by Caro Feely
The difference in the chamber's service since we arrived was astonishing. In five years the organic vineyards had grown from around 1 per cent to 4 per cent of the vineyard surface area in France. With that, we had seen a distinct shift from us being considered wacky, hippy types to being taken seriously as a form of agriculture. Advisors, suppliers and other support bodies were organising themselves to better serve this fast-growing market.
France had a long way to go. They had fallen from the top of the European tables in organic in 1980 to the bottom in 1990. In that decade, EU agricultural funds that most other EU member states used for encouraging organic conversion had been used as aid for conventional dairy farmers in France, increasing the milk lake and ensuring that through the 1990s and later France had to import a large part of its organic needs instead of providing for itself, despite being the agricultural powerhouse of Europe. With organic produce now a key and fast-growing part of the food market, that had been truly short-sighted folly.
As harvest progressed we saw the shape and size of our new tasting room forming, as Thomas, our stonemason, worked the foundations. The official start date, three months after submission of the planning request, had passed and we had heard nothing, so officially we were home free and could start. Then, about two weeks later, as Thomas started wall construction, we were notified that the Security Commission and the Handicap Commission had given an 'avis défavorable', meaning that we did not have our planning permission.
Seeing the letter's headline, panic overwhelmed my brain and adrenalin pulsed through my body. I felt like running away. I told myself to calm down, then carefully read through the page of feedback. There were simple things like making sure all the doors were at least 90 cm wide – most already were – but there were also seemingly insurmountable ones. The principal one was wheelchair accessibility for the tasting-room toilet. There was no way Seán's stone building could meet the strict wheelchair-turning-circle requirements and the budget had not included a new facility.
Sébastian then called to say he would come back from Brittany two weeks later than planned at the end of September as his work there was taking longer than expected. I almost spun out of control.
'What will we do?' I lamented to Seán. 'The plans have to be redone for the wheelchair accessibility. Sébastian needs to get on with the work. Our deadlines are tight. We can't afford a delay.'
We both knew that it only took one skipped beat for us to be in trouble with our delicate financing. The
tasting room had to be ready for guests by April when the season began, and the Wine Lodge by June when the renting season gained pace.
'You have to keep your calm, Carolinus. You need to keep the team motivated, and going off the deep end won't do that,' said Seán.
But that was easier said than done. I took the shopping list off the cork board in the kitchen and added five slabs of dark chocolate to it. My consumption increased with stress and it was clear over the next few months it would be substantial.
I was short with Sophia, Ellie and Seán and slept badly, locked in a state of panic about these loose ends that could be our undoing.
We had gone so far; we had to have the aid so we had to have the toilet. The tasting-room project was signed and committed. We hadn't signed the final quotes on the lodge, but the two went hand in hand, both using the same access ramp. The Wine Lodge gîte, while it was a bigger expense, was also a more certain revenue stream. If we put it off and finished only the tasting room, work at a later date would be almost impossible since access was via what would be the tasting-room deck. Putting it on hold was not an option.
'Don't worry, Caro,' said Thomas, our stonemason, always the calm voice of reason. 'This is no problem. We will put a wall over here, connect to the wall of the dry toilet there; put a door in here and basta! No problem.' Thomas put together an estimate. It was an honest quote but any addition to the budget made me stress. After reading his quote I reached for the shopping list to double the number of chocolate bars. 'Isn't ten slabs a little excessive?' said Seán.
I bit into another square, trying to control the nervous tic in my eye and making it clear it wasn't. I was not sure if my heart would withstand this pressure for another nine months, but the project was now well underway and there was no turning back.
Seán and I discussed budgets, pros and cons and next steps deep into the night. There was the budget issue, but now we didn't have official planning permission either. All the work done so far, and what would be done in the coming weeks, was going ahead illegally and could be rejected.
On the other hand, we could not send Thomas and Sébastian away while we sorted out the planning permission since we risked losing them to other projects; plus, months lost would mean missing key summer revenue the following year, which would destroy the fragile financing.
There were red 'beware' signs flashing in all directions. Every route was risky. We decided to continue the work. We had to get on and do it and deal with the consequences.
Sébastian returned. We reworked the plans and resubmitted.
As well as the chocolate-overdose-inducing accessible-toilet facility, we now needed security glass for the windows and doors that doubled the cost of the glass areas. These were required for a public building, which a tasting room was classified as, no matter the size. There was, however, a silver lining: the new plans were so beautiful that I was more excited than ever. The project was like a flower blossoming.
Each day brought more decisions. Going into the project I had no idea that a custom build would generate so many: the exact toilet location in the new accessible facility, the height of the small stone wall that would hold the massive panorama windows in the tasting room, colours, materials…
Incorporating the original stone walls of the nineteenth-century barn and chai added complexity. The exact levels and hence the length of the ramp could only be calculated once the foundations had been dug and the final levels relative to the old buildings had been fixed. Now the foundations had been dug, and the solid stone level had been fixed, so we knew.
