A Season for That

Lost and Found in the Other Southern France

By: Steve Hoffman

Narrated by: Steve Hoffman

In this poignant, delicious memoir, American tax preparer and food writer Steve Hoffman tells the story of how he and his family move to the French countryside, where the locals upend everything he knows about food, wine, and learning how to belong.

Steve Hoffman is a perfectly comfortable middle-aged Minnesotan man who has always been desperately, pretentiously in love with France, more specifically with the idea of France. To follow that love, he and his family move, nearly at random, to the small, rural, scratchy-hot village of Autignac in the south of the country, and he immediately thinks he’s made a terrible mistake. Life here is not holding your cigarette chest-high while walking to the café and pulling off the trick of pretending to be Parisian, it’s getting into fights with your wife because you won’t break character and introduce your very American family to the locals, who can smell you and your perfect city-French from a mile away.

But through cooking what the local grocer tells him to cook, he feels more of this place. A neighbor leads him into the world of winemaking, where he learns not as a pedantic oenophile, but bodily, as a grape picker and winemaker’s apprentice. Along the way, he lets go of the abstract ideas he’d held about France, discovering instead the beauty of a culture that is one with its landscape, and of becoming one with that culture.

Critic reviews

“This is a beautifully written book, reflective, sometimes ruthlessly so, occasionally sad and often funny. I started reading skeptically and found I could not put it down. One can only hope for a sequel.”—The New York Times, “Best Wine Books of 2024”

“This funny, fluidly written memoir . . . sends Hoffman into the lives of his neighbors and the vineyards of his community, where his curiosity, humility, and labor serve to cohere his vision of France, his family, and himself.”—Food & Wine, “Our Favorite Food Books of 2024”

“Sentences . . . so polished that you will marvel at their brilliance.”—The Washington Post

“Hoffman is a reflective and often lyrical writer . . . [his] newfound abilities—and the bumpy road to acquiring them—could be put to use in a very bingeable Netflix series.”—The Wall Street Journal, “The Best Books for Every Type of Wine Lover This Holiday Season”

“It’s quite possibly the best autobiography I’ve ever read.”—Tamlyn Currin, Jancis Robinson sustainability editor and staff writer

Genuine

This book was an absolute delight to read. It felt as though Steve had returned from his time abroad and was bursting with excitement to share all his experiences with me. I was completely engrossed in the story. While my love for France, passion for wine, and my time living there undoubtedly influenced my emotional response to the book, it was solely because the author has a deep understanding of the country, beauty of winemaking, and a remarkable talent for capturing its essence in writing. Well done!

Took me to France for a few hours

This memoir let me escape to France for a few wonderful hours, laughing at Steve’s winemaking endeavors & enjoying his cooking!

Good Story

if you are a wine person, like to see people better themselves, and are a bit of a dreamer. This will be a good book for you. First half of the book starts off a little slow and it makes sense towards the end. Why all the detail. I was really into the book at the 60% mark and couldn’t put it down. Was sad that it ended, but it ended in a way that allows someone to think.

Beautifully detailed memoir

5 stars for his writing and books read by the author are my favorite. This is a vulnerable exposé of what he went through to assimilate into his favorite country. His wife though! He does not judge her, just relates facts but she seems a dehumanizing harpy! She bullies the author so badly it's cringey. That said, his descriptors of the food, environment and characters immerse you in his experience.

Wonderful memoir, wonderfully read!

Starts off seeming a bit too earnest, until you realize that’s just the nature of the narrator, soon enough the listener gets pulled into his world. He writes beautifully and engagingly and at the end of each chapter you find yourself wanting to keep listening to just tone more. I wound listening to the entire book over the course of one day. He reads it beautifully as well. Wonderful memoir!