Grape Expectations (26 page)

  Sean sounded bullish, but he wasn't the one meeting the buyers.

  That evening Aideen and Barry organised a dinner with old friends. No longer was a dinner simply a chance to socialise: our wines were on show. It was great to see old friends but I couldn't relax.

  'I love this rosé,' said Doug, 'not so sure about the white.'

  'It's a well-made wine,' said Conor.

  Each comment was sparkles from heaven or a knife through my heart. This wine was so personal. Now wine was our life, no social occasion would ever be free of marketing or analysis if wine was involved. The next day I met a group of people I had worked with for many years for lunch. The jokes started flowing and I laughed until my sides ached. I missed this repartee. Our second bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc arrived and I sniffed it critically.

  'That's exactly the same wine but can you pick up how smoky it is compared to the first bottle?' I asked.

  'She's right, you know,' said Andrew, surprised. 'That is smoky and the first one had no smoke.'

  Soon they were all sniffing and nodding, impressed that I could pick up such nuances in a wine. In the old days, as their colleague, I'd been someone who knew a bit about wine but not an expert. In the intervening two years I had become a winegrower.

  The last day of my trip I met our highest priority target customer, the chain of twenty-five wine shops. Walking in with a copy of the cover story that had been published about us at the time of my previous trip, I tried to look confident. Dave had dark, somewhat unruly hair and was skinny and hyper with a disarming smile. His office was mayhem: strewn with samples of wine and marketing brochures awaiting his approval. He gave the impression of being disorganised but I realised through the meeting he was a savvy business man and a serious wine expert.

  'I've seen the article. I really like your story,' said Dave. 'How did you get that coverage? If I could get half of the press coverage you've had, I would be happy.'

  He was right: writing the story for the newspaper the previous year and lucky breaks through my business contacts – like the radio interview – had helped our direct business significantly. The way he spoke it was clear it was going to help us here as well. He was keen to try our wines.

  I talked him through the vineyard and the white that was available and ended with some negotiation pressure.

  'We need a decision fast as I have someone else who is interested in the wine,' I said, adding to myself, 'or our adventure will be over'. The statement was somewhat true since the other contact was interested, although it was clear they would never buy in time to save us. I kept a poker face despite total terror that this tactic could backfire. He looked surprised, clearly not used to buying competition in a flooded wine market and said, 'I'll taste the wines again and phone you before you leave to let you know.'

  I still had no order to report back to Sean but at least I had met the decision maker, the person who had direct control over the buying decisions. I liked him. He was honest and direct.

  That evening Dave called to announce his decision I tried to control the tremble in my voice. He was our only hope for a fast solution.

  'I like the wines but I find them a bit light – sort of Italian style,' he said.

  A dagger slashed through my heart, followed by an intense urge to remove him from our target list despite how much we needed him right then. 'But I like the story and I think your wines are only going to improve. I'm already looking forward to next year. I prefer the sauvignon blanc but the price is too high, it puts you into the price level of well-known Loire Valley sauvignons.'

  'What price do you need?' I asked.

  He put forward a figure that was way too low for our sauvignon.

  'We can do the sémillon sauvignon for that,' I said, trying to remember the negotiation lessons I had learnt in my previous life.

  Dave explained the different options for pricing and the impact they had on sales. If he promoted a wine it sold much faster and price point made all the difference.

  'You see it depends on what you want to do with your wine. How fast you want it to sell determines the price you give us,' he said. He then proposed buying 250 cases at 10 per cent lower than the price I had offered.

  'For that price I'll have to talk to Sean,' I said, sounding more assured than I felt.

  'Talk to Sean and let us know by the end of the week.'

  My hand that stretched out to put the phone on the kitchen counter was shaking like a leaf.

  'Tell all,' said Aideen.

  'He wants 250 cases of Château Haut Garrigue sémillon sauvignon blanc.'

  'Yippee!'

  Barry beamed at me. 'Well done.'

  'But it's not at the price we wanted.'

  'It doesn't matter. It's your first trade sale. Let's celebrate!' Aideen was over the moon.

'I got this present for you,' said Sean, handing over Nicolas Joly's book
Wine From Sky to Earth
when he collected me from the airport. He was alone: Sophia was at school and Ellie was playing with Alane at Sonia's. 'This is the path to exceptional wines.'

  Nicolas Joly is one of the most famous biodynamic producers in France. His farm in the Loire Valley has been a vineyard for more than a thousand years. I had read a bit about him and his methods but I was sceptical. I felt like I had been given a school textbook as a gift. After the experiences of my trip I would have appreciated a book on how to sell wine rather than one on cow horns and lunar cycles.

  'Thanks, SF. But we're going to need more than exceptional wines to make sales in this market. It's more than tough out there.'

  'I know, Carolinus. But I think we have extraordinary terroir and with hard work and biodynamics we can do great things. You should read it.'

