by Caro Feely
GRAPE EXPECTATIONS
Copyright © Caro Feely, 2012
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About the Author
Caro Feely worked as a project manager and IT strategy consultant in Ireland and South Africa before trading it all in to pursue her dreams. She now runs a successful organic wine estate with wine school and gîte rental business in the Dordogne Valley in France with her husband, Sean.
Note from the Author
This is a true life story; however, some characters, events and place names have been changed to protect the privacy of the people concerned.
Dedicated to our new friends in Saussignac, our loyal customers and my family, Sean (SF), Sophia and Ellie, without whom this adventure would not have been possible.
Wine in itself is an excellent thing.
Pope Pius XII
Contents
Prologue
1. Beware the Dream
2. Goodbye Pay Cheques, Hello Château
3. Homesick
4. Six Tons of Chicken Poo and No 'Épandeur'
5. Tangling with Red Tape
6. Shark Attack
7. Poil de Vache
8. Summer4
9. Vendanges!
10. Of Fingers and Foresters
11. Digging Grapes
12. Vineyard Rights
13. Goodbye Owl, Hello Château
14. Lessons in Lunacy
15. In the Merde with the Merlot
16. Vendanges Tranquilles
17. French Wine Adventures
18. La Source
19. Pre-school Gourmands
20. Goodbye Château?
Message from the Author
Acknowledgements
Prologue
I took a deep draught and swirled it around, feeling the warming sensation of alcohol on the back of my throat. The wine filled my mouth with plum and blackberry. The finish had a hint of spice and an attractive saline minerality.
'Delicious.' I licked my lips. The wine filled me with joy. A picture of a vineyard drenched in sunlight formed in my mind. Sean drew me rudely back to the lounge of our semi-d.
'Did you get the spice?'
I nodded.
'How can they be in liquidation if they make wine this good?' I asked.
We should have stopped right there. We were driven by something that went beyond logic: a decade-long dream that took us to places we could not have imagined.
Chapter 1
Beware the Dream
'I think this wine is like an ageing dancer. Her moves are slow and supple. Then she performs a pirouette just like she did when she was younger.'
Pierre-Jacques dipped the pipette into the wine-stained oak barrel, transferring tastes swiftly to our outstretched glasses. We stood in the entrance to his cellar, a cave hewn out of the chalky cliffs, captivated by the softening sun and his sensuous descriptions. The wine was smooth and serene across my tongue before fresh raspberries twirled at the finish.
'The wines are grown. I am not a winemaker. I merely help the grapes' transformation.'
Pierre-Jacques, a compact man with dark curly hair and a twinkle in his eye, chronicled the weather of the vintage, the monthly progress in the vineyard, the gentle shepherding of the harvest. Something stirred in our blood. No longer was wine just wine, but a living liquid bright with memory. We had caught a glimpse of the soul of winemaking and were smitten.
After that revelation, we had sought out artisanal wines from French vignerons, people whose lives were expressed in what they bottled. Sean took night classes in wine. I took French. We both dreamed.
Now I was leaning on the kitchen counter, staring at grey drizzle, grabbing a few moments of peace between baby feeds and thinking back to our first visit to that French vineyard. I reflected on how our lives had developed since that fateful day. Every spare cent went into our vineyard fund. We researched, studied and saved. I was an IT-strategy-consultant-turned-early-stage-venture-capitalist and Sean, an investment writer for the asset management business of a large bank. We were typical yuppies but with a long-term mission to change our lives.
Then our first daughter Sophia was born. A malformation of her oesophagus led to five hours of life-critical surgery at less than a day old. It was a time of extreme feeling: powerful love as a first-time mother, fear that she would be taken from us and desperate hope that she would stay. For a year we thought of nothing but her health. She survived – more than that, she glowed with vitality. With Sophia healed, our thoughts returned to a vineyard of our own. We searched the Internet for our dream vineyard most evenings and weekends but had found nothing.
The dream was in fact seeded long before Pierre-Jacques. Sean's grandfather, long dead, was a winegrower. In our mid-twenties we had nearly bought a vineyard but a career opportunity with the large technology multinational I worked for put the vineyard on hold. Now, ten years later, here we were, confirmed city dwellers living on M&S dinners.
It was still raining. I dragged myself away from the window and opened my laptop. Even on maternity leave I logged in every day to see what was going on at work. Ellie, our second daughter, had arrived safely and was exactly six weeks old. I felt vaguely like a super-mum having given birth with no epidural thanks to a few white lies from the midwives: 'You're only minutes away.' Yeah, right.
