by Caro Feely
Suddenly no water and a broken toilet seemed like no trouble at all. Jeopardy for our second-largest order ever meant I saw red and our bank account soon would too. We would have to fast-track the order to prevent Naomi cancelling because, if she did, we would have to pay return shipping costs and would have four pallets of wine labelled for her that were not sold. I felt sick. I left a message for the importer stressing the urgency and demanding action.
By the time Jean-Marc, my knight in shining armour for all things plumbing, arrived, Seán had closed the pipe sufficiently to turn the mains back on. He wasn't so bad at plumbing after all. As I told Jean-Marc about my day, he kept repeating, 'Oh, la misère!'
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Jean-Marc checked Seán's seal, added some professional tape and said he would return to repair the toilet properly the following day. I rushed out to announce the victory to our gîte guests and almost ran into Mr Jegu at the door. The channel was taking longer than expected and the work would take at least one more day. The access to the warehouse could be in place for the wine collection but the noise would have to continue. I didn't know how to tell our guests they had another forty-eight hours of hell instead of twenty-four. I felt like leaping off the gîte terrace but instead gritted my teeth and delivered the message, offering half the week free to sweeten the bitter pill.
If this was what the building was going to be like, I would not make it to the end of the week, let alone the end of the project. At least the water was back on and I could look forward to a fast shower before drowning my sorrows in fine wine at L'Imparfait. 'The Imperfect' was a fitting name for the day so far.
In Bergerac the last rays of sunlight caught the tops of the medieval houses leaning in over the streets of the old town, their facades a mix of cream stones, weathered wood and peach-tone tiles. The night air was warm and velvety. Young, happy couples strolled with insouciance, and the afternoon from hell seemed a lifetime away. Down a tiny lane packed with tables we found L'Imparfait. Waiting to be seated I was unexpectedly embraced by Pascale. Pascale and François had run the Lion d'Or in Saussignac for years until François was struck with a fast-acting cancer and passed away almost before anyone realised what was happening. Pascale had moved on, unable to continue the restaurant alone. We missed them. It was great to see her and we caught up quickly as she led us outside. She had sold the hotel-restaurant François had bought for her before he died and now she was helping at L'Imparfait temporarily. I felt sad. She was bouncing back but loss was still etched on her face.
We squeezed into a tiny table on the narrow terrace, flanked by tables filled with diners on either side. It was so tight that, as pedestrians passed along the lane behind Seán, their legs touched the back of his jacket. Despite the tight seating, the ambiance was relaxed, languid, like a peaceful late-summer afternoon totally unlike the one I had just experienced. I felt luxurious. The old walls facing me danced in the candlelight as if the stones were alive.
Dressed in a clingy, chic yellow dress, a hand-me-down from my glamorous sister Jacquie, possibly wirecell but what did I know, and some lovely strappy silver flats by Prada, also courtesy of my benevolent sister, I felt on top of the moon, stylish, almost pretty… Not like someone that had just humped three tons of wine across a barn and wrestled the day from hell into submission.
We perused the menu and the wine list, feeling thoroughly opulent. It was a delight to be a wine buyer for a change, hesitating between this and that, revelling in the wonderful moment of anticipation. We settled on a Pouilly-Fumé to start, a superb sauvignon blanc with mineral flinty notes and good body, magic with Seán's starter portion of langoustines and my red mullet fillets served on a fennel salad. The imperfect day slowly dissolved as the meal progressed.
My main course, melt-in-the-mouth sea bass with creamy ginger sauce on a perfectly dressed plate, was so heavenly Seán told me to quieten down – what would people think? I was Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. A Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil red wine sent us down memory lane to the day we discovered France and her wine and our lives were never going to be quite the same again. That day, at the Pierre-Jacques Druet estate in the Loire Valley, the chalky cliffs outside the cellar hewn out of the rock had glowed cream-gold in the afternoon sun. His descriptions of the harvest and the wines as we tasted from his barrels transported us to a new place.
'The wines are grown, not made; I am the shepherd of the harvest, not the winemaker,' Pierre-Jacques had said. Between his poetic descriptions and his passionate explanations we were smitten. From then on our lives were consumed with the dream of becoming winegrowers in France.
From the reverie of Bourgueil we talked on dreamily of holidays, of appreciating our fast-growing daughters, the future and the project. Returning home replete, we found the house bizarrely quiet. Not having our daughters at home felt strange. We felt out of place and at a loss. Some candles strategically placed in the bedroom helped us find something to do.
Chapter 19
Volunteers and Red Tape
We were expecting a hundred people for our harvest weekend. Niall's television show the year before had generated a bumper turnout. The event needed James Bond precision and our 007 team had just landed. Spring Webb was a powerful 'can do' Kiwi with fabulous dreadlocks. She more than matched our Kiwi expectations set by Helen and Derek, the titans who cleared the forest around the site for the new tasting room and lodge. With Simon Golding, her partner, a Brit with dark curly hair and a philosopher's perspective, they were a formidable team, having worked multiple vintages on estates in New Zealand.
