Grape Expectations

by Caro Feely

  As I pictured myself manually bucketing grapes from trailer to press, grapes and juice exploded out of the pipe, overshooting the press and splattering our precious harvest around the freshly cleaned winery. At my frantic motioning Sean dramatically decreased the revs. Ad carefully aimed the now manageable harvest into the presses and the rest of the load went in smoothly. We had got through our first vendanges scare.

  As each load arrived there seemed to be a million things to check and do. Carbon dioxide gas was sprayed over the juice in the press tray and into the receiving vat. Small doses of sulphur dioxide were carefully poured separately into the press tray as the juice ran through. These were measures to protect the grapes and juice from spoiling on their trip into the vat. Our vines surrounded the house and winery so they had little distance to travel. When they got to the winery they were pressed or pumped into the vat immediately rather than having to wait. The less time grapes have travelling or sitting waiting, the better the end result, so we could use significantly less sulphur dioxide than a large operation with more travel and waiting time. This was important for organic winemaking, where we aimed for lower levels of sulphur dioxide, or 'sulphites' as it is labelled on the bottle, than conventional wine. The juice level in the press tray was monitored continuously and judiciously pumped to keep air bubbles to a minimum. As soon as another load arrived we would start the frenzied round again.

  Three harvest trailers and two press loads later, we had 2,000 litres of sauvignon blanc which would net us about 150 cases of finished wine. Sean started our Kreyer cooling unit using our second pump. The pump ran for a few minutes then stopped. Ad, a qualified mechanic, dismantled it and found the axel had broken. It was Sunday and Sean was doomed to juggling cooling the wine with one pump.

  After lunch we raced back out to prepare for harvesting the rest of the white grapes the following day just as Lucille arrived to check how our first day had gone. It was the weekend and she was accompanied by an extremely handsome boyfriend. He clearly was a long-term item, which helped to lay my crazy suspicion finally to rest.

  'We may need to bring the merlot in this coming week as well,' she said as they prepared to leave. It was not the news we wanted to hear. We were exhausted but preparations and work on the sauvignon blanc kept us up until midnight.

  The 'blue monster', as John dubbed the harvest machine, could be heard approaching well before 5 a.m. The heady scents of sémillon wafting on the warm night air provided a foretaste of what was to come in our white wine blend. The moon was still high and an owl swooped down as I ran through the vines indicating vineyard markers to Jean-François, the driver, my heart racing with adrenalin. I reached the last marker and waved goodbye to the driver, then jogged back to the winery.

  We were old hands that day, splurging a drizzle of precious liquid as we pumped our first load into the press. When we finished the day's harvest Sean proudly drew off jugfuls of sémillon juice for us, then turned his attention to the sauvignon blanc, which needed to be drawn off its heavy sediment before fermentation started. We drank the luxurious liquid, full-bodied and sweet, less zesty than the sauvignon blanc but with a dimension of opulence from the varietal and the old vines.

  Then it was back to cleaning presses, harvest trailers and buckets. Although we had only met Ad and Lijda briefly, they were already close friends. Working in pressured circumstances helped us get to know each other.

  Sophia and Ellie could feel the stress and were kicking up more than usual about going to bed and other routines. Grandma Feely had been subjected to watching the Les Aristochats Disney film ten times but she was coping remarkably well, despite only seeing us when we urgently needed food.

  The next day I visited Monsieur Bonny with the broken pump.

  'Are you sure the axel is broken?' he asked, knowing that Sean and I hadn't a clue how to find the axel let alone tell if it was broken. I explained that we had a mechanic staying with us.

  The cost of repair would be equivalent to half a new pump. We had already spent too much on this ill-fated machine so we opted for the new one but it would take a week to arrive. We needed a second pump immediately to manage the wine temperatures.

  'Ne vous inquiétez pas,' (Don't worry) said Monsieur Bonny. 'I'll lend you the pump that I use for testing refrigeration systems until the new one comes. I can do without it for a few days.'

