Saving Our Skins

by Caro Feely

  Chapter 10

  The Last of the Summer Wine

  The mist was thick outside my window as I sat drafting Grape Expectations. I had a few children's book manuscripts in the bottom drawer and dreamed of being published. Seán's gift of The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club, a how-to guide for new writers, provided the motivation for me to get on with the manuscript that had been in draft since we had our first firm thought about moving to France. Now each morning from 5.30 a.m. until the house woke at 7.30 a.m., I relived the previous years, marvelling that we were still on the vineyard after such a precarious journey.

  Taking a break from writing, I opened my emails and found Niall's reply. He loved the idea of filming the harvest weekend. Within a few weeks he had flights booked, a cameraman organised and it was all systems go. Now there was even more pressure for the harvest weekend to be a success. I threw myself into planning mode. Laura Bolt, a young chef I'd met at Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland when giving a talk on wine and biodynamics a few months before, volunteered to do the picnic. Brigit and Ian agreed to cater the dinner. I booked the magnificent main hall of the Château de Saussignac, owned by the commune and available to its inhabitants for the entire weekend for the cost of a dinner out, and clicked it off my to-do list.

  On the Friday of the harvest weekend, the murmurs of a waking household tore me from my writing. Ellie still needed help getting ready for school. Laura and I skipped from recipes to notes of what we needed to buy to timing as I served Ellie's breakfast and crunched on organic home-made muesli and yoghurt. In a whirl the girls were gone and Laura and I were flying along the Route des Coteaux to Bergerac, a million checkpoints flashing through my brain like lightning.

  Shopping done, we installed tables, chairs, settings and candles in the chateau and prepared as much as we could for the picnic, then Seán raced me back to Bergerac to collect the minibus for the TV crew.

  As I drove to Bordeaux along the familiar D936 that ran through Castillon and passed Saint-Émilion, I mentally checked through the weekend plans again. The mist of the morning had lifted and autumn sun bathed the vineyards along the route in gold. On the hills of Saint-Émilion, hand-picking crews scuttled up and down the rows like ants. Machine harvesting had almost totally replaced humans in the rest of the Bordeaux vineyards. Only the most prestigious could afford the luxury of hand-picking, given the minimum wage, and yet, ironically, it could help solve the grave unemployment situation in France if the practice were widespread. My mind drifted to the wine tours I had done that year. I had met wonderful Saint-Émilion characters through them and got to know the appellation almost as well as my own. The tours were becoming a lifesaving revenue stream, a fulfilling aspect of what we did and a way to share our organic ethos.

  Arriving at Bordeaux airport, I found the Aer Lingus flight from Dublin had landed. Maj and Mary were the first to burst through the security doors. I felt warmth flow through me. We had only met once, the previous harvest weekend, but, along with the other second-timers in the group, they were more friends than clients. I loved this convivial aspect of wine, how it brought people together. Two men loaded down with filming equipment came next: Niall and Ronan Hand, his cameraman. They gripped my hand firmly in turn and I introduced them to Maj and Mary as Ronan unpacked his camera. He filmed the arrival of the rest of the group and the hustle of suitcases and banter that ensued. Then, walking backwards down the glass corridor to the parking exit, he filmed us as we made our way out and chatted excitedly about the plans for the weekend. I led the throng through the car park to the minibus and packed the suitcases, doing a quick mental check that I hadn't forgotten anyone or anything. I felt a little overwhelmed and we hadn't even got out of the airport. With Ronan sitting next to me filming and Niall behind me talking non-stop accompanied by a stream of wisecracks from Maj and Mary, I tried to tune out to concentrate on leveraging the bus out of the car park and pointing it in the direction of Saussignac. Getting film crew and clients lost in France would not be a good start to the weekend.

  The cobbled main street of Saint-Émilion signalled the last leg to Saussignac, a road I could drive blindfolded I had taken it so many times. Ronan wanted to capture the bus leaving Saint-Émilion. I turned the cumbersome minivan around and took off again three times so he could catch the rear end and the sign in the perfect shot. My nervousness rose with each turn. I was unfamiliar with the large vehicle and I needed to get home to continue preparations for the harvest day. But Ronan knew what he was doing; third time lucky he captured the perfect shot that formed part of the trailer for the television show.

  Laura had taken over as majordomo, leaving Seán to his all-consuming winery work. The house was peaceful, the girls' homework complete. The guests were settled into their accommodation nearby and making their own plans for the evening, leaving family and film crew to the dinner of lasagne with cream, home-grown potimarron, a gourd-shaped bright-orange pumpkin with a sublime nutty flavour, and home-grown walnuts that Laura had concocted. Seated cosily around the kitchen table with Niall and Ronan, candles flickering, we toasted good health, fine food and the harvest weekend with our Générosité white, then tasted in silence before recommencing our chatter in hushed tones to match the heavenly food.

