Saving Our Skins

by Caro Feely

  A new law in France meant that any public building had to be fully wheelchair-accessible, and even the furniture had to be carefully selected if we wanted the EU aid. This added complexity. With the aid application package was a detailed document outlining the technical aspects of compliance. My French had improved significantly but I still found legal and technical documents slow-going so I gave copies to the team, hoping they would ensure we were aux normes.

  Spring brought more guests than ever. With Anna, a lovely, delicate-looking Swede, I visited Château Guadet, a beautiful little grand cru classé in Saint-Émilion, owned by the Lignacs. Anna's boss, a Russian oligarch, had several thousand bottles in his cellar on the Côte d'Azur and she needed to know more about the wines he had, and the wines he should consider having. She was on call 24–7 but was so well paid she said it was worth it. She lived in luxury in his palatial villa while he globe-trotted. He had three full-time personal secretaries, one in each time zone, but he still called her at all hours of the day and night. She never said his name or gave any more details. She always referred to him as 'Mister'. I was intrigued.

  Our visit was hosted by Vince Lignac, a lithe and charming thirty-something with a mixed American– Australian twang to his English thanks to ten years working overseas. Dressed in working clothes, strong boots and a kangaroo-leather Stetson hat, his look matched his accent.

  Vince's family had bought the vineyard from the Guadets in the 1840s after the Guadets' ancestors, members of the Girondins political faction, made the mistake of abstaining from voting for the death of the king during the revolution. As Vince said, 'It was, like, you know, bad for your head.' Marguerite-Élie Guadet hid in the tunnels under the chateau for months and was on his way to Spain when one member of his fleeing party, rattled by the sound of fireworks, shot himself, raising the alarm. Soon after, Marguerite-Élie had his head chopped off. Just one month later he would have been home free, as it became Robespierre's turn to get to know the guillotine. Much of the family followed Guadet to a similar bloody end, except his wife and children, who sold the property to the Lignacs two generations later.

  The revolution was a gruesome chapter in France's history that I didn't like to dwell on. I preferred other parts of its history, like the troubadours and Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was heiress of our province, and she and Henry II, her second husband and king of England, gave Saint-Émilion their city rights in return for an annual share of vin honorifique, their equivalent of grand cru today. It sounded like a good deal to me. Eleanor was quite a lady. She married the French king at the age of fifteen; you can see the city gate commemorating it in Bordeaux. Some fifteen years later, despite having produced healthy children with him, she convinced the pope to annul the marriage on the basis of consanguinity and promptly married Henry Plantagenet, who soon after became king of England. She went on to outlive all her children. In her seventies she rode on horseback from Aquitaine to Spain to vet a suitor for a granddaughter. For that ride alone she was worthy of her legendary status.

  Saint-Émilion is named after a hermit monk who settled there around AD 750. His healing miracles made the village a famous pilgrimage stop on several of the Santiago de Compostela routes through Europe. Émilion was most famous for his fertility miracles. 'Leave your wife in my cave for an hour and I will see what I can do,' was an irreverent quip from one of my American clients.

  After years of visiting Saint-Émilion, I could identify which of the different soils a wine came from: the limestone plateau, the south-facing slopes, the gravel back-end near Pomerol, or the sandy soils at the bottom of the area. It fascinated me. Wine was a subject of never-ending depth and breadth. Each time I thought I understood I would see another dimension and taste a different nuance in a new vintage or a new slope. Vince had a quiet sense of place, a wisdom and serenity that came from the combination of his deep family anchor in Saint-Émilion and a knowledge of himself from travelling the world before returning by choice. 'We taste the wine every day during the fermentation to decide how many pump-overs to do. It is a question of balance. Just like in life, after all, it is all about the balance,' he said.

  Saint-Émilion was more famous than ever and had become a hot 'must visit' destination for wine lovers. We were lucky to be so close, a 45-minute drive through beautiful vineyards, a boon for our growing tourism business. While growers in appellations nearby struggled to give their wines away, that afternoon the lovely Laurent Benoit of Château Angelus, soon to become premier grand cru classé A, explained that they had released their latest vintage for en primeur sales at a consumer price of over 300 euros a bottle. All 100,000 bottles available were sold in under an hour. The wine crisis I felt when selling our wines to the trade was not something they were experiencing.

  The Reserveage payment for the first batch of our dried certified organic grape skins hit our account and Naomi ordered four pallets of our red wine. It was the second-largest order in the history of our vineyard and another vital boost to our confidence to proceed with the building project. She was saving our skins in every way. To close the sale we had to find a US importer to bring the wine into Florida. I contacted several and settled on one that appeared reliable and physically close to Naomi. Then, for the American market we needed to add a special label with the importer's name and the Surgeon-General's health warning, just as we had done for Jon. Before doing this, the front and back labels had to be submitted to the American authorities for verification. The initial submission was rejected because they wanted an English translation of the text on the main label added to the back label. Clearly the assessor of the label didn't understand French, since they didn't realise that the English text featured on the main label was a translation of the original French. I felt like screaming but instead resubmitted with this clarification and got another rejection, this time for an unacceptable font size on one of the headings on the back label. We corrected and resubmitted.