As I flicked through work emails a property newsletter popped up on the screen. It was filled with tantalising images of cottages in France... And a vineyard: it was the closest to perfect I had seen. The property matched our criteria: 25 acres of vines, a large house, a winery and equipment, and within our price range. In a frenzy of excitement I emailed Sean then read the description again. It seemed too good to be true. Patrick Joseph, the agent, answered my call. I explained the property we were interested in and asked for more details. He hesitated before extinguishing my excitement.
'I'm really sorry, it's been sold.'
Disappointment enveloped me like a wet blanket. He tried to sell me the other vineyard in the newsletter but it was way out of our price range. He could tell we were on a mission and wanted to help. I had to remind myself and him that if our dream ever was to succeed we had to keep to our financial reality. The phone rang again as I hung up and it was Sean.
I announced the bad news; we both knew that properties like this one were like hen's teeth. Through years of searching, the vineyards that matched what we wanted were always out of our price bracket. This was the first that looked right and that we could afford, but it was sold. I was gutted.
'It must have been a fake an
nouncement to get people like us in contact. It probably didn't even exist,' I said bitterly.
'Maybe. We'll have to keep looking,' said Sean sagely. 'I've got to go.'
That last phrase meant someone had arrived at Sean's desk. Our search was in stealth mode. We couldn't let on to his work that he was on a mission to completely change his life.
Trying to take my mind off the lost vineyard, I started unloading the dishwasher. Now was not the time anyway. Ellie was too young. It was a crazy idea. We had no experience working in a vineyard or winery. Sean's night wine classes were just theory. We had thought about taking a few weeks' leave to go and work on a vineyard but it hadn't worked out. A cry from the lounge stopped my internal debate. I grabbed a nappy, picked Ellie up, snuggled her tiny body close to mine, and climbed the stairs to the changing station.
A few weeks later there was a message on the answering machine.
'Caro, it's Patrick Joseph. That vineyard is back on the market. The buyer couldn't get a mortgage. You should move quickly, it will sell fast at this price.' Patrick was a Frenchman living in Nottingham. He helped people like us, with limited French, manage their way through the confusion of French property law.
I was thrilled and scared.
'Are we ready for this?' asked Sean when we spoke a few minutes later.
'I don't know, SF. It would be better if Ellie was older… but it seems so perfect.'
'We'll kick ourselves if we don't view it. I can't take another year in the rat race,' said Sean.
Sean left home before dawn and got back after dark. Investment management was stressful and city traffic hell. They were taking their toll. Sophia, now two years old, missed him. I did too, especially at 5 p.m. with a toddler and a newborn to placate. This vineyard was the answer. We would pursue our passion and get away from the rat race... and the rain.
'You'll have to go on your own,' I said. 'We won't get a passport for Ellie fast enough for me to go. Even if it doesn't work out it will be good for our research.'
Research was a good word to keep the property at arm's length. Sean booked his flight.
With absolutely no experience in vineyards and winemaking we needed someone to help us assess the property. An Internet search offered up the agricultural organisation Société d'Aménagement Foncier et d'Établissement Rural, or SAFER. They looked like the experts we needed.
To call them I had to use my French, which, for all my lessons, was pitiful. I had done a few years of basic French at school then a few years of night classes with the Alliance Française. I wrote down what I wanted to say and made the call. A woman answered and my brain froze. I stammered out the first sentence on the page in front of me.
'Je ne parle pas beaucoup français. Parlez très lentement s'il vous plait.'
After several repeats of words that made no sense to me I realised Madame was saying someone would call me back. My investment in night classes was not delivering what I hoped.
A Monsieur Dupont called at 7 a.m. the next morning from something called La Sa Furr. I assumed he had the wrong number and was about to hang up when it dawned on me that this was the pronunciation of SAFER. No wonder I'd been confused the day before. With Ellie latched onto my breast and Sophia jammed into the high chair, I rolled out my 'please speak very slowly' again and tried to concentrate. After spelling his name three times and repeating his phone number ad infinitum, I could tell his patience was wearing thin. A five-minute discussion about what quinze heures meant drained what little of it remained but I had a rendezvous between him and Sean at what I hoped was 3 p.m. the following day at the vineyard.
Sean left for Bordeaux. While on the outside I calmly went through my daily routine, inside, my mind was racing. At last, the phone rang.
