Saving Our Skins

by Caro Feely

  Back at the tasting room, Mathieu poured a sample for each of us.

  'This part of the range is called Terroir. It's grapes from fields with mixed vines so the blending is done in the vineyard rather than the winery.'

  He swirled and sniffed then sipped and contemplated before spitting expertly into the spittoon.

  'What is surprising is that when we plant them together the vines mature together. Grapes that would mature at different rates planted in single-variety fields come to maturity at the same time. It's the power of shared experience, a kind of crowd mentality,' said Mathieu.

  We had old parcels for Saussignac dessert wine planted this way. Perhaps the old-timers knew more than we gave them credit for. Rudolph Steiner, the father of biodynamics, had defined the five hormones that drive a plant's activities fifty years before modern scientists 'discovered' them, and it was one of these hormones that created this crowd behaviour.

  We progressed through the tasting, offering the girls sniffs of the different wines so they could start to hone their noses for the future. We loved the Terroir wines and the two premiers crus, Schoffweg and Engelgarten. Each cru vineyard had a meaningful name: the 'sheep's road' since it was sited on the route where the sheep travelled in the old days; and the 'angel's garden' where the local children used to play.

  We left loaded with a few bottles. I had never dreamed of visiting Alsace as a wine destination until I met the Klurs and took the WSET course, but I was smitten. We promised the girls more Christmas markets, a trip to the ice rink and a visit to the toy museum the following day… and a tiny wine visit in Pfaffenheim in the evening.

  It was a visit of medieval magic. From the rustic wood-panelled tasting room Jean-Pierre Frick, a lanky, quirky figure, led us along a set of outbuildings to dive down, down, down, like Alice in Wonderland, into an intoxicating cave of treasures.

  Starting with a two-year-old white wine from one of the Alsatian oval vats that I found so beautiful I wanted to hug them, he said:

  'I don't know what to make of this Riesling that is still fermenting.'

  I tasted and was transported to heaven. The wine was filled with golden bubbles and tasted of apples and nuts. It was the essence of what I realised was signature Frick.

  'Each wine is an individual. We let it follow its own pace. This one decided to take a very slow fermentation. We'll leave him to continue and see what happens.'

  We moved further into the winery and he pointed to a flowform, a set of specially shaped interconnected bowls that made patterns in liquids as they flowed through, a way of dynamisation, another biodynamic method.

  'We dynamise a wine by passing it through this flowform if we think it needs it. It is up to each individual wine, to what it needs. We don't use any additives, very little or no SO2, no fining agents, just a light filtration before bottling.'

  He was like a druid; I was enchanted. As we tasted through the wines I experienced a clear style so unique I could pick it up blind forever after. Years later when I tasted his wines I was instantly transported back to that place where he worked his magic. It was like time-travel back to the day in Alsace when we visited him.

  There was much more to Alsace than we had time to see. We would have to come back to explore the things we missed, like Riquewihr, a town minutes north of Katzenthal, where we circled the medieval walls and saw captivating glimpses of a restored heritage centre within but didn't have time to stop. Although Alsace was widely bombed at the end of World War Two, there were a remarkable number of historic buildings still standing.

  At Zind-Humbrecht, our last winery visit in Alsace, another biodynamic vineyard with a surprisingly modern building, a secretary welcomed us to a fancy glass-and-steel waiting room with views onto the vineyard. Each of the visits offered ideas for our own project, stealthily forming in the back of our minds.

  Olivier Humbrecht, owner and winegrower, looked fortyish and was very tall, standing a good 5 centimetres taller than Seán. We walked out to the sleeping vineyard. Everything was perfect, the courtyard was clean and organised; the vines were neat and well maintained.

  Pointing to the soil, Olivier said:

  'Avoiding soil compaction is a priority for us. Compacted soil has no air and hence no life. We use caterpillar tractors and equipment that is as light as possible.'