  He bundled the pump into my boot and promised to call as soon as the new pump arrived. I couldn't believe his generosity.

  'Bon courage,' he shouted as I waved goodbye.

  The following day Lucille and I toured the vineyard while Sean drew the sémillon off its heavy lees.

  'I think we need to harvest the merlot as soon as possible,' she said. 'Vignerons on the valley floor are already facing une vraie catastrophe.' When Lucille said catastrophe it was serious. She had a harried look. This harvest was not for the faint-hearted.

  'The grapes were damaged by the severe heat of the canicule. With the rain they become swollen and split, allowing rot to set in. Look,' she said, pointing to some small freckles on one of our most exposed bunches. 'The sunburnt spots are weak and burst easily. It's worst for those vignerons who de-leafed.'

  I recalled Cécile's sage advice not to de-leaf most of our vineyards, in spite of the debate about it. De-leafing around the fruit zone was thought by some to aid ripening; but by de-leafing you remove some of the leaf area for photosynthesis, which is the driver of the sugar production – plus you allow the fruit to get sunburnt.

  We toured the rest of the merlot vineyards tasting anxiously. The Garrigue vineyard grapes were delicious, full and sweet. Those of Hillside and Cimitiére were smaller and the bunches were more spaced than Garrigue, allowing air to pass between the grapes and concentrating the berries. There wasn't a sign of rot in any of the vineyards.

  The grapes were ready but we were not. We hadn't prepared the vats required for the red. Lucille said the latest we could push out was Thursday. More rain was forecast for Friday. I called Jean-François, the blue monster's driver, and left a message. If we didn't get the machine for Thursday we might have to harvest in the rain, which was bad. If we waited for the rain to stop it could be worse as rot might get established in our vineyard. We were on a knife edge.

  Before leaving, Lucille reviewed our log of the wine's progress. She checked the mustometer which we used to measure the density of the wine and hence its progress through fermentation.

  'Are you adjusting for the temperature?' she asked.

  'No.' I felt like an errant schoolgirl.

  'You must start as you wish to continue,' said Lucille imperiously. 'Pour faire le bon travail we must adjust and fill in the graph so it's easy to track the wine's progress.'

  I promised to try harder to 'do good work'. With little time to eat or sleep in the last couple of days, filling in the graph had seemed like a nicety.

  Ad and Lijda left to return to Holland, leaving us to the Harvest from Hell. John, Sean and I were dog-tired but the whites needed work and there was preparation for the merlot to be done. The sauvignon blanc and the white blend had finished their period of cold settling and were ready to start fermentation. I prepared the cultivated yeast using my cake scale, a thermometer and other sundry items from the kitchen. Once the yeast was added, the whites entered a quieter phase where the key activity was monitoring the fermentation and, of course, not to be forgotten, filling in the graph... if I didn't want my knuckles rapped by our serious oenologue.

  It was nearly midnight when I dredged the last of the rinsing water off the winery floor. The faint hum of harvest machines could still be heard in the distance. Farmers were working all hours to get their grapes in because of the rising risk of rot.

  Jean-François called to let us know it was all go for Thursday. He sounded exhausted. He was working almost round the clock. Thierry Daulhiac assured me that this was the most difficult vendanges he could remember. Normally, in our area, the harvest took place over about four weeks wit
h at least a week between each grape variety. This year, because of the weather, it was all happening the same week and we were getting a baptism of fire.

  Sean and John worked through the day, cleaning the vats, pipes and buckets for the merlot harvest. Around ten that evening Sean prepared to spray tartaric acid onto the cement vat we planned to use as I read the French instructions.

  'This says it needed to be done at least three days before use.'

  'Feck,' exclaimed Sean, 'you'd better phone Lucille.'

  'C'est vrai,' said Lucille, thankfully answering her phone in spite of the late hour, 'the tartaric acid needs several days to dry otherwise the wine could react with the cement of the tank. You must find another vat.'

