Grape Expectations

by Caro Feely

  'Hornets,' he yelled as he fell back, breaking several more tiles. He leapt up again, still whacking violently at the air, and lurched closer to the 4-metre drop.

  'Climb down the ladder! Forget the hornets! Climb down the ladder!' I screamed.

  I couldn't get up in time to do anything so I stood and yelled desperately. At last, he threw the pipe down and climbed down the ladder at high speed.

  'They came out of nowhere,' said Sean, puffing. 'There were a bunch of them zoning in on my neck and face. Then I got stung on the leg. As soon as that fellow got me the rest pulled back.' The sting was already red, swollen and very painful. We were lucky he had only been stung on the leg.

  High summer meant hornets but also bounties of fruit. We discovered the joys of eating berries directly off the trees. Ellie, who regularly refused fruit indoors, would happily position herself in a well-stocked, shady spot and shovel fistfuls of juicy delight into her mouth. We moved from cherries to early plums, blackberries, early grapes, figs, more plums and finally the wine grapes. I made jam and compote until the shelves were groaning.

  The market in Gardonne, our nearest town, every Wednesday and Sunday was held in the parking lot opposite the supérette (minimart). It wasn't a beautiful market like Issigeac but it was real. Most of the stallholders were local producers rather than resellers. Among the producers was a strawberry man, and over the season he offered different varieties from the early Gariguettes to the late Charlottes, succulent and flavourful, as far from bland, factory-farmed strawberries as you can imagine. The melon man was similar, offering a superb mix of melons in all manner of sizes, no doubt unacceptable to supermarkets, for tiny prices. Matched with Parma-style ham, they made the perfect starter. Alongside the melons he had piles of tomatoes topped with large sprigs of fresh basil that reeked of summer.

  One late afternoon I rode the bike down to Gardonne to collect the car from the garage where it was in for a minor fix. The vines on either side of the road were loaded with ripe merlot, purple-black and velvety. The vendanges were getting close. A little further on, a plum orchard engulfed me in its cool shade and rich fragrance. The air was heavy with the smells of summer. I was in heaven.

  By the time I drove back to Garrigue it was evening. The car beams lit up the dirt track and the vineyards. There were no streetlights or sirens, just the shadow of a hare disappearing into the brush. As I got out of the car the warm night air enveloped me in a dark embrace. The huge sky, spangled with stars arched over me and I felt a deep sense of ease. It was so familiar, so right. Despite living more sparsely than we ever had, not knowing if we would be able to earn enough to feed our children, and the ongoing tension in our relationship, I had a deep sense of being where I belonged.

  A week later we attended our first Saussignac producers' annual tasting and dinner at Château La Maurigne (pronounced 'more-in-ye'), a neighbouring vineyard. An old army tent sparkling with lantern lights was set in the garden. Inside were seated our fellow producers tasting golden wine from delicate glasses.

  Thierry Daulhiac, the president of Saussignac appellation and in charge of the evening, came over to welcome us and greeted me with the obligatory bisous, kisses. Thierry was wiry and energetic, a winegrower who was a mechanical engineer at heart, farming land where his family had tended vines for at least seven generations. He was open-minded, generous and focused. When not farming his vineyards he could be found inventing viticultural equipment for a German firm or renovating part of the house under the direction of his very organised wife, Isabelle.

  The magical scene was a horizontal tasting of the previous vintage. All the bottles were covered with bags; the identity would only be disclosed at the end. We were handed paper and pencils. I felt intimidated, having never done a professional tasting before. Sneaking a glance at my neighbour's notes I took a swig of wine. A starburst of flavours exploded in my mouth: orange peel, almond, pineapple, honey. I slurped the second: passion fruit. Then the third: citrus and a hint of fennel. Almost effortlessly, writing filled the page in front of me.

  Grapes are unique; no other fruit can create such a rainbow of flavours depending on its terroir. They offer a palette of polyphenols or aroma compounds that runs into the thousands compared to normal fruits like oranges and apples that would only be a couple of hundred.

  Combining the great range of polyphenols of each grape type or varietal with the soil, the climate and the grower gives a unique taste. This unique 'taste of place' is terroir, an emotionally charged term that is deeply part of French culture. Blending the different results from each vineyard and each varietal is a key part of taste of place. For the French it is this complex notion of terroir that determines taste rather than the type of grape: a key difference with the New World. When you taste a mineral chardonnay from Chablis compared to a hot climate chardonnay it is easy to see why: they may be the same grape but they are worlds apart in flavour.

  All I knew then was that I was tasting the same style of wines from the same small area of Saussignac and yet they tasted different. Each one had its own nuance, its own secret whisper about where it came from. When the tasting was over, each wine was debated, then unveiled.

  'What do you think of number eleven, Caro?' asked Thierry.

  'Passion fruit and almonds. Delicious,' I said feeling nervous. Was I correct? Would I be unmasked as the complete novice that I was? It was so expressive even I could describe it and my comment was followed by approving nods around the table.

  Next up was a wine that was cloudy and fizzy: I had marked it right down, not realising still-fermenting wine was regularly presented at producer tastings.