We knew the lodge was a few extra centimetres below the level of the tasting room, thus the ramp needed to be even longer to meet the strict accessibility law, generating more cost. We also knew that we needed to raise the walls a little higher than expected to ensure that there was no change in ground level between the living area and the bedrooms of the Wine Lodge. When I thought I would go completely mad with the stress of it all, news that our reworked plans had passed the two commissions arrived.
The work had official sanction. But our fine-tuned budget needed constant feeding from wine sales and wine tourism. One missed beat and we were in deep, deep water. I paddled harder and faster, pushing all the buttons I could to get good PR for the wine and fighting to get a TripAdvisor listing for our wine tours, which were gaining momentum.
Chapter 20
One Hundred Guests
We swung into high gear for the harvest weekend with the aid of our dream team, Spring and Simon. A hundred people were confirmed and we needed an ace caterer. Fabrice was recommended by Laura, a lovely Englishwoman who managed the two magnificent chateaux on our doorstep, Fayolle and Les Tours de Lenvège. He arrived for an initial meeting, a handsome, finely dressed young man in a black suit and pointy patent leather shoes. Pointy men's shoes were a 'no-no' for Seán, a sure sign of a salesman and an instant reason for him to distrust the unlucky person wearing them.
On the contrary, I was convinced. This was not due to his handsome visage or toned body as Seán hinted, but to the photos on his website – of his food. I explained that we had booked the Château de Saussignac, which had very basic kitchen facilities. Fabrice said he would stop in to see it but he had catered there before so he had an idea. In the end he was so busy he didn't come back to see the facilities. We agreed the menus on the phone and by email.
Anne McManus, a beautiful blonde artist of around fifty with the body of a twenty-year-old, her adult daug
hter Nadine and a friend settled into the Wine Cottage. They were the perfect antidote to pre-harvest weekend panic. Anne was into chakras, biodynamics, divining rods and alternative medicine. She drew a map of how she felt the farm. The most powerful positive forces were the old sémillon vines, planted in 1945 and now surrounding the Wine Cottage, winery and building site. These old vines were sculptures, each one a beautiful set of curves, twists and gnarls; individuals rather than the clones that became the norm in 1982.
Vines are like people. When farmed naturally they follow a similar life-cycle. From zero to five years they can do little for themselves, requiring significant labour and investment as we had found with our baby cabernet sauvignon. Then they offer a small harvest: like a kid that can unpack the dishwasher or dress themselves. From five to fifteen they produce fruit but it is more about energy than finesse, the phase we called 'education'. They need guidance and the chance to get their roots deep into the earth to refine their energetic output into something with depth. It is for this reason that the fruit from vines younger than fifteen years is seldom used for an estate's top wine; they go into the second wine.
If farmed naturally, vines offer good yield with complexity from fifteen to sixty-five, when they begin to wind down, the volume decreasing with complexity as compensation, hence the pride with which 'old vines' is displayed on a label – not a legislated term but generally only used on wine made from vineyards over forty years old. With great age, vines can offer wines of depth that improve further with ageing in the bottle. Chemically farmed vines are lucky to live beyond forty years, exhausted and worn out from overproduction before they reach this sweet spot. Our old vines had withstood thirty years of conventional farming by previous owners because, before that, they had had thirty years of old-style farming with animal traction, cow dung and hand work – how most owners farmed until the seventies brought mass industrialisation of farming. They had a fundamental strength and disease resistance from their thirty-year good start. Some of our other vines were middle-aged and had had thirty years of conventional farming in their formative years. Despite being half the age of the 'grandmammies', they were finished. They couldn't recover. Like a malnourished child fed good food in later life, even with nurturing they were not returning to full health.
Two days before the harvest weekend we walked the vineyards to taste the grapes. They were magnificent; it was a confluence of nature that the biggest hand-picking team ever, the bumper turnout resulting from the television show, fell on such perfection. We set the harvest weekend date a year in advance so guests could plan and book their travel, hence we never knew exactly what we would pick. Some years the reds were ready, other years it was the first pick for the dessert wine. With a hundred people we expected to pick half our red grapes in one morning.
The other half, merlot grapes planned for machine-harvest, the wine we called Résonance, was also ready. In the pre-dawn darkness I greeted Benoit then ran ahead indicating the rows, hardly taking the time that I usually did to breathe in the special moment. Seán, Spring and Simon were ready. When the dawn broke through the vineyard we were halfway. As we finished pumping the last trailer of grapes into the vat, the first set of harvest weekend guests arrived. We were on fast forward.
Spring and I turned the Château de Saussignac into a stunning banquet hall with white tablecloths of recycled paper, brown linen runners, tea lights and crystal glass, while Seán and Simon signposted the roped-off parking area and prepared the winery. Each of us attacked our respective list of responsibilities with focus. It was the big league.
The following day dawned bright and I said a thank you to the sky. We split into two groups, me on one side of the farm and Spring on the other. Dave Moore picked up the buckets of harvested grapes with the tractor, rushing back and forth between Spring's group and mine, aided by Simon. They barely had time to drop the grapes before we required our buckets and bins to be emptied again. Seán and Ian Wilson, like tireless wind-up toys, processed the harvest at the winery.