  The only option was one of the semi-underground tanks that we had in the pressoir. I wanted to avoid them because they were dangerous but now we had no choice. Sean quickly filled his hand pump with the required sterilisation product then squished himself through the lid in the floor of the pressoir and descended into the heart of the vat.

  I felt like I was on a high-pressure technology project. We were working crazy hours and under intense conditions but a camaraderie was developing between the three of us. Things were going a lot better with Sean now that the harvest was in full swing. I was still being treated like the weakest link but since establishing myself as the 'expert' on the finer points of winemaking like yeasts and analysis, I was getting a little respect. Sean emerged from the underground vat and we did a final check that everything was ready. Ellie was much better and we got four hours of solid sleep.

  We woke to a star-studded sky. Ten acres of merlot made it our biggest day. At five sharp the blue monster hummed into the courtyard. I climbed up to hitch a ride to show Jean-François what we were picking for the day. Riding high on the open wing of the harvest machine I felt awed by our starlit vineyards laid out peacefully under the infinite velvet sky.

  Back at the winery the lights were on and it was buzzing with activity as Sean and John connected pipes and checked vats. Sean backed up the first load of merlot, a trailer of perfectly formed berries with no foreign matter to be seen. Around dawn as we hooked up the fourth trailer the church bells in Saussignac started ringing and carried on eerily all morning.

  'Someone's died in the village,' I said.

  'Always look on the bright side,' said Sean.

  'No, I'm sure that's what it is.' I hoped I was wrong.

  On the ninth load fatigue was setting in. John and I tried to get the harvest pipe onto the trailer and it took on a life of its own, reared up and whacked us around the heads. We sat down for a few minutes until the world stopped spinning. Neither of us was seriously hurt, just a little bruised.

  After a total of eleven trailers we declared victory. Ravaged by the exertion and stress of the week, we were relieved that we only had one hectare of cabernet sauvignon and our Saussignac dessert wine left to do.

  Later that day we heard two vignerons had been killed in a tragic accident. The father and son were suffocated by carbon dioxide in a subterranean vat in their winery that morning. They lived down in the valley a few kilometres from us; we could see their property from Garrigue. Though we didn't know them personally, after hearing the news I stood on the balcony looking at their farm with tears pouring down my cheeks. It was gut-wrenchingly sad.

  We had filled one of our semi-underground vats with the merlot. The thought of it made me nauseous. That night I had nightmares about Ellie falling into it. The tank lid was in the middle of the floor of the pressoir and when filled with fermenting wine, the chapeau, the thick cap of grapes that forms over the juice, was about 40 centimetres from it.

  I kept picturing Ellie leaning over to pick a grape out of the chapeau and falling in. This spells instant death as the carbon dioxide suffocates and the liquid drowns. I woke up in a cold sweat. It happened over and over again. I took a double dose of my sleeping remedy.

  The following day I struggled to keep my eyes open but the fermenting white juice needed to be kept cool to hold the fresh fruit aromas, while the red juice needed to be kept warm, to extract the colour and the flavour from the grapes. Our Kreyer temperature control system helped us do this, but it was far from automated. Nothing was as simple as a flick of the switch. Constant pump work was required, manoeuvring heavy pipes and equipment in an endless dance. There was more work than we could handle, even with no weekend. I didn't know then that there would be no weekends for more than two months.

  Lucille arrived for her Friday visit.

  'More bad weather is forecast. You should harvest the cabernet sauvignon early, perhaps next week,' she said, reaching for our winery file.

  I tried to snatch it back: the densities were adjusted, but the graphs were still missing.

  'I haven't done the graphs,' I mumbled, expecting to be severely reprimanded.

  'C'est pas grave,' said Lucille. 'You are in full harvest.' At least I knew our 'serious oenologue' would cut us some slack in 'full harvest'.

