Grape Expectations (16 page)

  After the year of work the vineyards were like old friends. Upper Garrigue, the vineyard that Cécile and Sean had carefully monitored every week as our indicator for the health of all our vineyards, was the most manicured and would be the highest yielding of our merlot vineyards. Cimitière merlot was concentrated like our old vines in Hillside. The two cabernet sauvignon vineyards, Gageac and Lenvège, were far less ripe, about two weeks behind the merlot, while the whites were the most advanced: sweet and aromatic.

  The
'ban des vendanges'
, the name for the official opening of the harvest for our AOC Bergerac, was declared. Despite this official opening, which changed each year with the weather, the development of the grapes was slow and each laboratory maturity analysis came back with 'review in a few days'.

  The waiting was excruciating but I also felt very alive. There was something about harvest time that was at once tense, exciting and invigorating. Perhaps it was that a full year of work in the vineyard depended on this critical period, or perhaps it was more profound and ancient than that: a connection with the annual cycle of life that has nurtured man since his first days on earth.

  A heatwave followed by a few days of heavy rain changed everything. The heat ripened the grapes and the rain put them at risk. From 'review in a few days' the analysis came back with 'harvest tomorrow'. We were thrown headlong into the
vendanges
hurricane.

  We booked the harvest machine for the next morning. Sean kicked himself for not harvesting the whites before the fresh deluge despite Lucille's hesitation. Choosing the day to harvest is a critical matter; a few extra days of 'hang time' on the vine can make a world of difference to the end product and that was the risk we took. Now Lucille was concerned that rot might set in.

  I had written everything down in a flow chart but despite my preparation I was terrified. This would be our first day of working with the winery equipment. Everything was huge and dangerous. I tried to lift the lid off the press on my own and couldn't do it. Sean yelled, 'Just get on with it.' I tried again but it wouldn't budge. Sean was aggressive and had no time for someone who couldn't keep pace. I felt inadequate. John came to my aid and we successfully lifted the lid off the press together so I could do a final clean and disinfect the inside.

  We had the advice of Lucille but we had to make the day-to-day decisions and do the work. We were essentially going it alone. That afternoon Ad and Lijda, a Dutch couple we met briefly the previous year when they stopped in to visit the previous owners, came by and offered to help us for a few days. They had helped with harvests in the past. Now, miraculously, we had two 'experienced' hands.

  Ad, Lijda and I did a pass through the white vineyards to remove bunches with signs of rot and found less than one bunch per row. It was a good sign for the quality of the white and laid Lucille's concerns to rest.

  Sean and his dad, John, worked deep into the night to get everything ready in the winery. We ran through our checklist one last time and fell into bed, exhausted. Ellie woke at midnight vomiting. I dosed her with paracetamol and changed her sheets and clothes, my mind racing ahead to our harvest day. After a prayer for her health and a kiss on her little cheek I fell back into bed. A few hours later, tired but eager, we got up to harvest our sauvignon blanc. Despite the clear forecast, it had rained in the night – far from ideal for harvesting as rain dilutes the juice. The harvest team – John, Ad, Sean, Lijda and I – gathered in the courtyard buzzing with coffee and anticipation. As we discussed methods to blow-dry the vineyard – in wealthy vineyards helicopters have been known to fly over to create the blow-drying effect – a strong wind blew in to remove the excess water. It would help significantly. Right on time the harvest machine rolled into the courtyard. It was enormous: like a giant mechanical insect preparing to ingest our white grapes. We introduced ourselves to the driver and explained what we were planning to pick. Then I ran ahead of the machine to show him the marked rows.

  We checked all the pipe connections and ran through our flow chart one more time. Within what felt like five minutes, but was actually twenty, the harvest machine had picked the Hillside sauvignon blanc. Sean drove the tractors into position and I watched in awe as our first load was poured from harvester to trailer. Then he expertly backed up to the winery looking like he had been driving tractors all his life, although it had been less than a year.

  John, Ad and I lifted the large pipe that connected the trailer to the press but even with three it was difficult to manoeuvre. While I cursed, Ad and John kept their cool and coaxed it into position. After checking the connections Sean started the auger that pushes the grapes from the trailer into the pipe. Nothing came up into the press. I motioned upwards to Sean and he increased the revs. Still nothing came up. I signed again and Sean increased some more. We repeated this process several times, panic rising in me with each increase. Perhaps none of this worked at all.

  As I pictured myself manually bucketing grapes from trailer to press, grapes and juice exploded out of the pipe, overshooting the press and splattering our precious harvest around the freshly cleaned winery. At my frantic motioning Sean dramatically decreased the revs. Ad carefully aimed the now manageable harvest into the presses and the rest of the load went in smoothly. We had got through our first
vendanges
scare.

  As each load arrived there seemed to be a million things to check and do. Carbon dioxide gas was sprayed over the juice in the press tray and into the receiving vat. Small doses of sulphur dioxide were carefully poured separately into the press tray as the juice ran through. These were measures to protect the grapes and juice from spoiling on their trip into the vat. Our vines surrounded the house and winery so they had little distance to travel. When they got to the winery they were pressed or pumped into the vat immediately rather than having to wait. The less time grapes have travelling or sitting waiting, the better the end result, so we could use significantly less sulphur dioxide than a large operation with more travel and waiting time. This was important for organic winemaking, where we aimed for lower levels of sulphur dioxide, or 'sulphites' as it is labelled on the bottle, than conventional wine. The juice level in the press tray was monitored continuously and judiciously pumped to keep air bubbles to a minimum. As soon as another load arrived we would start the frenzied round again.

