Right? This is almost impossible.

We are in France, not some theme-park version of it, and the notion of several days of bad wine or several consecutive bad baguettes … is incroyable.

Wine and baguettes? That is the heart of French cuisine.

Yet, there we are. Three bad-to-awful bottles of wine, several awful baguettes, including two in five minutes.

This cannot be happening!

OK, we will take some blame for the wine.

Two of the bottles cost very little, and a person cannot count on getting lucky with a wine that inexpensive, even in France.

Even when a paid professional talked up both of those.

One was from the domaine of the former rugby player, who may prefer beer. That syrah was weak and watery.

The second was a red, a Laval (with grenache and carignan grapes), produced locally by an Irish vigneron who, allegedly, is good at this. The only flavor it offered was a bitter tannin/sulfide blend; the Laval’s attachment to grapes was impossible to taste.

The third was also a local red, by the domaine Montpeyroux (carignan, grenache, syrah and cinsault grapes), and it was not at all smooth, verging on vinegar-y — and this one alleged to be a medal-winning wine.

And we gave each of these several hours to reveal any hidden qualities.

A confession: We did not pay more than 7.5 euros (about $8) for any of these (and about five for the third), which suggests that the Languedoc region may not be the home of hidden gems, as it was once. The pricing may have been our first warning.

The baguette situation is perplexing.

The issue begins with the lack if a bakery in our tiny town. Just not enough people to support one, apparently.

That puts us at the mercy of out-of-town boulangeries, and we have been doing a shuttle run of bad baguettes — tasteless, too crusty, too airy, too white-bread-y.

The low point came tonight in Pezenas, the “big” city of the immediate area. We were in the main shopping area, in the old part of town, and we were impressed by the outward appearance of one bakery, which had almost a Parisian feel to it, in the lighting and presentation of the wares.

The baguette was a disaster. Several hours old, and the word that came to mind was “papery”. (Also, their pain au chocolat, a sort of base line in the pastry side of things, was a big wad of dough, neither light nor flaky. Another disaster.)

We then went across the place to another bakery, presumably the arch-rivals of the first, and they handed over the same papery baguette.

(The semi-scary part of this is … perhaps this region of France prefers these bland, Wonder Bread-y baguettes — though we did not notice this in previous visits.)

Eventually, we detoured back to the one baguette we have liked so far, on the busiest street in Pezenas, at the shop of a traiteur who does a very nice job with bread, and bought what they call their festive baguette — which was substantial and tasty, and also warm, showing that it was baked after 3 p.m.

So, nearly a week in the Languedoc, one good bakery. Not good.

Back at the Cote d’Azur, we batted 1.000 on the baguette front, and very much liked the baguette tropezienne.

We plan to stay two-plus months here, so we have to get this fixed. I suspect we shall.

Step 1 on the wine front is tasting local wines before we buy them (well, duh).

Step 2 is ferreting out bakeries closer to where we are based, so we don’t have to spend a half hour or more in the round trip to Pezenas to find a decent baguette.