Grape Expectations (6 page)

  Weeks later, my arms were toned but the room was still in an awful state. I was more at home with a keyboard than a screwdriver and found myself a reluctant renovator.

  'We're getting nowhere, SF,' I said, bursting into tears. Completing this room alone before Sean started pruning the vineyard was looking unlikely. I envisioned trying to do the renovations on my own and dissolved into further floods of tears.

  'Feck it, Carolinus, we have moved country,' said Sean, trying to cheer me up, but only making me cry harder. The stress of our move was taking its toll. We'd moved country before but not like this: then it was in the same language and with the security of the large multinational for which I worked. It wasn't just getting familiar with physically hard work. We hadn't made love in months – living in a room with our daughters didn't help. Romance was forgotten in change overload. We were spending more time together than ever, but I had never felt so estranged from Sean.

  That afternoon, a neighbour we met in passing at the village fête dropped in. Jamie was an impressive character who had worked his way up to being vineyard manager of one of the largest wine estates in our region. He had spent half his life in England and half in France and the speed of his French when he talked on his mobile left me breathless and envious. We had a chat then he looked uncomfortable.

  'I've got a favour to ask of you,' he said. 'I need a
chai
. We've got problems with some of our vats. This year will be a catastrophe if we don't find somewhere else to make our wine and since you're not using yours this year I thought of you.'

  A winery is called a
chai
, pronounced 'shay'. We hadn't worked up the courage to venture into ours.

  We leapt at Jamie's proposal which provided the opportunity to watch a harvest in our own winery and to get to know the equipment. A week later we rose early to see him bringing in the first of his grapes with François, his colleague. The weather was changing, autumn had arrived and with it that morning a chilly five degrees. With Ellie wrapped in blankets in her pram and Sophia bundled up in her winter coat we watched, enthralled, as the dawn poked long gold fingers through the vines. The harvest machine was already motoring up and down the rows and soon the trailer loads were arriving every half-hour. Jamie explained the idiosyncrasies of our winery as he and François worked frenetically to move their machine-harvested grapes from the trailer into a vat. He had to yell above the noise of the tractor that drove a pump in the trailer to push the grapes into a massive pipe oriented into the vat. I hung onto Sophia, anxious to keep her out of the way of the large machinery.

  A few hours later the harvest machine left and there was a moment of peace before I had to take Sophia to school. Jamie offered us cups of fresh, pure sauvignon blanc. It was super-sweet grape juice but with the classic aromas of lime and gooseberry and a delicious zesty finish. We had learned these terms in textbooks and tasting finished wine; now we were getting to apply them in the process of winemaking. This was why we were here. It raised us out of our renovation rut and made our dream feel real.

  Jamie was a regular visitor from then on, arriving at the winery at least once a day and sometimes twice a day. His arrival would often be accompanied by noise as he pumped liquids from one vat to another or heated or cooled them with our heat exchanger. Just moving the heat exchanger and associated pumps and pipes to the different zones of the winery was heavy work. We exchanged few words most days, but having him come by made me feel less lonely. We were also getting an idea of how much physical work went into making wine.

Jamie did a lot more than rent our
chai
. He taught Sean how to drive the tractor and was an infinite source of advice, encouragement and contacts. One of the contacts was the Chamber of Agriculture; we were the right side of forty to get some free help and perhaps some financial aid under the
jeune agriculteur
, young farmer, banner.

  One of the chamber's representatives, Monsieur Ducasse, suggested we meet. I took copious notes on the phone about how to get to his office and he remained remarkably restrained as I asked him to repeat everything many times.

  Without a single wrong turn we arrived on time, and clean – Ellie was still in the habit of throwing up on me. Monsieur Ducasse was chunky and dark with serious eyes framed by bushy eyebrows. He welcomed us politely, clearly taken aback by the arrival of a seven-month-old to the meeting. I wedged Ellie's buggy between Sean and myself, gave her a bottle of milk, then explained our situation. Sean's French wasn't up to participating so he left it all to me.

  Monsieur Ducasse's severe look darkened with each word.

  'We want to know what help we can get from you since we are new to this business,' I said.

  'What farming experience do you have?' he asked.

  'None really... But we both grew up in a rural environment,' I said helpfully.

  Monsieur Ducasse's Gallic eyebrows rose.

  'But you must have some practical farming experience?' he pressed.

  'Well, we had a small organic vegetable patch in our city garden,' I replied.

  The eyebrows shot up.

  'We had two grape vines in the garden,' I added quickly.

  His eyes popped out.

  'What about an agricultural degree?' he asked.

  'No, we have masters degrees in economics and finance,' I said.