'C'est Jean.' He had already changed his name to the French version.
'Tell all.' I was so excited I couldn't keep still. I paced and Sophia toddled round the room after me while Ellie, lying in a bouncy chair on the floor, looked on bemused.
'It's been some afternoon,' said Sean. 'When Monsieur Dupont arrived, the sellers looked rattled, then he announced that the place is in liquidation. The French agent didn't even know. Sweet divine. Lucky you phoned SAFER. But bellissima, it's beautiful, Carolinus.'
Beautiful was one thing, liquidation was another. The French agent was from the local property agency that had the property on their books. Patrick was a go-between for us, offering help and advice, particularly on the legal aspects of the transaction. It was looking like we were really going to need him.
'We don't want to get into a complicated transaction. We've seen how badly things can go wrong buying property in France,' I said. We had been avid viewers of No Going Back and similar shows.
'We won't make an offer until we've done our homework,' he said reassuringly. 'The house is in bad shape. We'll have to learn to renovate.'
Liquidation, a ruin of a house; perhaps this wasn't it after all. We had never done more than a coat of paint between us. Part of me was in denial and another part desperately wanted this property to be the one. We had been dreaming of this for so long.
'Patrick gave me the name this morning: Château Haut Garrigue. It's near Bergerac in the Dordogne, an hour east of Bordeaux.'
I had never been to the Dordogne.
'The house has incredible views,' continued Sean. 'You can see Bergerac cathedral, twenty kilometres away. Saussignac village is five minutes' walk through the vineyards. It has a primary school and a restaurant.'
'The girls could walk to school,' I said. 'We wouldn't even have to commute for the school run.' This property was looking more attractive. 'What about the land?'
'Apart from the vineyards it has peach, hazelnut, cherry and fig trees.'
'It was made for us, SF!' I shouted. I love figs.
'Calm down, Carolinus! The place is totally rundown. The figs are nice to have for personal consumption. I don't know… it needs a lot of investment.'
'What about the vineyard? How much money do they make?'
'They sell everything in bulk to a négociant. Based on the numbers they gave me they gross about twenty thousand a year. If that's true, after costs, they make nothing with two of them working full-time.'
A négociant buys wine in bulk then blends it with other wines and bottles it for sale. We knew they paid low prices for wine but this income sounded wrong, far too low. We had to be missing a zero. We agreed that Sean had misheard and moved on, ignoring the harsh reality of the wine crisis.
'And the winery?'
'The winery needs investment.'
We avoided discussing where this 'investment' was going to come from. Based on rough calculations, with the money from selling our house, after paying off the mortgage, we'd have just enough to buy this property. We'd be throwing everything we had into it and there wouldn't be any left over for renovation or 'investment'. There was a long pause where both our minds churned silently over the financial elements.
'Did you taste the wines?' I asked.
'The sauvignon blanc and the red. They're surprisingly good given the state of the place. The vineyard slopes are steep and well drained. Monsieur Dupont says it's a good vineyard but it needs renovation. The soil is similar to what we saw on the grand crus classés plateau and slopes in St Émilion; clay and limestone. I think it can produce great wines.'
That was it: great wines. Our dream was more than a vineyard, it was creating great wines. I went to bed but couldn't sleep. My body tossed and my mind thrashed in all directions. It was what we wanted and I was excited but the prospective upheaval was immense. The mere logistics of making the move were turning me into an insomniac; the idea of what we would do when we got to that foreign land and had to create our wine was beyond me.
When Sean got home we spent an exhilarating afternoon arguing the pros and cons of Château Haut Garrigue. That evening he presented me with a bottle of vintage 2000 red from the vineyard. He poured tasting amounts into our Riedel glasses.
Riedel makes what some believe are the finest lead crystal wine glasses. They are crafted to bring out the best in wine through their shape and design. We thought Riedels were only for wine snobs, then our closest friends gave us a pair for Christmas. Drinking wine from them was like listening to a symphony on a serious sound system compared to a portable CD player.
I took the glass from Sean and lifted the mahogany liquid to my nose, inhaling a melody of dark fruit with a clean mineral streak through the centre. Desire drew me forward and I tilted the glass to my lips.
'Hang on,' said Sean. 'What did you get on the nose?'
Sean wanted analysis. I wanted to drink. 'Blackberry,' I said, eager to get on with my first swig.
'What else?'