By midday, the spring had unwound and Seán demanded we stop, there was so much harvest; he couldn't cope with any more. In the garden under the trees near the new tasting-room foundation, tables and chairs, picnic blankets and benches, anything that could hold a bottom, were set alongside tables groaning with pâté, cheeses, breads, crudités and different dips.
For the first time, the covers were totally compostable: paper plates and wooden knives, even paper cups. Ian opened bottles of wine, the pile of empties at his feet growing as fast as he could open new ones, while the serving plates were emptied and refilled by Brigit. By the time Seán and Dave realised how hungry they were, all 5 kilograms of pâté were gone. I was so on the hop dealing with questions, orders and organisation that I didn't even think of food. We were pulling off a 100-person event without any hitches. Despite the lack of second helpings of pâté, guests were thoroughly enjoying themselves; roars of laughter regularly broke the happy hum of conversation.
The previous year, Dave and Amanda had been with us for harvest night; but this year, installed in their new vineyard, they offered to have Sophia and Ellie for a sleepover. As the girls enjoyed Amanda's superb vegetarian cooking, we arrived at the chateau ready for a gourmet sensation delivered by a hot Frenchman.
Fabrice drove in with a refrigerated truck and a team of smartly dressed youngsters right on time. With his good looks came fast-flowing speech that I sometimes struggled to keep up with, but the horror on his face at seeing the kitchen facilities in the chateau didn't need words.
'My team will give this place a thorough swabbing so we can use it for washing up, but for cooking absolutely non.'
I felt dizzy. With under an hour until guests were due to arrive, my mind raced to potential solutions.
'Not to worry,' said Fabrice, 'in the back of the second truck I have two restaurant-grade gas-fired ovens just in case. I'll set them up in the vaulted hall and use that as the kitchen.'
Within minutes Fabrice had the ovens installed, tables erected to handle the dressing of one hundred plates by his expert team, and protective screens delineating this new 'kitchen' area. Delighted by his professionalism and confident that everything would be perfect, I dashed home for a shower. Seán was knee-deep in grapes. I told him about Fabrice's reaction to the facilities.
'What did I tell you?' he yelled, his voice echoing eerily round the vat he was working in. 'Fancy pointy shoes!'
It was so unseasonably warm that Fabrice's waiting staff were serving Feely méthode traditionelle sparkling wine to the lavishly dressed crowd outside on the rough stone patio. Tea lights twinkled on the tables, their soft light playing on the stone walls of the massive hall. Seán arrived and we called for guests to take their seats, beginning the evening with awards for best pickers, noisiest guests and latecomers as per tradition.
The starter was dressed to perfection: Fondant d'aubergine et de poivrons rouges au cumin aux queues de langoustines, vinaigrette vierge de fines herbes et copeaux de vieux Parmesan – in short, langoustine tails with aubergine fondant, a sensation of flavours, accompanied by Luminosité. I was in heaven and so were our guests, the crowd carried along by the good humour that comes from a fulfilling day of relaxed exercise in the sun. Fabrice's main course, Tournedos de canard aux cromesquis de foie gras frits, rissolée de girolles fraîches et petites rattes, jus de morilles aux sucs de vin de Terroir Feely – duck tournedos with mushrooms and potatoes – was matched with La Source red. The duck tournedos, despite being cooked for a hundred people, were perfectly medium rare. Even Seán grudgingly admitted to being impressed by Fabrice's cooking skills. The timing of the presentation and clearing of courses was perfection. He was a real pro.
With the main course served, I felt a great sense of relief. The heavy lifting of the event was done; we could relax and enjoy coasting through the next courses. Seán and I clinked glasses and I walked across to do the same with Simon and Spring; then Seán rose and read out a piece he had adapte
d from a Seamus Heaney poem to toast our harvesters. Tears of emotion welled up in my eyes as the hall exploded with applause.
An impressive cheese sculpture paired with the Générosité barrel-aged white set off an impromptu tin whistle concert by Larry, a guest from Dublin, and the crowd clamoured for more. Then Liz, Larry's partner, broke into a beautiful Irish ballad as the finale was served: Gourmandise chocolatée aux fruits rouges, sorbet cru de fraises à la fleur de thym et tranché à l'huile vierge – chocolate mousse and strawberry sorbet with red fruit and thyme, and Saussignac dessert wine. The song was haunting and beautiful; I didn't want it to end. I didn't want the dessert to end either; the plate was an artwork, a chocolate sculpture, with spun sugar and beautiful red berries; it was a travesty to eat it. But it had to end. Café et mignardises, sweet delights served with freshly brewed coffee, signalled the moment and groups began to drift off in taxis or on foot.
Simon, Spring and I smacked high fives before taking the mountains of bottles to the bottle bank. Fabrice and his team cleaned up and left as Seán swept the last dust off the floor. We were exhausted but deeply satisfied, thankful for the quality of the harvest, the gorgeous dinner and the wonderful people that had been part of it. The following day I had a stiff cup of tea, so strong you could trot a mouse on it, to knock myself into shape for the guided walk of our farm. I could see the end at last and the fast-forward feeling I had had all weekend began to slow down.