Grape Expectations (2 page)

A few weeks later there was a message on the answering machine.

  'Caro, it's Patrick Joseph. That vineyard is back on the market. The buyer couldn't get a mortgage. You should move quickly, it will sell fast at this price.' Patrick was a Frenchman living in Nottingham. He helped people like us, with limited French, manage their way through the confusion of French property law.

  I was thrilled and scared.

  'Are we ready for this?' asked Sean when we spoke a few minutes later.

  'I don't know, SF. It would be better if Ellie was older… but it seems so perfect.'

  'We'll kick ourselves if we don't view it. I can't take another year in the rat race,' said Sean.

  Sean left home before dawn and got back after dark. Investment management was stressful and city traffic hell. They were taking their toll. Sophia, now two years old, missed him. I did too, especially at 5 p.m. with a toddler and a newborn to placate. This vineyard was the answer. We would pursue our passion and get away from the rat race... and the rain.

  'You'll have to go on your own,' I said. 'We won't get a passport for Ellie fast enough for me to go. Even if it doesn't work out it will be good for our research.'

  Research was a good word to keep the property at arm's length. Sean booked his flight.

With absolutely no experience in vineyards and winemaking we needed someone to help us assess the property. An Internet search offered up the agricultural organisation Société d'Aménagement Foncier et d'Établissement Rural, or SAFER. They looked like the experts we needed.

  To call them I had to use my French, which, for all my lessons, was pitiful. I had done a few years of basic French at school then a few years of night classes with the Alliance Française. I wrote down what I wanted to say and made the call. A woman answered and my brain froze. I stammered out the first sentence on the page in front of me.

  
'Je ne parle pas beaucoup français. Parlez très lentement s'il vous plait.'

  After several repeats of words that made no sense to me I realised Madame was saying someone would call me back. My investment in night classes was not delivering what I hoped.

  A Monsieur Dupont called at 7 a.m. the next morning from something called La Sa Furr. I assumed he had the wrong number and was about to hang up when it dawned on me that this was the pronunciation of SAFER. No wonder I'd been confused the day before. With Ellie latched onto my breast and Sophia jammed into the high chair, I rolled out my 'please speak very slowly' again and tried to concentrate. After spelling his name three times and repeating his phone number ad infinitum, I could tell his patience was wearing thin. A five-minute discussion about what
quinze heures
meant drained what little of it remained but I had a rendezvous between him and Sean at what I hoped was 3 p.m. the following day at the vineyard.

  Sean left for Bordeaux. While on the outside I calmly went through my daily routine, inside, my mind was racing. At last, the phone rang.

  
'C'est Jean.'
He had already changed his name to the French version.

  'Tell all.' I was so excited I couldn't keep still. I paced and Sophia toddled round the room after me while Ellie, lying in a bouncy chair on the floor, looked on bemused.

  'It's been some afternoon,' said Sean. 'When Monsieur Dupont arrived, the sellers looked rattled, then he announced that the place is in liquidation. The French agent didn't even know. Sweet divine. Lucky you phoned SAFER. But
bellissima
, it's beautiful, Carolinus.'

  Beautiful was one thing, liquidation was another. The French agent was from the local property agency that had the property on their books. Patrick was a go-between for us, offering help and advice, particularly on the legal aspects of the transaction. It was looking like we were really going to need him.

  'We don't want to get into a complicated transaction. We've seen how badly things can go wrong buying property in France,' I said. We had been avid viewers of
No Going Back
and similar shows.

  'We won't make an offer until we've done our homework,' he said reassuringly. 'The house is in bad shape. We'll have to learn to renovate.'

  Liquidation, a ruin of a house; perhaps this wasn't it after all. We had never done more than a coat of paint between us. Part of me was in denial and another part desperately wanted this property to be the one. We had been dreaming of this for so long.

  'Patrick gave me the name this morning: Château Haut Garrigue. It's near Bergerac in the Dordogne, an hour east of Bordeaux.'

  I had never been to the Dordogne.

  'The house has incredible views,' continued Sean. 'You can see Bergerac cathedral, twenty kilometres away. Saussignac village is five minutes' walk through the vineyards. It has a primary school and a restaurant.'

  'The girls could walk to school,' I said. 'We wouldn't even have to commute for the school run.' This property was looking more attractive. 'What about the land?'

  'Apart from the vineyards it has peach, hazelnut, cherry and fig trees.'

  'It was made for us, SF!' I shouted. I love figs.

  'Calm down, Carolinus! The place is totally rundown. The figs are nice to have for personal consumption. I don't know… it needs a lot of investment.'

  'What about the vineyard? How much money do they make?'