  Three harvest trailers and two press loads later, we had 2,000 litres of sauvignon blanc which would net us about 150 cases of finished wine. Sean started our Kreyer cooling unit using our second pump. The pump ran for a few minutes then stopped. Ad, a qualified mechanic, dismantled it and found the axel had broken. It was Sunday and Sean was doomed to juggling cooling the wine with one pump.

  After lunch we raced back out to prepare for harvesting the rest of the white grapes the following day just as Lucille arrived to check how our first day had gone. It was the weekend and she was accompanied by an extremely handsome boyfriend. He clearly was a long-term item, which helped to lay my crazy suspicion finally to rest.

  'We may need to bring the merlot in this coming week as well,' she said as they prepared to leave. It was not the news we wanted to hear. We were exhausted but preparations and work on the sauvignon blanc kept us up until midnight.

  The 'blue monster', as John dubbed the harvest machine, could be heard approaching well before 5 a.m. The heady scents of sémillon wafting on the warm night air provided a foretaste of what was to come in our white wine blend. The moon was still high and an owl swooped down as I ran through the vines indicating vineyard markers to Jean-François, the driver, my heart racing with adrenalin. I reached the last marker and waved goodbye to the driver, then jogged back to the winery.

  We were old hands that day, splurging a drizzle of precious liquid as we pumped our first load into the press. When we finished the day's harvest Sean proudly drew off jugfuls of sémillon juice for us, then turned his attention to the sauvignon blanc, which needed to be drawn off its heavy sediment before fermentation started. We drank the luxurious liquid, full-bodied and sweet, less zesty than the sauvignon blanc but with a dimension of opulence from the varietal and the old vines.

  Then it was back to cleaning presses, harvest trailers and buckets. Although we had only met Ad and Lijda briefly, they were already close friends. Working in pressured circumstances helped us get to know each other.

  Sophia and Ellie could feel the stress and were kicking up more than usual about going to bed and other routines. Grandma Feely had been subjected to watching the
Les Aristochats
Disney film ten times but she was coping remarkably well, despite only seeing us when we urgently needed food.

The next day I visited Monsieur Bonny with the broken pump.

  'Are you sure the axel is broken?' he asked, knowing that Sean and I hadn't a clue how to find the axel let alone tell if it was broken. I explained that we had a mechanic staying with us.

  The cost of repair would be equivalent to half a new pump. We had already spent too much on this ill-fated machine so we opted for the new one but it would take a week to arrive. We needed a second pump immediately to manage the wine temperatures.

  
'Ne vous inquiétez pas,'
(Don't worry) said Monsieur Bonny. 'I'll lend you the pump that I use for testing refrigeration systems until the new one comes. I can do without it for a few days.'

  He bundled the pump into my boot and promised to call as soon as the new pump arrived. I couldn't believe his generosity.

  
'Bon courage,'
he shouted as I waved goodbye.

  The following day Lucille and I toured the vineyard while Sean drew the sémillon off its heavy lees.

  'I think we need to harvest the merlot as soon as possible,' she said. 'Vignerons on the valley floor are already facing
une
vraie catastrophe
.' When Lucille said
catastrophe
it was serious. She had a harried look. This harvest was not for the faint-hearted.

  'The grapes were damaged by the severe heat of the
canicule
. With the rain they become swollen and split, allowing rot to set in. Look,' she said, pointing to some small freckles on one of our most exposed bunches. 'The sunburnt spots are weak and burst easily. It's worst for those vignerons who de-leafed.'

  I recalled Cécile's sage advice not to de-leaf most of our vineyards, in spite of the debate about it. De-leafing around the fruit zone was thought by some to aid ripening; but by de-leafing you remove some of the leaf area for photosynthesis, which is the driver of the sugar production – plus you allow the fruit to get sunburnt.

  We toured the rest of the merlot vineyards tasting anxiously. The Garrigue vineyard grapes were delicious, full and sweet. Those of Hillside and Cimitiére were smaller and the bunches were more spaced than Garrigue, allowing air to pass between the grapes and concentrating the berries. There wasn't a sign of rot in any of the vineyards.

  The grapes were ready but we were not. We hadn't prepared the vats required for the red. Lucille said the latest we could push out was Thursday. More rain was forecast for Friday. I called Jean-François, the blue monster's driver, and left a message. If we didn't get the machine for Thursday we might have to harvest in the rain, which was bad. If we waited for the rain to stop it could be worse as rot might get established in our vineyard. We were on a knife edge.

  Before leaving, Lucille reviewed our log of the wine's progress. She checked the mustometer which we used to measure the density of the wine and hence its progress through fermentation.

  'Are you adjusting for the temperature?' she asked.

  'No.' I felt like an errant schoolgirl.

  'You must start as you wish to continue,' said Lucille imperiously. '
Pour faire le bon travail
we must adjust and fill in the graph so it's easy to track the wine's progress.'

  I promised to try harder to 'do good work'. With little time to eat or sleep in the last couple of days, filling in the graph had seemed like a nicety.

  Ad and Lijda left to return to Holland, leaving us to the Harvest from Hell. John, Sean and I were dog-tired but the whites needed work and there was preparation for the merlot to be done. The sauvignon blanc and the white blend had finished their period of cold settling and were ready to start fermentation. I prepared the cultivated yeast using my cake scale, a thermometer and other sundry items from the kitchen. Once the yeast was added, the whites entered a quieter phase where the key activity was monitoring the fermentation and, of course, not to be forgotten, filling in the graph... if I didn't want my knuckles rapped by our serious
oenologue
.