  As we crept closer to Naomi's deadline I became more and more stressed. She needed the wine for a trade fair four months away. Where international shipping and wine-related red tape were concerned, this was not much time. The labelling pedantry seemed like a lot of administrative tussling about nothing, particularly for wine that was a private sale and not for resale to the public, but we had to adhere.

  Following approval, third time lucky, Isabelle printed the precious labels for us. I set a production line up in the barn and steadily unpacked 200 twelve-bottle cases weighing around 18 kilograms each, carefully added the extra label to each bottle then repacked the box and stacked it onto a new pallet, a special kind required for exporting to the Americas. Over a couple of days I lifted three tons several metres vertically and horizontally. My exercise programme did not lack for new and entertaining ideas.

  Sophia and Ellie were also getting their share of exercise by collecting the eggs of our free-range chickens from all over the farm. The chickens liked to test their stamina and cunning by regularly changing nest location. When the girls found Mother Blacky brooding on a nest of about twenty eggs, I recalled a trick from my grandmother about floating or sinking being an indicator of age; the Internet confirmed that if an egg floated, it was bad. Most of these did.

  At lunch that day Seán and I were debating yet another aspect of the project, oak doors versus clapboard doors at a quarter of the price. We had been through everything: longevity, look, budget. 'They are French oak,' said Seán.

  'What's that got to do with the price of eggs?' I said, thinking he had lost it; French oak for wine barrels, sure, but for doors surely French oak versus other oak made no difference.

  'Why are you asking about the price of eggs when you are talking about the price of doors?' said Sophia.

  We all laughed and I explained what we meant when we used this saying in English. The girls were becoming more French by the day.

  Seán was right, though. The doors were not only French oak but also FSC-approved: buying locally and responsibly was important. With each
day we were becoming more aware of what our purchases meant; rather no doors than doors that would pollute the environment and end up in landfill. These doors would last many lifetimes.

  After a few false starts the wine for Naomi was collected with all the necessary paperwork. The truck was taking it to a port in Holland, where it would be containerised for its onward trip to Florida. I confirmed the successful collection to the US importer, feeling a wave of relief. The wine would be in Florida by the first week of September, just in time for Naomi's deadline of mid September, so that it could be served at a show in late September in another state.

  Continuing with logistical work, I emailed a UK chain of delis that had ordered two pallets of our white wine, putting pressure on them to collect. Digging work for the project was due to start and would hamper access to our warehouse. We had signed for the initial terracing work but were not yet fully committed to the main project; like a rabbit in car headlights, we were frozen with fear at the risk.

  It was a full week since the deli's requested pick-up date and I was getting worried. Wine sold to trade was only paid two months after collection. If the wine was not collected on the collection date stated on the order, we could not invoice the client. On the other hand, we had to hold the wine for them since it was contracted. It was a catch-22 that could destroy a wine estate if a large order got stuck in this no-man's-land.

  This order and Naomi's were key sales to funding the initial stages of the project, but thereafter the path was not clear. I had many sleepless nights asking myself if we were completely insane but I knew we had to do it to progress. I prayed we wouldn't lose our balance in the process. Doubts dragged us into inaction until a postcard from our biodynamic association arrived with a quote from Goethe:

  As long as we do not engage, doubt reigns; the possibility of withdrawal remains, and inefficiency prevails. This is an elementary truth, the ignorance of which has numerous implications and has aborted splendid projects. From the moment we engage fully providence starts to move in the same direction.

  Everything you can do or dream of doing you can undertake. Audacity confirms in us genius, power and magic. Start now.

  We took it as a sign and committed ourselves fully to the tasting room. The decision began a new era of 'feeling the g-force'. The growing season had Seán engrossed in the vineyard and better weather meant non-stop tour guests for me. We hardly had time to wave at each other as we passed morning and evening: Seán going to bed long after me and me getting up way earlier than him. Sophia and Ellie were growing at speed. I felt like I was missing it. Pulled this way and that by the project and by marketing trips, and working weekends, I was barely there.

  Chapter 18

  The Imperfect Day

  Seán's birthday, the last day of August, was the anniversary of our move to France five years before. It also signified the end of the summer holiday and of the builders' holidays, so it was the official kick-off date for the project.

  Mr Jegu, a gentle giant who had helped us through earth-moving experiences in the past, started the project with a flourish, opening up a trench across the courtyard to lay the electricity and water for the tasting room and lodge. The hammering of the brise-roche (rock-breaker) was accompanied by extremely high-pitched squealing from the rusty tracks of his old digger. My head was throbbing.