  Ellie was wary of men except her papa but there was an instant connection with tall, handsome, charming Ronan. There was magnetism about him. Soon all the girls, not only the small ones, were hanging on his every word. When Sophia and Ellie went up to bed, Ellie asked if her 'adult friend' could come up to say goodnight. Ronan's charisma had won her over in a couple of hours.

  Before dawn, Niall and Ronan were crunching across the gravel of the courtyard, setting up the camera to capture sunrise over the vineyard. I brewed strong coffee and we planned the day. They would accompany me to our local bakery to collect the bread and apple tarts, then film Seán demonstrating how to pick; then it would be freestyle. En route to the bakery, Ronan's camera over my shoulder, I drove and talked non-stop about our love of France and being winegrowers despite the challenges we had encountered. 'You're a natural!' said Niall as we parked at the boulangerie.

  It was easy to talk about our life and our passion. As we left the bakery loaded with twenty-five baguettes and two enormous apricot tarts, the next shopper raised his eyebrows and said: 'Oh la la, il y a du monde!' (Oh my, oh my, you have a lot of guests!)

  He was right: fifty to be exact. Ashley and Rob, the couple that had buoyed me up at a low point soon after the frost, were with us for their first harvest weekend. We embraced warmly. Golden sun chased the wisps of mist away as the rest of the pickers arrived.

  Seán demonstrated how to pick and we were off. Running up and down the rows I checked quality and plastered snipped fingers while Seán and Dave struggled to keep pace with the processing required at the winery end. Their production line of grapes from bucket to de-stemmer to vat was like a film on fast forward in their race against the speed of our fifty-strong picking crew.

  Three hours later all the vines were picked bare and the hungry gang tore into Laura's picnic, a feast of salads that people talked about for days and quiches that had guests clamouring for the recipe. Somewhere in the afternoon's blur was the highlight of stomping grapes to the tune of Riverdance.

  I felt like I was in a high-speed shuttle. Laura and I arranged the aperitifs in the chateau then sprinted for a shower. Flying back after cleaning ourselves up, we found the guests, smartly dressed in evening wear, already gathered in the courtyard of the chateau. We celebrated the achievements and faux pas of the day with awards and glasses of méthode traditionelle, revelling in the hard work and hours of sunshine that epitomised hand harvesting in perfect conditions.

  Niall and Ronan put their film equipment away to relax and enjoy. A delicious fig and goat's cheese starter served with the dry white Luminosité set the tone for the feast that followed. In the early hours, we all exchanged a high-five before Laura and I delivered a heavy load to the recycled-glass containers behi
nd the chateau.

  As the weekend progressed I realised that Niall was worried that, despite our Irish ancestry and citizenship, perhaps we wouldn't be well received by the RTÉ Nationwide audience since we didn't have Irish accents. He said nothing direct, but I understood the momentary concern I had seen flash across his face when he asked about our background on our trip from the airport.

  I was beyond exhausted; managing the event for a group of fifty people, coupled with the pressure of the film crew, had drained my usual energy. We finished the cleaning and clearing and I fell into bed to sleep like the dead.

  The following evening was so deliciously warm that we sat on our terrace, the vineyard and valley stretched below, as we chatted with Mary Kennedy, presenter of Nationwide and an Irish celebrity. Niall had organised her trip to Bordeaux to film the vignettes that would set the scene for the show. The weather kept playing ball and Laura kept the kitchen rolling, working with Seán to turn out duck breast with home-grown figs and potatoes dauphinoise. Sophia and Ellie demanded that Ronan read the bedtime story, his position as Ellie's first 'adult friend' now firm.

  Ronan filmed beautifully evocative shots of Seán punching down our red wines by hand, a stone wall as background, illustrating artisanal winemaking on a small farm in stark contrast with the factory-size, mechanised stainless steel wine production often portrayed on mainstream television. He ended with scenes of Mary and me chatting in Saussignac, showing off our quintessential French village and its beautiful chateau in Monday's early morning light.

  Looking back on the weekend, it had passed so fast and yet been so packed it was hard to reconcile the two. It was over to Niall to produce fifteen minutes from hours and hours of film.

  A few weeks later, the red grapes harvested on the vine-shareholder weekend finished fermenting and we dug out the marc, pressed it and prepared to dry our first load for Naomi. Following Thierry's instructions to the letter regarding the strict procedure required to keep them in perfect condition, we took the grapes from the press to Gérard's ovens. The immediate low-temperature slow drying meant the skins would keep their food value and stay in food-grade condition for years.

  Seán was having one of the most difficult years ever in the winery. With our natural-winemaking and minimal-intervention approach, the high sugar and low acids of the vintage had created some problems. He clumped into the kitchen in his heavy winery boots looking haggard.

  I passed him a print of the latest analysis just in on email from the laboratory, a little knot of anxiety in my stomach. Natural yeast struggles to work at high alcohol levels so, with the high sugar levels that year, the yeast wasn't always able to finish its job of fermenting the wine. Seán, therefore, had vats that had stopped fermenting part way through the process.