  'They sell everything in bulk to a
négociant.
Based on the numbers they gave me they gross about twenty thousand a year. If that's true, after costs, they make nothing with two of them working full-time.'

  A
négociant
buys wine in bulk then blends it with other wines and bottles it for sale. We knew they paid low prices for wine but this income sounded wrong, far too low. We had to be missing a zero. We agreed that Sean had misheard and moved on, ignoring the harsh reality of the wine crisis.

  'And the winery?'

  'The winery needs investment.'

  We avoided discussing where this 'investment' was going to come from. Based on rough calculations, with the money from selling our house, after paying off the mortgage, we'd have just enough to buy this property. We'd be throwing everything we had into it and there wouldn't be any left over for renovation or 'investment'. There was a long pause where both our minds churned silently over the financial elements.

  'Did you taste the wines?' I asked.

  'The sauvignon blanc and the red. They're surprisingly good given the state of the place. The vineyard slopes are steep and well drained. Monsieur Dupont says it's a good vineyard but it needs renovation. The soil is similar to what we saw on the grand crus classés plateau and slopes in St Émilion; clay and limestone. I think it can produce great wines.'

  That was it: great wines. Our dream was more than a vineyard, it was creating great wines. I went to bed but couldn't sleep. My body tossed and my mind thrashed in all directions. It was what we wanted and I was excited but the prospective upheaval was immense. The mere logistics of making the move were turning me into an insomniac; the idea of what we would do when we got to that foreign land and had to create our wine was beyond me.

When Sean got home we spent an exhilarating afternoon arguing the pros and cons of Château Haut Garrigue. That evening he presented me with a bottle of vintage 2000 red from the vineyard. He poured tasting amounts into our Riedel glasses.

  Riedel makes what some believe are the finest lead crystal wine glasses. They are crafted to bring out the best in wine through their shape and design. We thought Riedels were only for wine snobs, then our closest friends gave us a pair for Christmas. Drinking wine from them was like listening to a symphony on a serious sound system compared to a portable CD player.

  I took the glass from Sean and lifted the mahogany liquid to my nose, inhaling a melody of dark fruit with a clean mineral streak through the centre. Desire drew me forward and I tilted the glass to my lips.

  'Hang on,' said Sean. 'What did you get on the nose?'

  Sean wanted analysis. I wanted to drink. 'Blackberry,' I said, eager to get on with my first swig.

  'What else?'

  'Mineral.'

  'OK, now you can taste.'

  I took a deep draught and swirled it around, feeling the warming sensation of alcohol on the back of my throat. The wine filled my mouth with plum and blackberry. The finish had a hint of spice and that attractive saline minerality.

  'Delicious.' I licked my lips. The wine filled me with joy. A picture of a vineyard drenched in sunlight formed in my mind. Sean drew me rudely back to the lounge of our semi-d.

  'Did you get the spice?'

  I nodded.

  'It's probably the oak, the wine was barrel-aged.'

  'How can they be in liquidation if they make wine this good?' I asked.

  'I got the impression they have bigger problems than their finances. Maybe their subsequent vintages weren't this good.'

We found a Bergerac-based
notaire
who was described as a specialist in vineyards and liquidations. The combination sounded ominous but was exactly what we needed.

  A
notaire
is an all-powerful state lawyer who does not litigate but rather deals with property, commercial and inheritance law. He assured us that we would be protected from the current owner's debts if we bought the property, rather than their business. It was excellent news. Now we could seriously consider buying the property. Then he outlined the process for buying a property in liquidation.

  It was complicated. We would be buying the land and house from the owners, the equipment and stock from the liquidator and negotiating the possibility of all of this through the French government agency SAFER. SAFER and the liquidator would consider multiple offers before making a decision on who to sell to. There would be multiple decision makers. I still didn't fully understand the process but at least I knew we weren't putting ourselves at risk to the previous owner's debts.

  This wasn't just a purchase for us; it was a massive life decision. To buy the property we had to sell our house. There was no halfway.

  'What are we going to do, SF?' I asked as we debated the purchase that evening.

  Sean had been playing it cool. He didn't want me to feel influenced but I knew what he wanted. For me, the quality of the wine had sealed it. Now that we knew the liquidation was not a problem it was obvious we should make an offer.

  Patrick, the agent, called the next day before I had a chance to call him. Although I had only spoken to him a few times he felt like a confidante; he knew more about our dream than our closest family and friends.

  'A person who viewed the place after Sean has offered the full price,' he said. 'What do you want to do?'

  This put a new aspect of risk on the purchase. It was not as simple as our decision to go ahead or not. There was no certainty that it would be ours. Over the previous few days I had slowly been making this vineyard my new home.