  'Slightly fizzy but good balanced flavour,' said the first commentator.

  'Too woody.'

  The sample was unveiled as Bernard Barse's, the wine we had helped pick with Aideen and Barry a year before. I began to take the comments personally. It was an inkling of how I would feel when Sean and I made our own wine.

  Joel, the man who regularly intimidated me as part of the AOC police, was sporting beautiful, long dreadlocks and bright coloured pants. That evening I realised that he was more Joel the Jolly than Joel the Gendarme. His clothes and hair told part of the story but he also had a sharp wit and a love of practical jokes, passing me a wine glass of apple juice destined for the kids instead of the white wine I had asked for as my aperitif. He lived next door to Thierry and had four grown-up children, although he didn't look much older than us. Next time he came round for an AOC contrôle I wouldn't feel the ball of fear in my stomach like I had the previous times.

  After the tasting, we were served aperitifs – a selection of wines from all the winegrowers who were present with pâté and rillettes – and I got talking to Geoffroy Colombe and his wife Delphine. The Colombes were famous wine producers in the area.

  'What possessed you to move from successful lives in the city to wine-farming?' asked Delphine. I had déjà vu to my mother's recent visit.

  I explained that we were following a long-held dream.

  'But wine-farming in France is so difficult,' said Delphine. 'With all the rules and our high costs of production, how can we compete with the New World winemakers?' She meant places like Chile, Argentina, South Africa, the USA, Australia and New Zealand, where winemaking is less regulated and they have a much lower cost of labour.

  'I don't know,' I said, feeling a twist of fear in my stomach. If such successful farmers were struggling, how would we survive? What were we thinking? Some of these people had centuries of wine-farming experience behind them. If they were in trouble, we wouldn't have a hope.

  Geoffroy and Delphine's son joined our group. Jean was working for a wine shop in England, having recently finished his studies.

  'We've had twenty years of stress,' said Delphine. 'I can't believe you have given up comfortable lives in the city for this. Stress with farming and weather, stress with the harvest and winemaking and serious stress with selling. It's not easy.'

  'Perhaps havin
g many small producers will prove to be France's saviour,' I said. 'People are looking for something different. Look how California producers are creating special vineyard areas and how large producers like E. & J. Gallo are splitting up their range to cater to consumer demand for unique, small production wines.'

  'Yes, I agree,' said Jean. 'Wine lovers are looking for the human touch, the artisans.'

  'I hope you are right,' said Delphine, not convinced.

  At that moment the first course of a feast was served. The lanterns twinkled and a gentle summer breeze flapped the side of the tent as we sat down at the long trestle table that had been speedily transformed for the banquet by Chantal Gerardin, the co-owner of Château La Maurigne, and Isabelle, Thierry's wife. Five courses followed with accelerating repartee as the night progressed. I soaked up the atmosphere. Rural France was supposed to be closed, but here it was the opposite. There was a shared history and sense of place. It was rich with generations and good humour but welcoming to newcomers like us. We had landed in an extraordinary place.

  The tasting of the Saussignacs was held a week or two before harvest and it signalled the imminence of our first vendanges. My stomach cramped with fear and excitement at the thought. This was what we had come to France for but we could not afford to mess up. We had to produce great wine, not just any wine, to survive financially.

  Chapter 9

  Vendanges!

  Lucille, our wine scientist, began her regular visits. For the next eight weeks she would visit for a couple of hours at least twice a week. Every couple of days she and Sean would disappear into the vineyard for hours to taste grapes and assess their ripeness. Stuck inside, looking after Ellie who was a year and a half, I couldn't help but feel a twinge of jealousy. Lucille was gorgeous, appeared to be single and was spending hours and hours alone with my husband in a deserted vineyard.

  As the days stretched into weeks I found myself imagining them having a full-blown affair. My trust in Sean had plummeted with our stumbling relationship. I began to spy out of the windows to see what they were up to. I kept reminding myself that I would know from Sean's eyes. He couldn't pass through a border post with a single bottle of liquor undeclared he was so honest. That didn't help reduce my angst, though. I had never been jealous before but the state of our relationship left me feeling unsure.

  When they returned from their promenades Lucille would field our endless questions with the patience and demeanour of a teacher. Our 'serious oenologue', as Sean called her, was reliable, despite her Playboy looks. I told myself to get a grip. This was my husband, Sean, a man who had felt it necessary to confess an affair he had well before our relationship started when we were playing the 'we're just friends' game back in our early twenties.

  Sean's parents arrived to help with the harvest. John, Sean's father, was in his late sixties and relatively fit. He was a forester by trade and still worked part-time on forestry projects in South Africa. He quickly became a key man on the harvest team. Peta-Lynne, well-used to grandchildren thanks to Sean's siblings' progeny, took charge of the girls and delivering food to a hungry harvest team.

  Sean and John commenced the mammoth task of cleaning equipment, vats and buildings. I escaped to Thierry and Isabelle Daulhiac to talk over our plans for the coming harvest. They had been very open at the Saussignac dinner and seemed like good people to ask advice given Thierry's impressive seven generations of wine history and the quality of their wines.