  The trench blocked access to the winery and the warehouse and forced our gîte guests to park elsewhere. They were unhappy about the noise, guaranteed to destroy a holiday even for the most easy-going – and they had just finished a long and nightmarish building project on their own house. This vacation was to get away from it all, and instead they found themselves on yet another building site.

  My wine-school guests were compromised too. The class that morning had to decamp to Château Les Tours de Lenvège next door, where the guests were staying, as the noise was so intense we could not hear ourselves think or drink. In the darkness of the chateau I did my best to run the class in a professional manner without my usual supports, like the correct light, maps, fridge and a spittoon.

  Now, after an afternoon back at my desk accompanied by the high-pitched screaming and hammering of the digger, I was close to pulling my hair out. It was only day one of the building site and I could not wait to get away. For his birthday I had planned a romantic dinner with Seán. It would be our first night out together in Bergerac, our nearest town, ever; a sign of how little spare time and money we had had in the previous five years and how much we had neglected our relationship.

  The girls were going to our friends Pierre and Laurence for a sleepover. I felt sure there would be no problem getting a reservation since it was a week-night. But when I called the restaurant I wanted they were fully booked. After a few more calls I realised that going out on the town was not so easy, even on a Tuesday night. Some places were on holiday, others were renovating and more were fully booked. Despite mixed reviews from gîte guests, many of whom had tried more local restaurants in a week than we had in five years, I called L'Imparfait, a gourmet restaurant guaranteed to cost far more than we could afford. After the day I had had I needed a blowout night. It was my lucky day: they could squeeze us in.

  Feeling better, I took note of the address then dialled into my messages, opening my email at the same time. It was nearly five in the evening. A phone message and an email from the UK deli's transporter said they would collect the two pallets of wine the following morning. It was ten days since their requested pick-up date and I had been asking for confirmation of the day for weeks. They had to choose the moment the courtyard was inaccessible to collect. I felt like screaming. Angst rising, I ran outside to find Mr Jegu. He promised to have the wine warehouse accessible the following afternoon after 4 p.m.

  I called the transporter to delay the pick-up to the afternoon and they informed me they did not have a tailgate on the articulated truck and that we, therefore, had to supply a forklift. We didn't have one. I made a mental note to ask Pierre if we could borrow his when we dropped the girls off.

  Seán came in from the vineyard bearing his toolbox.

  'I'm going to fix the toilet before I get ready,' he said.

  The toilet had been dripping for a few days and I hated wasting water, but we had several years of experience to prove that plumbing jobs could not be squeezed into a few minutes after-hours. For us, plumbing jobs needed days, several trips to the local hardware store and a visit from our professional plumber at the end for good measure. I mumbled a warning.

  'What? It's a simple matter of tightening the joint,' Seán riposted.

  I shut up. It was his birthday after all.

  A few minutes later I heard frantic cursing and water-gushing. In the process of tightening the connection, the old tap that fed the toilet had snapped off and water was pouring out of the broken copper pipe.

  'Feck!' I added to the volley of expletives already flowing from Seán, and grabbed the towel he had wrapped around it in a futile attempt to stem the leak. He sprinted outside to switch off the mains. I could see my planned bathing and beautifying before our big night out disappearing like a mirage on the horizon. Seán and plumbing spelt disaster. Knowing this, it was hard to fathom why he had decided to start this delicate job in the evening but I reminded myself again that it was his birthday and bit my tongue.

  It was 5.45 p.m. and the chances of getting a plumber were slim. The only way to stop the gushing inside our house was to leave the mains for the whole property off. Now our unhappy gîte guests would have noise, no parking and no water. No flushing toilet, no water to cook with, no water for tea, no water to drink. 'Feck' was not enough.

  Before I could say 'buy water', Seán leapt into the car and raced down to the quincaillerie, our local hardware store in Gardonne, one of his favourite haunts, to buy a closure and some plumbing tape.

  I called Monsieur Lambert's office, miraculously catching him as he closed up for the night. He promised Jean-Marc would come round immediately to see what he could do.
Monsieur Lambert had become very responsive since we began the grand project of the tasting room and Wine Lodge.

  Maria, our gîte guest, walked onto the Wine Cottage terrace and announced that they were about to fill the kettle for a cup of tea and did I want to join them. I broke the news that there was no water for tea and promised to buy water as soon as Seán returned from the quincaillerie.

  I felt like jumping off a cliff but instead leapt into the car Seán had just returned in, raced down to the Utile and stocked up on 20 litres of water.

  Thinking the day from hell could only get better, I opened my email to check for the confirmation of the afternoon pick-up by the deli's transporter and found a note from the Florida wine importer: 'Due to engine trouble the ship carrying the Reserveage order had to return to port and the wine is now delayed and will only leave Europe on 3 September.'