We were hesitant about using volunteers because of a few bad experiences. Brian had been a young, fat engineer with little appetite for work and a great appetite for Internet and hot chocolate, though with a good sense of humour that was his saving grace. He was followed by Brad, a young, overweight graduate with even less appetite for work and a large one for cigarettes despite 'no smoking' being clearly spelt out in the guidelines provided when he first contacted us. They added little and took up unnecessary time to manage and extract from the farm. After experiences like these, Seán was emotionally drained and our work reversed rather than advanced.
Now we only accepted volunteers who were super keen to learn about organic farming, the main reason for us offering the volunteer places; and for short periods with a non-negotiable maximum of two weeks. Under these new rules Simon and Spring had visited in early summer. Over those two weeks they were a Bond-worthy team. Simon set up our Internet networks – he had been a skilled network engineer before giving in to his passion for wine and vineyards. Spring tore into outdoor work without hesitation and organised everything she touched. My half-day for a group of journalists invited by the regional tourism body was planned with military precision. The tables were beautifully laid in the shade in the garden. Spring and Simon positioned them to the millimetre for views of the vineyards and the Château de Saussignac in one direction and the Dordogne valley's orchards, vineyards and villages below us in the other. The food was perfect, the service impeccable, and I was able to focus on explaining our wines and organic and biodynamic farming. For most of the journalists it was their first time hearing about biodynamics and they were entranced.
After lunch we had sweated around our newly marked guest-walking route as the thermometer climbed to 36 ºC. When we returned hot and parched, we found tables and chairs positioned in the shade of the lean-to terrace alongside the old tasting room with great jugs of iced water decorated with slices of lemon and home-grown mint. Spring was always a step ahead. I would think of something that needed to be done and as I was about to say it she was already there, like a mind-reader. They were a mean team. We loved them and so had invited them back for as long as they liked at harvest time.
One of the guests that journalist day was Stephan Thierry, the marketing manager of our provincial tourist board in Bordeaux, a mover and shaker in the world of wine tourism. He emailed to thank me and suggest
ed we apply for the 'Best of Wine Tourism' awards the following year.
The Internet revealed the awards were part of the global awards run by the Great Wine Capitals network that brought together the top wine destinations of the world: Bilbao for Rioja, Bordeaux for Aquitaine, Cape Town for the Cape Winelands, Christchurch for South Island in New Zealand, Florence for Tuscany, Mainz for the Rheinhessen, Mendoza in Argentina, Porto in Portugal, San Francisco for Napa Valley and Valparaíso for Chile's Casablanca Valley. It read like a roll call for a WSET wine tasting. The pitch looked way too grand for us given the heavyweights involved, but there was no harm in finding out. I sent an email to the organisers asking for an application form.
By the time Spring and Simon returned for harvest, the lean-to against the old tasting room was gone. Mr Jegu, our digger man, had finished the trench and was making inroads into the foundations for the new buildings.
Simon and Spring settled into the caravan in the limestone amphitheatre surrounded by panoramic vineyard views. The bathroom Seán built, that served as their washroom, now floated above a large white moat of solid limestone, the foundation for the new tasting room. To reach the facility they had to traverse it, as would all my tour guests. Spring and Simon constructed a handy bridge of wooden pallets to make the passage easier. The weekend of their return an apricot sunset over the vineyard announced perfect conditions for a barbecue. Simon and Spring produced bottles of the wines they had made in New Zealand, I raided my supplies of tasting samples and bottles from our trip to California and we blind-tasted New World vs Old World. Sniffing and swilling, I experimented with my blind tasting skills, needing to practise. The 'Certified Wine Educator' course at the WSET school in London was set to test my abilities in a few weeks. With the qualification and the new tasting room we would be a certified wine school.
Spring found the old world wines had a clear signal that she called 'dusty' and she picked them out correctly. We laughed and tasted, sharing experiences and getting to know each other, creating the bonds necessary for the intense teamwork of harvest. The late night didn't put Spring off helping me clean the Wine Cottage for guests the following day. She was a cleaning machine and when she declared that she loved cleaning, I said she could stay forever.
Harvest brought cleaning and sterilisation of vats, stressed planning of dates and worry that we might be served the bad driver again. I called Serge to put my foot down and he said the person had ceased to drive for the co-operative. I could barely contain my delight as I marked this little stress off the most intense time in our annual cycle.
Seán, Simon and Spring walked the vineyards every day, tasting the grapes to determine the ideal picking date for the sauvignon blanc. Now, in our fifth year, Seán was confident about his decisions, aware of the small differences from one side of the vineyard to another, of the top of the slope compared to the bottom, of the slight change in vigour of the vines depending on their location, and in the resulting taste of the grapes in the barely perceptible dip in the middle. He could visualise the wine based on the fruit on the vine. The sauvignon was ready. The weather was perfect. I booked the harvest machine.
Waking up before dawn was a privileged moment of feeling I had the earth to myself, of silence, of sensing the magnificence of nature with the hoot of an owl and the flicker of a hare disappearing down a vine row. Waiting for the harvest machine I marvelled at the star-studded dome above us, as filled with wonder as I had been the first year.