  Seán took notes while I tracked Sophia and Ellie running around on the grass. We realised that despite his reputation and that of his wines, Olivier was unassuming. He was one of the first Frenchmen to achieve the Master of Wine designation, a qualification requiring a fine tasting palate and many years of experience and study; he was a mover and shaker in the world of biodynamics in France. Despite this and a weighty family wine heritage, he talked to us as equals, sharing his insights and asking our opinion.

  Leaving Sophia and Ellie watching another DVD in the waiting room, we entered the tasting zone, a mezzanine floating above the winery, surrounded with photos of their steep vineyards with such intriguing, hallowed names as 'Clos Saint-Urbain au Rangen de Thann'. Some were more like names I would expect to find in a Tolkien novel than on a vineyard. Zind-Humbrecht created so many single vineyard wines that the tasting table was a sea of bottles.

  'We use gravity to move the wine, there is no fining and the wines are usually aged on the lees,' said Olivier as he poured the first sample.

  Even with spitting, when we hit sample twenty my head was spinning. It was a rainbow of taste from dry and mineral to sweet and luscious with a diversity of terroir that could be seen on the map and tasted in the glass. We selected a few wines to buy but Olivier would not hear of it, requesting a swap instead. We swapped six bottles of our La Source red for a six-pack of wines equivalent in value to about six cases of ours. I wanted to give him more wine but he insisted it was bottle for bottle: each bottle requiring as much love and effort regardless of the price. He was a gentleman; I felt honoured to have met him.

  The timing of our visit to Alsace had been perfect. Seeing Klur's tasting room, the spiral winery, their ecological apartments with sauna and spa, gave impetus to our ideas for our own new tasting room and Wine Lodge. As the vine shares kept pouring in we could see a financial seed for the project emerging. As Naomi would have said, it was our destiny.

  Feeling sad to leave, we set the GPS to head south-west to the Côte d'Or in Burgundy. Sawday's French Vineyards guide had yielded a B&B owned by Anne Gros, a celebrated winegrower. When I booked the rooms I organised a tasting with Anne for 5 p.m. on the day of our arrival. Leaving Alsace at 11 a.m. for a trip that should take three hours allowed a massive margin, until the snow began to fall. We tuned into traffic news: crash central once again. The car inched forward, the highway jammed with traffic blocked by gruesome accidents. At times we stopped so long we turned off the engine, but then we got too cold. Through the hours the snow continued to fall, making the journey ever more treacherous. I vowed never to travel north again in winter.

  At five o'clock we entered a car park in Beaune for a toilet break. In perfect conditions it would have been around fifteen minutes from there to Vosne-Romanée, the village where Anne's B&B nestled alongside grands crus Romanée-Conti, La Tâche and Richebourg. In these conditions I estimated an hour. As I hung up from announcing this news and apologising to Anne, Seán pulled slowly into a parking space but the brakes didn't hold in the icy snow and we slid in slow motion towards the neighbouring van. It seemed like minutes but it was seconds. I knew we would hit but prayed fervently we wouldn't. We stopped a hair's breadth from the vehicle and I felt faint, drunk with relief but even more cautious about the treacherous snow.

  Witnessing two more accidents on the last stretch didn't dampen our excitement at being in the heart of Burgundy for the first time. Travelling at a snail's pace, we took in the views of the steep vineyards up to our left, home to names and producers that we had only heard of – usually in hushed tones – or read about. As night fell we came to an unplanned halt. The 20 centimetres of snow was too much
for the grey monster: our fat-bottomed Renault refused to go any further. After several attempts to get her out, me pushing and Seán yelling and gunning the accelerator, I called Anne. Fortunately we were only about a kilometre away and she arrived in minutes in a snow-tyre-clad Audi, a knight in shining armour.

  Grabbing the essentials and a basket of leftovers from Alsace we leapt into the plush car. Despite the late hour, Anne gallantly offered to do the tasting. The two girls happy in the well-supplied playroom, we descended into her new underground chai à barriques, the storage area for her oak barrels. The vaulted space was reminiscent of a cathedral. Anne was intrigued by our story and impressed by our courage taking on a vineyard in France with no experience.