  Ellie watched him suspiciously, sensing his discomfort, while he made urgent notes on the page in front of him.

  'How many employees do you have helping in the vineyard and winery?' he asked at last.

  'None. We can't afford employees. Anyway, the property is small enough for Sean to farm on his own.'

  'Not even part-time?' he gasped, wedging his hand under his chin to stop his mouth from gaping open.

  'No... But we have a neighbour who is giving us lots of useful advice,' I said hoping to save him from cardiac arrest. 'He told us to contact you.'

  His eyebrows were now within a whisker of his hairline. There were a few minutes of silence wherein he sought to regain control of his facial parts. Ellie watched him intently, finding the drama of his expressions very entertaining.

  'There is nothing we can do to help you,' he said eventually, delivering a massive blow to our hopes of aid money to help keep our leaking ship afloat.

  Seeing my dismay he tried to explain his position.

  'You need an agricultural degree from a French university to get onto the young farmer aid programme, or you need to do a university equivalent programme in Périgueux.'

  I started to ask something about the programme.

  'It's in French,' he said, stopping me in my tracks and making it clear he didn't consider my language skills up to the level required.

  'I thought your organisation was here to help farmers, especially new farmers, like us,' I said bitterly.

  'I think there is someone who can help you in the vineyard. I'll give you the number for Cécile Bernard, she's our vineyard advisor for your area.'

  We thanked him despite feeling that we got nothing from the exchange except depression at our lack of farming credentials. The young farmer programme opens the door to layer upon layer of aid, something he didn't explain. By not being on it at the start, we were excluded from benefits that multiplied through the system.

  Fortunately, we got more than we realised when Cécile Bernard became our advisor.

Cécile was a wonderful woman with a heart of gold, brown, curly hair, and a ready smile. She was in her thirties and knew vineyards. When she arrived to meet us a few weeks later Sean dragged me out despite my reluctance to get involved in vineyard work. His lack of French meant that I already knew more about tractors and other farm equipment than I wanted to.

  With Ellie on my hip we walked the vineyards with Cécile. She and Sean made good progress despite the language barrier. I tuned out and busied myself with eating the delectable botrytis sauvignon blanc that had been left on the vines. Botrytis is a miraculous 'noble' rot that develops on late-harvest grapes under special conditions. It concentrates the flavours and sugars to produce the most heavenly taste. The way the late-harvest grapes develop is unique, and hence considered worthy of a special designation, giving the wine of Saussignac its commune appellation.

  Appellation is an ancient concept developed in France to denote a quality food or drink from a geographic area. The first food to gain the pre-cursor to appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) was Roquefort cheese back in the 1400s. Wine appellations were relative latecomers, only officially initiated in 1935. Our reds, rosés and dry whites fell under the Bergerac appellation, one of the original areas to gain AOC status. Saussignac was made a commune appellation in 1982 but its dessert wines were famous as early as the 1500s. At the time all I knew was that those grapes were so good I could not stop myself.

  As I stuffed the fifth bunch into my mouth, I noticed that Sean was having difficulty understanding something Cécile was saying. Cécile repeated herself. Sean turned to me.

  'I think she's trying to ask us a question.'

  'I know, but I didn't catch what it was.'

  Cécile looked at us as if we were aliens from outer space.

  'Are you trying to ask Sean something?'

  Cécile cracked up and all three of us roared with laughter while Ellie looked on in mild amusement. I think she had realised just how little we knew about how to farm vines. Here we were trying to learn something completely new and complex – winegrowing – in a language we didn't even understand. If we didn't laugh we would have cried. I felt like I was Alice in Wonderland. We had a long way to go.

My birthday card from our closest friends, Barry and Aideen, arrived with the caption: 'The road to a friend's house is never long.' I dissolved into tears. There was a silver lining inside the card; they were coming to visit us in a few weeks.

  The night they arrived we set up camp for them in the second half of the house where renovations we still seriously required. Cillian, their nine-year-old son, and Juliette, their seven-year-old daughter, were ecstatic; it was a real adventure being in an abandoned semi-ruin. Mattresses, sleeping bags and boxes as side-tables offered simple comfort. We put the kids to bed early and settled down to catch up, starting with an aperitif of the Saussignac dessert wine we bought with the property.

  'This is fantastic,' said Barry.

  Aideen followed with more superlative comments. She grabbed my notebook and took tasting notes. Then we tasted the reds.

  'You must sell these wines direct this Christmas,' said Barry.

  We had been enjoying the wines but we didn't feel confident enough to sell them. Sean had taken samples to a
négociant
nearby who had voiced interest – but at outrageously low prices.