by Caro Feely
By mid October the tasting-room walls were up, the project was flying ahead and we were keeping to our tight deadlines. Spring and I marvelled at Thomas. Watching him working was like watching a dancer. He was at one with his work, a true artist. We saw it in his precision with traditional stone, but also in simple tasks like filling his concrete mixer with sand and cement. His movements with the spade were fluid strokes, each following the other in perfect rhythm, like music.
Spring and Simon had been a positive force provided at a critical moment in our development. Towards the end of their stay, though, their relationship was weakening. Simon wanted to return to the UK and Spring to New Zealand. We saw rifts; where Spring was accommodating before, now she let Simon know she was exasperated. Before they had cooked together, turning out wonderful vegetarian food and sushi and working as a fluid team, but now they disagreed. As the time to say farewell approached it seemed they would be saying farewell to each other too. I felt sad. It was the end of an era.
But it was also the beginning of another. The successful event and follow-on orders gave us the confidence to sign on the dotted line for the Wine Lodge. Now we were fully committed to the beautiful design Sébastian had created.
Staying with my sister-in-law Glynis in London for the wine-educator course a few weeks later, I found several books on her shelf I thought I would enjoy. Between studying and attending the course I read all three: Serge Bastarde Ate My Baguette, Tout Sweet and A Chateau of One's Own. They were wonderful – hilarious, uplifting and full of the richness of life in France. Incredibly, they were all published by the same publisher. I took note of the address and got back to studying. The days flew by; going to wine school every day was fun. Like the WSET 3 with Matthew, the course was a stretch and at times I felt out of my depth. Many of my classmates were already holders of the WSET Level 4 two-year wine diploma. They included the wine buyer of a smart chain of wine hotels, a dynamic and talented wine specialist with a wine school in India, a winemaking consultant for one of the major drinks groups, the head sommelier of a top Michelin-starred restaurant and an Eastern European wine journalist. The group was as diverse as the wines we tasted.
While most were far more experienced wine tasters than me, I was able to give the facts on organic and biodynamic wine and a winemaker's perspective that most of the others didn't have. The European regulations for organic viticulture and winemaking and the certification of those were evolving, leaving wine buyers and end-consumers confused. As producers, we were directly involved in the setting of the standards. I was surprised at how little knowledge the group had about what organic meant in winegrowing or why it was so important. It made me even more determined to find ways to share my awakening with others.
At the end of the course the practical exam included presenting a chunk of theory then going through the WSET systematic approach to tasting a wine in front of a panel of judges. My days as a consultant presenting and running workshops paid off. When Seán collected me from Bordeaux airport he congratulated me on my newly minted 'certified wine educator' status as he hugged me. On the way home he recounted problems and delays on the building project. I already had a large group booking for April and I needed the tasting room finished. I felt stress coursing through my body.
In the meantime, running the classes in the tiny old tasting room was a nightmare. A few days before I had left for England, two New Zealanders attending the wine-and-food-pairing lunch were subjected to swarms of flies and a nasty smell. Only when they left did I realise Thomas had connected the composting loo's urine pipe to the new all-water septic tank system and the smell had travelled up the waste pipe recently positioned in the old tasting room. It was the ultimate horror for a wine-tasting zone, not the kind of pee smell we wanted, even on our sauvignon blanc. Simply filling the offending pipe with water stopped the stench – unfortunately too late for them.
But the consequences of serious delays were way, way worse than a whiffy waft on the air. I grilled Seán on the details as we turned onto the last stretch home – then I saw the roof of the tasting room in the distance. The structure had been raised while I was away, a beautifully carved ferme of oak and Douglas fir beams. With Thomas's rounded wall it made a striking impression. Seán had been teasing me. The wine school tasting room was a reality. Sébastian and Thomas were right on target.
That evening I looked up the publisher and found that they took submissions from authors so I packaged up a letter and the first three chapters of my manuscript as outlined on their website and crossed my fingers.
Chapter 21
Noël aux Chandelles
After more than a year, the Last of the Summer Wine television show was still delivering a bounty of vine-share orders, thanks to word of mouth from the people that attended our bumper harvest weekend. Wanting to maximise sales from last-minute shoppers, I set the deadline for vine-share orders as midday on 24 December. On the morning of the 23rd six orders had already come in when a heavy snowfall cut our electricity. The power-out continued through the night. By midday on Christmas Eve, my cut-off time, I was in a panic. I needed to know how many orders there were and I needed to process them. Usually power cuts were short – an hour, a day maximum. We were into the second day. No electricity meant no PC and no vine shares. I felt like I had the year before, trapped in the snow in Burgundy.
The outage also meant no heating and a chance that the pipes would freeze and burst. It was not good. I called a few friends, hoping to find electricity and an Internet connection. Thierry and Isabelle in Razac had none; Pierre and Laurence had already left for the Pays basque for Christmas with family. Then I saw lights in Saussignac and called Olivier, our immediate neighbour closest to the village. He had power and, not only that, he offered to lend us a fuel-powered generator until ours came back. I felt like kissing him.