Benoit, the new driver, arrived right on time. An introductory chat revealed he was a farmer, which gave us confidence. He knew how important harvest was to us, as only another farmer could.
I ran down pointing the sauvignon vineyard markers, beautiful big bows made from pink Lycra strips at the start of each row that Spring had attached the day before. Turning to head back up I exchanged a wave with Benoit and saw a wide smile. He had never seen a vineyard marked with baby-pink ribbon before.
The first load went smoothly from harvest machine to trailer, then Seán backed up the tractor and we pumped the juice from trailer to vat. Simon was positioned as a stabilising point under the main harvest pipe, I was on duty dosing carbon dioxide gas and a tiny shot of sulphur dioxide to protect the juice from oxidation, and Spring was reading Seán's mind.
Before he said a word she grabbed the big white food-grade spade and pushed the grapes left along the sides of the trailer down so they would be pumped through and not left to oxidise. Seán looked astonished and gave her the thumbs up.
Minutes later, with the load safely transferred, he turned off the tractor and climbed up onto the vat to check how it looked. She handed him the first bucket of grapes drained from the auger pipe of the trailer and I got ready to pass the next. There was almost no need to talk – it was telepathy and instinct. Before my words formed, Spring had taken it from me.
That night, with all the sauvignon blanc safely in the vats, we celebrated the successful start of vintage with a recipe from the Cakebread book bought on the trip to California: duck and home-grown dried cherries and walnuts matched with a medley of roast potatoes and courgettes and a bottle of La Source from our first year. It was perfect for the cold that announced the start of autumn and a chance to reminisce about our trip. We toasted the safe passage of the sauvignon blanc grapes destined to be our Sincérité pure sauvignon. It was the first vintage of white grapes that would be pressed with the 'new' basket press. Seán had decided to leave the juice on the skins for one day of maceration. We didn't keep the skins with the juice for the fermentation of white wine as that could create bitter tannins. However, limited skin maceration could be interesting, particularly for sauvignon blanc, as it helped to draw the polyphenols, all-important aroma compounds, into the juice.
Wine is made with grapes, and not other fruit, because of the concentration of these magical properties within them. In oranges and apples there are hundreds of such properties, whereas in grapes there are thousands. When man first made wine around ten thousand years ago, he already realised that wine made with grapes was better than anything else. What ancient man knew, modern man had proved with science. In Australia, the Wine Research Institute measured the pepper polyphenol aroma in shiraz, which we call syrah in France, and found, incredibly, that it was several thousand times the power of actual pepper.
We left the sauvignon blanc for a day and the effect was just right. In previous years we had pumped the fresh harvest straight into our old Vaslin presses, skipping the maceration, so this was an important new step for us. Seán ran off the 'free run', the juice that had liberated itself naturally as a result of the weight of the grapes effectively pressing themselves overnight. But after draining the tank of the free run we found the grapes were still full of juice. Seán hosed himself down then jumped in and stomped the grapes in the tank in an effort to extract more free run. A little more juice was released but after draining that, what was left was still very liquid. We couldn't transfer with the 'vendange pump' and neither could we dig it out. It was too wet. The only way to transfer the juicy grapes from vat to press was by hand, bucket by bucket. I returned home after a day in SaintÉmilion to find them still working. Seán was frustrated. Digging out the red grapes that had only a little juice left in them and using the basket press the previous year had been simple but tough work. Pressing fresh white harvest with our basket press seemed impossible. As the pressure built with the pressing, the juicy grapes and skins regularly exploded out of the sides of the oak cage.
'Caro, it's like standing behind a cow with diarrhoea!' said Spring. It explained why all three were encrusted with grapes. I laughed but felt a twist of anxiety. Even after hours of pressing, the grapes left were still juicy and it was slow and laborious. For all the benefits and gentleness of the press, if it was not efficient and did not extract sufficient juice for the whites we would have to change it, but a new press was a significant investment, one we were not in a position to make with the commitments on the project.
But
their hard work paid off in taste: the juice was extraordinary, a step change in quality compared to previous vintages. It was our second year fully certified organic and our second on the path to biodynamic certification, so the health and quality of the grapes themselves was also responsible, but, for all the difficulty, frustration and lower volume, the basket press delivered exceptional taste.
A couple of days later we harvested the sémillon under a perfect full moon. The wine I had originally nicknamed 'wild moon white' was living up to its name. Some of it would go to our Luminosité white blend and some would be barrel-aged for Générosité. Seán, Spring and Simon worked through the following day carrying out the same difficult pressing process, while I welcomed a group of guests for a day wine adventure in the tasting room.
Dave, Mr Greedy, arrived to help, part of an ongoing exchange programme, our home team helping the Moores on their harvest mornings and vice versa. It was their first harvest on their new farm and they were experiencing similar joys and challenges to us in our first year. Seán was their volunteer advisor, providing an alternative view to the Chamber of Agriculture, their official advisor's version of the truth.