  'How many vintages have you done?' she asked.

  'Four,' replied Seán.

  A look of intense emotion, almost like a longing for a loved one, crossed her face, like she was pining for vintages missed.

  'I have completed twenty-two vintages and I wonder if I will have enough time to achieve what I want to with my wines. There is still so much to do.'

  We had started late but at least we had started. For all its ups and downs it was an incredible journey being a winegrower. Thinking about it still gave me goosebumps.

  With Anne we progressed in our tasting through the 'lesser' vineyards of Hautes-Côtes de Nuits, to VosneRomanée, to the grands crus like Echezeaux. Seán's wonder was palpable.

  I ran back to check on the girls, suddenly panicking that if they took off into the snowstorm to look for us they could be lost forever. All was peace and warm in the house, however, and they were engrossed in toys and books. Locking the door behind me, I returned to taste Anne's Richebourg grand cru: a sensation of cherry fruit, spice, rose and minerality that evoked powerful joy and infinite depth. It was a classic, a pinnacle; a wine that helped me understand why these tiny pieces of land called grand cru in Burgundy carried such gravitas.

  Anne had given up part of a precious Friday evening to share her wisdom and wines with us. We were deeply grateful. She disappeared into whirling snow saying she would ask her cousin to help extract our car from the snow the following day. In a warm embrace of grand cru inebriation we returned to our daughters and a cosy kitchen to dine on leftovers and read the feast of Burgundy wine books.

  The blizzard did not stop the Côte de Nuits boulanger; we found croissants and baguettes in the baguette box outside the front door in the morning. A glance at the road confirmed that we weren't going anywhere in the car, though. The forecast on the Internet made it clear we weren't leaving the next day either. Madame Gros, Anne's mother, opened the front door in a blitz of snowflakes and introduced herself. I asked if we could stay an extra night or two.

  Research on our laptop showed no shops or restaurants in Vosne-Romanée and we needed to eat, as the leftovers from Alsace were wearing thin. Seán set off valiantly to search for the nearest food shop. After a long, cold walk he bought key supplies in Nuits-Saint-Georges. As he loaded them into our backpack at the checkout someone tapped him on the shoulder.

  'You're courageous,' said Madame Gros with a smile. 'But I think it will be better for you to take a lift with me back to the house.'

  Michel, Anne's cousin, was ready to pull the grey monster to safety with his 4x4 when they returned. He towed it up and Seán parked in the yard. We still weren't going anywhere, but at least we had our gear. Although the sun was out, snow was falling; flakes like a million floating sparkles suspended over the whiteblanketed vineyard. Wrapped up warmly with hats, scarves, gloves and thick coats, we walked up the lane that led from Anne's B&B to the vineyards, passing the entrance to Domaine Romanée-Conti, one of the most hallowed wine estates in the world, en route. Within a few minutes we were in the vines.

  The stone walls were stark, the famous names etched on them edged in frost: Richebourg, La Tâche, Romanée-Conti, Romanée-Saint-Vivant. The stalwart vines within were reaching for the sky but drawn back to the earth by the onset of winter. Snow-clad vineyards ran to our left and right, surrounding the village of Vosne-Romanée below us, and smoke wisped out of chimneys in the snowy roofs of ancient stone houses. There was something exciting about discovering these world-famous vineyards in snowy glory; no one but us in the white silence. Ellie and Sophia ran off up the hill and we followed, revelling in the view over the Côte de Nuits. That evening as I cooked Burgundy-style meatballs that would be perfect with one of Anne's pinot noirs a little later, Seán spluttered a mouthful of her Hautes Côtes de Nuits Blanc Cuvée Marine chardonnay across the table. He pointed to a photo in the guide he was reading. 'That was THE Michel Gros that pulled me out of the snow.'