  We quickly moved on to more pressing items, like following up our potential order. That evening I opened the book he gave me and started reading. Biodynamics is often called 'organics plus' or 'super organics'. We were farming organically and I was convinced, but the mystical activities like burying the cow dung in the cow horn at the autumn equinox and digging it out at the spring equinox to charge it with fertility were too much for me.

  The book was so gripping, however, that I read deep into the night. Joly gave substance to the mystical elements. The dung buried in the cow horn in the right place at the right time had been proven to have hundreds of times more soil-boosting microbiological activity than the same mix buried in a clay pot.

  I learnt that biodynamics consisted of two key parts: working with the calendar of the earth's position in relation to the moon and cosmos, and homeopathic-like preparations or treatments for the soil and plant.

  For millennia man has used the sun, moon and stars to guide his agricultural activity. Early writers like Romans Columella (AD 4–c. AD 70) and Varro (116 BC–27 BC) noted elements we now think of as biodynamics. Before wristwatches we told the time via the sun, moon and stars. They determine much of what takes place on earth, although in the modern world it is easy to forget that and to think that the world revolves around us...

  The moon moves the oceans; it has a major influence on water. So the moon's phases influence the way plants grow through the different levels of moisture in the environment and in the plant. The Romans noted that certain crops were more successful if planted when the moon was in a specific constellation or set of stars. The moon takes two to three days to pass through a constellation, so this offered a very specific window for different crops. This, and the location of the other planets in our solar system, is what determines the biodynamic day on the calendar and hence what a winegrower – or gardener – should prioritise for that day. They also noted that harvesting at the correct time meant the food lasted longer. This is because of how the plant stores the water in the fruit/crop at different times of the lunar cycle. Less water generally means better conservation.

  The biodynamics used today has its roots in a series of lectures by Austrian philosopher-scientist Rudolf Steiner in 1924. With the onslaught of chemical agriculture after World War Two much of the agricultural wisdom of the previous two millennia was forgotten. Steiner's lectures helped to keep this knowledge safe for us.

  Equally important is the overarching concept of a 'whole farm' self-sustaining system. The farm must not live on inputs from outside, it must achieve a natural equilibrium. If illness arises, the cause of the problem, not the symptom, is treated.

  In a healthy, organically farmed vine, only 10 per cent of the plant is created by what it takes in from the soil. Only one tenth! The other 90 per cent is created by its complex relationship with the rest of the elements around it, particularly the sun. Plants are miraculous in their ability to take the sun's energy and transform it into energy like starch and sugar that we can eat. If a vine is offered chemical fertilisers and irrigation it becomes like a drug addict. Not required to find and create its life from natural elements around it, it takes more and more from its drip. Galileo Galilei said 'Wine is sunlight, held together by water'. What a poetic way of communicating this incredible truth.

  After reading the book I was convinced that we should try biodynamics. There was significant evidence that it would contribute to our quest to make expressive wines. Sean planned his next phase of vineyard work around the biodynamic calendar. Before he headed out to start the new season's shoot removal we talked about Dave's order, which was still up in the air.

  'I need to follow up. Can we do his price?' I said.

  'With our yields we need twenty per cent more,' he replied.

  'But we need this sale. He won't buy our wine at that price. I think we should go at ten cents over his price. That way it's not enough to scupper the order but it's enough to show we won't roll over and take whatever price he proposed.'

  'Just make sure you get the order,' said Sean putting the pressure of the decision back onto me. We had to get the order but we also had to agree a price that would keep us in business.

  The next day Dave phoned back. I dropped the juice I was serving Ellie and made my proposal with a tremble in my voice. Without this sale we were finished. If he didn't proceed with the order for the sake of that ten cents I'd never forgive myself.

  'I'll organise the order confirmation. You'll have it in a couple of days.'

  My body flooded with the euphoria of success and an adrenalin burst akin to that of having just avoided a car crash. That evening Sean and I toasted our success with a glass of the wine we had sold.

  I watched the email hungrily. Days stretched into weeks and still no confirmation arrived. I put our creditors off promising to pay in a few weeks and began to worry that he had changed his mind. We needed that confirmation.

The kitchen drain had been smelly again and I was not looking forward to 'Operation Stench 2'. We needed a long-term solution that did not involve me lying on the ground with my nose in a stinking drain and a hosepipe in my hand every few months.

  'Don't worry,' said Monsieur Fracasse, a compact, energetic artisan in his fifties who had been helping Sean to finish the new terrace. The new terrace was to become our outdoor area. The original one and part of the house would become a self-catering cottage that would deliver much-needed rent long before renovating the old building that Helen and Derek had uncovered – if we could ever afford it. He was full of ideas and spoke fast. 'I work with someone who does septic tanks and drains. I'll call him to come down and have a look.'

  An endless blue sky spread above the Dordogne valley. Our vineyard was awakening from its winter sleep, with tiny pink shoots running along the vine canes. On the valley floor the last of the plum blossoms had given way to green leaves.