Seán plugged the PC and Internet box into an extension cord running from the generator set up outside the kitchen door. With its erratic chugging diesel engine it was not recommended for PCs but it was an emergency. I emailed the vine shares in record time, fear for the PC creating super speed.
Breathing easy for the first time in twenty-four hours, I went upstairs to put a basket of washing away. Noticing a smell of urine in the WC upstairs I absent-mindedly flushed it, realising in horror as I did that without power, my old friend the broyeur – the macerator that turned our upstairs loo waste into a fine liquid that could pass through a small pipe – would not work. The original house structure built in the 1700s didn't have sewage pipes in the metre-thick solid stone walls and so the macerator was a necessary evil that had brought many unhappy surprises over the years. I watched, frozen, as the contents of the toilet rose, splashed over the edge, flowed around the bathroom out of the door and down the stairs –then screamed for Seán. He offered me a bucket and mop and disappeared from the noxious scene.
Rather than leaving all the Christmas cooking to him, our master chef, as I usually did, a few days before I had shopped and planned the perfect Christmas Eve dinner. Seán's dream of a wife who baked bread, had a hot lunch ready each day and cooked fabulous Christmas feasts was going to be foiled again, though. After cleaning the floor it was late afternoon and the chance of having electricity in time for dinner was not looking strong. But a way out was at hand, thanks to a four-plate gas stove-top that worked during a power cut. The original induction stove-top had been fried in a storm that summer. I was delighted then, and even more so now. I had hated the induction; the noise it made and the strange magnetic field I felt near it were horrible.
Using the gas stove-top I cooked pan-fried fillet steak topped with a nugget of organic butter, wild spinach, red beans in onions and red wine, and a sprinkle of our home-grown walnuts lightly pan-toasted. It was one of the best Christmas Eve dinners we had ever had. Afterwards we discovered the peace of candlelight, time together in front of the fire, no TV, no PCs, no tablets. It was so good we considered making it a tradition to unplug the power for Noël a
ux chandelles every year.
My 'certified wine educator' certificate arrived, another building block on the road to the wine school, like each brick in the new tasting-room wall. As the work on the Wine Lodge gathered pace, each day brought a mass of decisions. The number of people on the site had increased, with plumbers, electricians and Sébastian working alongside Thomas.
It meant progress and another unexpected result: the need to empty the composting loo. It was almost two years since we had bought it and infrequent use meant it hadn't needed emptying until now. The new all-water tank for the tasting room and gîte would only be connected to the toilets at the tail end of the project when all the piping was complete. I couldn't put it off. My duel with the dark matter was nigh. The waste had to go. Sébastian opened the apparatus, removed the industrial bucket that held a super-thick compostable membrane and tied it around the dark matter. All I had to do was take the bucket to a hole we had made for composting, empty the dark matter into it, cover it with soil then wash the bucket and the apparatus. I did it.
In a moment of madness I had considered putting composting loos in for the new tasting room and Wine Lodge. The experience of emptying that bucket convinced me that my decision to put real loos with low-flush systems in was dead on. With an all-water tank that clarified and returned the matter to our farm anyway, the solution was ecological and far better for my stomach.
Sophia and Ellie were in the grips of a children's toy phenomenon that could teach me reams about marketing. 'Monster Highs' were Barbie-style dolls created in the image of famous monsters from fairy tales – werewolves, witches, ghouls – all part of a make-believe high school in a kingdom of monsters. Along with films, books and a website about Monster High, they could collect each of the monsters in their normal size and in their mini version with many, many accessories. It was a never-ending moneymaking dream with new versions coming out all the time, totally original characters but also remakes of old monsters, a tweak here, a new outfit there. Monster Highs had been top of their Christmas list so we had succumbed and given them each one. Now they were desperate to get more. The dolls cost as much as a pair of shoes, so you can imagine how likely that was going to be.
'Why don't you start the egg business we have been talking about so you can buy them yourselves?' I said. Our chickens were getting old and their laying was slowing down. There were barely enough eggs for our own needs. That summer we had discussed getting more so the girls could run a small egg business.
'What's that got to do with the price of eggs?' said Sophia, applying the English phrase she had learnt a few months before.
Seán and I cracked up and the girls looked puzzled. There started the first 'Business 101' lesson for our five- and seven-year-old daughters.
'If you use the money you have saved to buy some new chickens then you can sell the eggs to people in our neighbourhood and, depending on the price you get and how many you sell, you can make enough money to buy a Monster High or many Monster Highs. In this case, it really has got something to do with the price of eggs,' I explained.
The girls giggled. We toasted the garden-fresh quiche made from home-grown eggs and vegetables and tucked in.
We still had a mountain to climb on the project, and the financing of it was far from being a fait accompli, but I felt a hint of serenity, a sense that our frantic paddling, if we could just keep our balance, was going to pay off. Despite my worries about planning permissions, budgets and wheelchair accessibility, I felt a fulfilment, a sense of achievement that we had even got this far.