  In the book we discovered he was recognised as one of the top producers in Burgundy.

  'He was such a nice guy. He seemed genuinely pleased with the bottle of La Source I gave him as a thank you. I feel so inadequate,' said Seán.

  We laughed. Being snowed in, we were meeting the who's who of Vosne-Romanée. That evening we enjoyed Anne's divine wine, pleased there was no chance of it running out while we were staying at the vineyard. She had a waiting list of clients wanting to purchase, and I promised myself one day we would be like that. When the snowstorm eased enough to step outside we made a snowman, setting a carrot as the nose and two pebbles as the eyes. Two days later we had explored everything that could be reached on foot with two young children and I began to feel trapped; desperate that we were so near and yet so far from the biodynamic growers I had hoped to see.

  Each day I logged in to find more vine shares had mounted up, adding to the pile that had been building since we left. With Christmas now days away, the chances of buyers receiving hard-copy photos of their rows in time was remote. My stress rose with the centimetres of snow, matched by Seán's stress about the difficult vintage he had in the winery and the pruning of the vineyards: each day signified lost opportunity. Madame Gros said it was the worst winter she could remember.

  By the time the roads were declared safe and we could escape, we were like two wild animals that had been trapped in a cage rather than relaxed after a holiday away. Back home, we dived into our work. We were both worried about our respective responsibilities; he to make wine in this difficult vintage and I to make sure our clients got the gift vine shares they had ordered for Christmas and not for New Year. To cap things off, the heating had stopped while we were away and one of the pipes had burst.

  Something, I don't even remember what, then sparked the worst fight we had ever had. It was a culmination of everything that had been building, and we lost the plot. It was the first time we had fought so ferociously in front of our two daughters. I was crying, they were crying and Seán slammed the door and disappeared into the cold, black night.

  I tried to comfort the girls, but we were shaken to the core. I retraced the build-up to the explosion, trying to work out what had happened, but could not. Since moving to France we had been so consumed with keeping our business afloat that we had not taken care of our relationship. Now the success of the vine shares had put us onto a positive financial footing and things should have been better, but instead they were worse. Perhaps it was our feelings of inadequacy from meeting winegrowers who were confident and at home, their families having grown wine on their vineyards for hundreds of years; perhaps it was simply years of relationship neglect. Whatever it was, something had tipped us over the edge.

  The fight destabilised our daughters' world and was indelibly etched on their memories. They saw that no relationship was safe; even one that appeared strong like ours could dissolve. I buried myself in vine shares and Seán disappeared into long days of pruning in the vineyards to catch up on the time away. With the memory of the fight like a wall between us, we prepared for Christmas.

  Dave and Amanda Moore's purchase of Chateau Bonté was finally going through. Expecting to be settled in France by February, they generously offered to look after the girls and Dora so we could take up Naomi's invitation to visit California with Thierry and Isa
belle in March. I was torn. Our girls were still very young. Ellie was five and Sophia nearly seven, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  Naomi had offered to pay our airfares to Los Angeles and hotel and expenses for the show. It was a chance to visit the Napa Valley and Sonoma wine regions, and to see my sister whom I hadn't seen in years. Confident in Dave and Amanda, and knowing that Sophia and Ellie would be only too pleased to spend ten days with their two daughters of similar ages, we decided to go.

  The Moores expected to move onto their new farm days before we were due to leave for the trip. If the move-in date was delayed, they could house-sit for us. They were planning to stay with us for a week or two before anyway. It was the perfect solution.

  Hardly daring to believe it was actually happening, I spent hours researching Californian organic and biodynamic estates, drawing on contacts I had in the area for the best places to visit. Seán and I had made an uneasy peace. Between Christmas and New Year we visited Thierry and Isabelle for dinner to plan the finer details of our trip to California. We swapped notes, discussed routes and had a good laugh. The trip would be educational, a chance to deepen our relationship with Naomi, and fun. Our tickets from Naomi arrived. It was real.