It has suddenly gone cold at night here and is the first real indication that there really is a winter out there somewhere . . . One of the things about old stone Provencal houses is that in this kind of weather the draughty fit to the windows makes its presence felt, particularly in a Mistral! Looking for a way to keep warm, I came across the family run luxury blanket factory of Brun de Vian-Tiran at L'Isle sur la Sorgue.
The Sorgue coursing through the village has provided free energy for an assortment of industries, the earliest of which were water-powered flour mills and wool mills.
The wool came from the flocks grazing on the nearby Crau in the Alpilles. The fleeces were soaked in basins of pure Sorgue water, where they were then pounded by water-driven hammers to degrease the wool.
Between 1750 and 1850 there were 35 wool processing plants in L'Isle, the only one that remains today is Brun de Vian-Tiran.
It is a family run business started in 1808, and the factory was water-driven until as recently as 1922. They process over 50 varieties of wool from mohair to camel yak and lama. They also use wool from a heritage breed of Merinos from Arles, sheep reputed to have the finest wool in Europe.
The Brun de Vian-Tiran still use locally grown teasles to card the wool,
What an interesting history ,and what a shame it has deteriorated to such a degree.
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