  'Thank God the pieds-de-cuve are working,' said Seán, quickly assessing the numbers set out in neat columns on the sheet. When we first arrived we had little clue about what they meant, but now reading the details was quick, almost instinctive.

  Three vats had stopped fermenting and needed to be coerced into continuing. To restart the fermentation Seán had taken a small amount from each of these vats and placed it into new containers. To these he added cultured yeast to encourage the wine to restart fermenting. Once he was sure each small batch was fermenting actively he increased the batch gradually, checking that the fermentation had taken properly with each addition before adding more. This process, called creating a pied-de-cuve (literally translated as 'the foot of the vat'), took almost constant observation and regular laboratory analysis, as well as hours of pipe-work to control the temperatures and regular changing and cleaning of vats to accommodate the changing volumes.

  'Oh feck!' said Seán after turning over the page to look at the analysis of the other vats. 'The volatile acidity on our biggest vat of red has gone through the roof.'

  I felt a jab of fear in my stomach. The volatile acidity, or acetic acid, had rocketed – our wine was turning to vinegar. We researched the problem deep into the night, thinking we would lose it all. Along with learning about what we could do, we discovered that, if arrested in time, this acidity could add complexity to a highquality wine. The hallowed 1947 vintage of Cheval Blanc, a premier grand cru classé in Saint-Émilion, was widely recognised to have a high level of volatile acidity. It consoled us a little, but we were still worried sick. The following day I called Thierry for his advice.

  'You must stop it as fast as you can. Give it a good dose of sulphur dioxide and sterile-filter it, but ne t'inquiète pas!' Don't worry, he said laughing. 'Most winegrowers with a bit of experience have been where you are. You don't hear people talk about it much, though, it's one of those taboo subjects.'

  I felt even more consoled but as soon as I put the phone down I went searching on the Internet for a company that could do sterile filtration. We had never done it to any of our wines, preferring to do a light paper filtration, if anything, so as not to damage the wine.

  By the end of the week Seán had the fermentations under control and the volatile acidity stable. We worked out that the vat concerned had completed its malolactic fermentation in record time, even before the alcoholic fermentation finished; a far cry from our first vintage, when the malolactic fermentation had taken a year. The lower-acid environment this left in an already low-acid year, coupled with the high sugar content, had allowed bad bacteria to get to work on turning our wine into vinegar. It was an unusual confluence of factors and we would know to take precautions if we ever experienced another vintage like it.

  We had arrested the problem by taking Thierry's advice, but we were still on tenterhooks. The level of volatile acidity was just a few milligrams below the cut-off allowed for our appellation. We decided that we would have to sell that vat to a wine trader, or négociant, so it was critical that it stayed within the appellation limits, as this would ensure us a higher price on the bulk wine market. We had never sold en vrac, in bulk, before.

  Seán worked late and started early, doing everything he could to save the vintage. He hadn't worked such long winery hours since our first harvest and the stress was taking its toll.

  The worry about our accents damaging viewership proved unfounded. The fifteen minutes of airtime Niall called 'The Last of the Summer Wine' was watched by a few hundred thousand people. Orders began to flow in while the show was on air. By the following day I had so many vine shares to send, I wished for a more automated process. Even with the new PC and printer purchased earlier that year I couldn't keep pace. Our friend Barry in Dublin recommended writing a programme to take the order as entered on the web, transfer it to a certificate and photo and print it automatically. I said no; I couldn't remember how to do that, and anyway handmade and hand-painted oak signs, each carefully photographed and then printed, were part of our differentiation, what made us special.

  Between processing the orders I studied frantically, preparing for the wine course that would take us closer to being a certified wine school. The waves of orders kept coming. As the days progressed the funds grew, at first enough to cover the loan repayments the following year, then the bottling. We began to think of the project to create the wine school and a second gîte, the 'Wine Lodge'. If the orders kept flowing, they could turn that dream into reality.

  Chapter 11

  Wine-tasting Boot Camp

  The sky was a mass of stars and the courtyard silent but for the wheels of my suitcase on the gravel. The weeklong Wine Spirit Education Trust course was in Languedoc, four hours away. I was looking forward to the drive, an opportunity to listen to the radio and lose myself in my thoughts.

  I closed the car door and started the engine, breaking the silence. A few hours later a magnificent sunrise splashed over the medieval citadel of Carcassonne as I crested a hill before turning onto a small country road for the last part of the journey through the garrigue that permeated the air and covered the hillsides of Limoux. At Domaine Gayda, Matthew Stubbs, the wine-school proprietor, showed me to my room: ol
d oak furniture, a view onto the courtyard and an enormous bathroom that had a claw-foot bath, a large walk-in stone shower and double basins. Luxury! If only Seán had been with me.

  I was excited about the course. I had read the textbook and felt ready for the theory, but I was a little frightened of the blind tasting. I dropped my bag and went to have coffee with Matthew and the students, a vibrant group that included a Canadian, a New Zealander, a few Frenchmen and two Englishwomen.