the help showed up at the farm, they donned raincoats and helped pick. Actually, they don’t “pick,” but place nets around the trees and run a vibrating pitchfork down the fine branches of the tree – Roxanne compares the action to combing hair – releasing the olives and catching them in the net. The olives head to the mill the same day for pressing, with Roxanne playing the mule. During harvest, her time is occupied driving to and from the mill (about an hour away) to drop off the olives and stopping at the grocery store to replenish the kitchen reserves at home.

Nico may be the trained chef, but during this time of year, he’s too busy in the grove to cook. As is Roxanne. Friends who’ve come to help take charge of the meals in the modest home find a kitchen with lime-green tile counters and a big untapped bottle of olive oil on the counter. Like any good French kitchen, there’s a crusty baguette to rip apart and the aroma of strong cheeses when you open the refrigerator. If I didn’t know Nico better, I’d think he was just a natural home cook, not a former white-smocked creator of countless duck pâtés and seafood with béchamel sauce.

The three days of my stay, we dined fairly simply. Nico shocked me – not because he skips breakfast – but by drinking, and actually enjoying, instant coffee. Evenings, he roasted beautiful salmon filets, serving them with fresh lemon, and seared duck breast, draping it across field greens with nuts and dried fruit.

The mill is where the oil extraction happens – a process that lasts through the month of December. The olives are washed and a machine then kneads them, mashing the olives into a paste. The oil is then extracted from the paste without heating, which is where the term “cold-pressed” comes from, and that ensures the oil’s extra-virgin purity. French regulations requiring accurate labeling are strict (unlike countries like Italy, where adulterated oil is a huge problem). The bottles must carry the label “Huile d’Olive de France” (Olive Oil of France), meaning the olives are grown, pressed and bottled in France.

While Nico runs the picking operation, Roxanne manages the relationship with the mill and acts as the farm’s exuberant promoter. Tour groups to Mas Des Bories? That’s Roxanne’s turf. Although she’s not a native speaker, she’s not intimidated.

“I’ll tell you what. When you really want something, you learn [how to say it],” she says of her American-accented French.

Most of the bottling is done at the mill. By spring, shipments of the new harvest’s oil have gone to customers in France, Germany, the U.S. and Canada. In Milwaukee, Larry’s Brown Deer Market sells Mas Des Bories oil, while Ozaukee Country Club, North Hills Country Club and Milwaukee Country Club use it in their restaurants.

Aside from harvest, the other arduous work is pruning the trees, which takes as long as four months, from late December to the middle of April. “Because we irrigate, we prune like hell,” says Roxanne. Only half of the effort is cutting them back. The other part is disposing of the limbs. Roxanne is again the mule, dragging the branches inside 12-foot tarps. Nico then shreds and burns the branches.

In France, everyone is a connoisseur” of oil, Roxanne declares. When the Dernis’ dishwasher broke down, she bartered. In exchange for five liters of olive oil, the repairman cut her bill in half.

Two days later, they blew a couple of fuses in the house. “I’ve got oil if you want that,” Nico told the electrician. And a deal was brokered. Add to that a computer technician, who left with two bottles of oil and four tins of olive tapenade. All part of “Nico and Roxanne’s Excellent Adventure,” as she refers to their new lives.

Aside from the Chicago-style hotdogs at Sammy’s in West Allis, not much makes Roxanne long for home. Certainly not the American ball-and-chain known as work. Their French lives have physical demands – Nico driving a tractor and operating a chainsaw – but none of the old stress.

“The first year we pruned the trees,” Roxanne explains, “I didn’t go inside until the tree was done. The second year, I quit when I wanted to, in the middle of the job, and went back to it the next day.” Americans would want to finish no matter what, she says. But by the second year, she realized “the tree would still be there the next day.”

Nowadays, even farmers living in a town with a medieval chateau and a Nostradamus museum have a satellite dish and Internet access. The Dernis also have Skype, which lets them make cheaper overseas calls through the Internet. When she wants “that touch of home,” it’s right there, Roxanne says, not to mention all her furnishings from Brookfield.

During my stay, Nico and I watched one of the U.S. presidential debates, broadcast in English on CNN International, and had a lively conversation about American politics. (The French are fascinated by American newsmakers.) It felt surreal to watch Obama and McCain in this pastoral setting.

When their real retirement comes, Roxanne predicts, “We’ll give the farm to our son, who really, really wants it.” That would ensure that Mas Des Bories stays in the family, a very French notion. Ryan Derni, 27 years old and currently working for the Peace Corps in Washington, D.C., would do the farmwork, and his parents would build another small home on the property to live in, says his mom.

Ryan has watched the metamorphosis of his middle-age parents, revived by the restorative powers of European country air and a fecund farm. Ryan’s mom, whom he describes as a Type-A personality, is thriving in a country where people work to live, not live to work. Nico has left his autocratic chef ways behind. Ryan was surprised to see, on his last visit to the farm, that his unhandy dad was trying to fix a crack in the farmhouse roof. They have sunk new roots into a land of almost eternal sunshine, and want to stay connected to the land.

“We don’t want to give it up,” says Roxanne. “We want to stay on our farm and die on our farm.”

Senior Editor Ann Christenson is Milwaukee Magazine’s dining critic. Write to her at ann.christenson@milwaukeemagazine.com.