  After Lucille left I prepared the yeast for the merlot. Part way through, two buckets of yeast didn't puff up in the normal way. Convinced we hadn't fully rinsed the disinfectant off the buckets I made ready to dash for more of the expensive stuff but Sean convinced me to wait. By the time the yeast was ready it had risen the same as the rest. It was a different strain, the one for our premium wine from Hillside and Cimitière vineyards, clearly a yeast of a more restrained and refined character. We knew next to nothing then about the benefits of the natural yeasts we could extract from our own organic vineyard that could offer us the unique flavour of our terroir; that first year we followed Lucille's instructions to the letter.

  We stole a few moments every morning and evening to review the wines' progress, taking the temperatures and densities and tasting them. The constant tasting of the red wines left my tongue ravaged by tannins, making it difficult to drink my early morning cup of tea brewed so strong you could walk on it – but it didn't stop me.

  The wines were like people, each with their own individual characteristics. Garrigue and Hillside were merlot grapes that were picked the same morning, had similar care through the year and were barely 500 metres from one another in the vineyard but they behaved and tasted totally different. Hillside was more intense and cool, while Garrigue was fruity and hot. So far our yields were well below what we had hoped for but the quality and concentration compensated.

  Another weekend passed in a blur of winery work. On Tuesday, while Sean did the winery pipe dance, I ran round the cabernet sauvignon vineyards collecting sample grapes to take into the laboratory for analysis. Later Lucille arrived with the analysis and told us we should harvest the cabernet sauvignon the following day.

  'We won't be ready even if we work all night,' said Sean. 'The sauvignon blanc needs to be moved out of the garde vin to make way for the cabernet sauvignon and that alone will take a couple of hours with the cleaning and sterilising required.' A garde vin is a vat with a floating lid that offers more flexibility as the volume can be adjusted by changing the height of the floating lid. This garde vin was nearly 4 metres tall and only about a metre wide, making it relatively unstable in comparison to fatter, shorter vats. We nicknamed it 'Tower'.

  'Can't we wait until next week?' asked Sean. He had a bad cold and wasn't feeling up to another harvest day.

  'We must get the grapes in,' said Lucille. 'More rain is forecast. If we wait, the rot could set in.'

  We took her advice. We didn't want to risk our precious cabernet sauvignon. I called Jean-François to book the blue monster. He promised to call back as soon as he had a slot. The next day he confirmed for the following morning. We were in the harvest hurricane. There was no respite. Nature was calling the shots. Sean emptied, cleaned and sterilised the garde vin then we spent hours wrestling the harvest pipe onto the top of it. I was terrified that it wouldn't hold with the force of the grapes coming through, and having been whacked by the pipe once before I was nervous, but there were no ot
her options. I was still having nightmares about Ellie and the underground vat. Sean had a bad sore throat. I went to bed totally shattered.

  The blue monster arrived just after four. At 3 metres high with fiercely powerful lights it was great for game-viewing. As we drove down through the vineyards a hare loped nonchalantly down the row in front of us and veered off into the next row then a deer took off into the shadows. I pointed out the markers and waved goodbye to Jean-François.

  Our first load came in and we hooked up what we called the Serpent pipe then watched nervously as Sean slowly increased the revs. The first few grapes shot over the cuve (vat) onto the winery wall but the pipe stayed in position and Tower remained stable. After a minor adjustment the load went in smoothly. All the cabernet sauvignon was safely in Tower before dawn. We felt a deep sense of relief that it was the last time we would see the blue monster that season. All that was left was our Saussignac to hand-harvest in a few weeks.

  Sean took the vendanges trailer round to the side of the house for cleaning. I heard the girls crying and went inside. As I reached the top of the stairs I heard Peta-Lynne, Sean's mum, yelling full throttle for me. Both girls sensed something serious and screamed in earnest. I told them to be calm, closed the security gate firmly behind me and ran back down the stairs.