  As I was leaving, their sons, Paul and Émilion, returned from school and a little white van pulled up behind them. It looked empty, then a familiar head of curly grey-blonde hair popped up armed with the largest water gun I had ever seen. Joel showered the boys and everyone else liberally then laughed hysterically and drove off, leaving us giggling in his wake. I would look at him through different eyes next time he came round to police our practices in the vineyard. Perhaps it was his way of coping with pre-vendanges stress.

  With Sean's folks on hand I could tour the vineyards and sample grapes with Sean and Lucille. This helped to calm my rising angst and also offered the opportunity to see and understand the fruit of our labour.

  After the year of work the vineyards were like old friends. Upper Garrigue, the vineyard that Cécile and Sean had carefully monitored every week as our indicator for the health of all our vineyards, was the most manicured and would be the highest yielding of our merlot vineyards. Cimitière merlot was concentrated like our old vines in Hillside. The two cabernet sauvignon vineyards, Gageac and Lenvège, were far less ripe, about two weeks behind the merlot, while the whites were the most advanced: sweet and aromatic.

  The 'ban des vendanges', the name for the official opening of the harvest for our AOC Bergerac, was declared. Despite this official opening, which changed each year with the weather, the development of the grapes was slow and each laboratory maturity analysis came back with 'review in a few days'.

  The waiting was excruciating but I also felt very alive. There was something about harvest time that was at once tense, exciting and invigorating. Perhaps it was that a full year of work in the vineyard depended on this critical period, or perhaps it was more profound and ancient than that: a connection with the annual cycle of life that has nurtured man since his first days on earth.

  A heatwave followed by a few days of heavy rain changed everything. The heat ripened the grapes and the rain put them at risk. From 'review in a few days' the analysis came back with 'harvest tomorrow'. We were thrown headlong into the vendanges hurricane.

  We booked the harvest machine for the next morning. Sean kicked himself for not harvesting the whites before the fresh deluge despite Lucille's hesitation. Choosing the day to harvest is a critical matter; a few extra days of 'hang time' on the vine can make a world of difference to the end product and that was the risk we took. Now Lucille was concerned that rot might set in.

  I had written everything down in a flow chart but despite my preparation I was terrified. This would be our first day of working with the winery equipment. Everything was huge and dangerous. I tried to lift the lid off the press on my own and couldn't do it. Sean yelled, 'Just get on with it.' I tried again but it wouldn't budge. Sean was aggressive and had no time for someone who couldn't keep pace. I felt inadequate. John came to my aid and we successfully lifted the lid off the press together so I could do a final clean and disinfect the inside.

  We had the advice of Lucille but we had to make the day-to-day decisions and do the work. We were essentially going it alone. That afternoon Ad and Lijda, a Dutch couple we met briefly the previous year when they stopped in to visit the previous owners, came by and offered to help us for a few days. They had helped with harvests in the past. Now, miraculously, we had two 'experienced' hands.

  Ad, Lijda and I did a pass through the white vineyards to remove bunches with signs of rot and found less than one bunch per row. It was a good sign for the quality of the white and laid Lucille's concerns to rest.

  Sean and his dad, John, worked deep into the night to get everything ready in the winery. We ran through our checklist one last time and fell into bed, exhausted. Ellie woke at midnight vomiting. I dosed her with paracetamol and changed her sheets and clothes, my mind racing ahead to our harvest day. After a prayer for her health and a kiss on her little cheek I fell back into bed. A few hours later, tired but eager, we got up to harvest our sauvignon blanc. Despite the clear forecast, it had rained in the night – far from ideal for harvesting as rain dilutes the juice. The harvest team – John, Ad, Sean, Lijda and I – gathered in the courtyard buzzing with coffee and anticipation. As we discussed methods to blow-dry the vineyard – in wealthy vineyards helicopters have been known to fly over to create the blow-drying effect – a strong wind blew in to remove the excess water. It would help significantly. Right on time the harvest machine rolled into the courtyard. It was enormous: like a giant mechanical insect preparing to ingest our white grapes. We introduced ourselves to the driver and explained what we were planning to pi
ck. Then I ran ahead of the machine to show him the marked rows.

  We checked all the pipe connections and ran through our flow chart one more time. Within what felt like five minutes, but was actually twenty, the harvest machine had picked the Hillside sauvignon blanc. Sean drove the tractors into position and I watched in awe as our first load was poured from harvester to trailer. Then he expertly backed up to the winery looking like he had been driving tractors all his life, although it had been less than a year.

  John, Ad and I lifted the large pipe that connected the trailer to the press but even with three it was difficult to manoeuvre. While I cursed, Ad and John kept their cool and coaxed it into position. After checking the connections Sean started the auger that pushes the grapes from the trailer into the pipe. Nothing came up into the press. I motioned upwards to Sean and he increased the revs. Still nothing came up. I signed again and Sean increased some more. We repeated this process several times, panic rising in me with each increase. Perhaps none of this worked at all.