Part Four
Fruit
In biodynamics we talk of a fruit day when the heat or fire forces are powerful. It is a good time to plant a fruiting plant like tomato, to harvest fruit or seeds of plants like wheat. As humans, we can relate fruit to the removal of the old and the recreation of a stronger self, like a forest fire making way for new growth or a fruit offering up its seed to create the next generation.
Fruit days occur when the moon is in the fire constellations Aries, Leo and Sagittarius.
In wines we find that fruit aromas and flavours, what we typically want to dominate in wines, are reinforced on fruit days so this is the ideal day to harvest grapes and to taste most wines… or to plan a tasting for wine journalists.
Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.
Wendell Berry
Copyright © 1998 by Wendell Berry from Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint.
Chapter 22
Rose Hips and Risk
Bright rose hips decorated the spiky brown bush like drops of blood on the frosty background. I picked one and gently squeezed the orange-red paste into my mouth, taking care not to get any of the hairy pips. Once the first frost of winter hits, the rose hip's interior becomes soft and transforms into perfect pockets of vitamin C donated free by the hedgerows. In the late spring and early summer the dog roses offer a mass of pinkish-white flowers that later turn into these bountiful rose hips.
Hedgerows are a key part of farming, offering biodiversity that helps to keep nature's balance. As I squeezed another pocket into my mouth, I wondered if we could keep our own balance. We were facing our latest crisis on the project. We had planned for Lionel Lazare to do the interior walls of the Wine Lodge, but he had fallen behind on other projects and couldn't keep to our deadlines.
Deep down I was secretly delighted that we wouldn't be able to use him after all. His father's tirade, though now almost a year past, still provided a fresh sting of anguish each time I thought of it. But we couldn't miss a super-critical milestone: laying the liquid concrete over the underfloor heating. The concrete company had been booked months before and walls, windows and doors on all the buildings had to be finished by the booked date. The floor then needed several weeks to dry before tiling could begin, so there was absolutely no chance of pushing it out.
We couldn't change that date. The walls had to be up. I made my way back up the hill to the house, energised by the vitamin C and called A2S, a company that Thomas had recommended. Eric, the manager, arrived within hours. He was medium height, fortyish with light brown hair. He seemed professional.
Standing in the Wine Lodge building site I looked out of the cut for one of the bedroom windows and was taken aback by the beauty. Winter sun caught the brown canes of the vines, creating a sharp contrast with the bright-green grass underneath.
'We want to use ecological products and solutions as much as possible,' I explained, handing him a copy of the inner layout I had created on Open Office Impress.
'We can use Fermacell,' said Eric. 'It's ecological plasterboard for the inner walls. It's more expensive but it lasts longer and is more robust.'
'How much more?' I asked, wary of budget creep.
'I'll put the difference into the quote so you can decide,' he said.
'Great. We also need to meet these rules,' I said, passing him a copy of the accessibility guidelines.
He whistled the kind of teeth whistle that signified trouble as he looked at my layout plan and pointed to the guidelines.
'I don't see how you will fit a double bed into this room and still have a ninety-centimetre passage.'
I felt a moment of panic but explained that I had measured it and was sure it would work out. He whistled again.
'Your plan hasn't taken into account the insulation of the outer wall. That's ten centimetres lost.'
I felt a blow like I had with the avis défavorable. 'We have to have the ninety-centimetre passage or our financing is toast,' I said.
Eric remeasured everything and promised to try his best to come up with a solution. We were up against the wall, in fact quite a few. The exterior walls of the old chai could not be moved. Eric sent his plan, including the all-important wall insulation that mine was missing, via email that evening. By making the bathroom smaller, while still keeping to the accessibility rules, the passage just made the required 90 centimetres
. I went to bed hyperventilating after a solid dose of chocolate. Seán murmured calming refrains then went outside to double-check the measurements himself. It was as fine as a hair's breadth.
A few days later the ferme structure of the Wine Lodge living area went up. I filmed every nail-biting second of the installation of the beautifully carved structure, a wonder of accuracy and skill. Sébastian and his apprentice finished in the dark and I gave them each a bottle of wine to celebrate. After they left I went out into the cold night to take more photos and was filled with wonder at the transformation of the old ruin.
With the full skeleton in place there was a sense of completion, a noticeable 'phew' from everyone on the team. Still, worries about the budget and timing, intimately connected as they were, combined to give me eczema and sleepless nights. Sébastian, too, was showing signs of strain, and he called a friend in to help. Usually he was upbeat with a great sense of humour and a spring in his step. Now his movements were slow and his eyes had lost their sparkle; a friend of his had recently committed suicide, which aggravated the feeling of descending into a deep gloom. Thomas, usually energy personified, no longer arrived like clockwork at eight, but closer to nine. The project had entered a dark phase in keeping with winter.