Grape Expectations

by Caro Feely

  'How do I become registered as a jeune agriculteur?' I asked.

  'Call the DDAF.' She gave me the number.

  What followed was the usual French business call:

  Me: 'Hello, please may I speak to Monsieur X.'

  Madame: 'Sorry, Monsieur X only works on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. Please phone back then between ten and twelve.'

  I would look forward in my diary to find an available slot to call at exactly the time suggested. A few weeks later I called again on the suggested day.

  Me: 'Hello, please may I speak to Monsieur X.'

  Madame: 'Sorry, Monsieur X is on holiday please call back next week.'

  And so on. I finally got in touch with Monsieur X and discovered that the only way to get the dotation (official status) was to have a jeune agriculteur specific loan on purchase of the property or on a related investment very soon after the purchase. The doors seemed to be closed.

  A few days later, however, in a chance discussion with Cécile at our weekly meeting, we realised that the previous owners had not declared their arrachage or 'grubbing up' of a small vineyard a few years before. Grubbing up is the removal of old vines from a vineyard no longer in production. If they had declared this grubbing up, as was legally required, the rights for the vineyard would be available to plant elsewhere on the property, for up to eight years. Cécile thought it had been grubbed up about five years before so she was hopeful we would be able to use these rights.

  I called the douanes, the French customs department, who controlled active vineyard planting rights, and asked if there was any hope for us to declare the arrachage and reclaim the rights.

  'Ça dépend,' said Madame, the same lady who had helped me through the 'you have no white vines' crisis. 'Write us a letter and we will look into it.'

  A few months later two douanes officials arrived at the property to verify that the vineyard was indeed grubbed up. It was easy to see where the vineyard had been as the trellising poles were still in place.

  'The problem is that we don't know when it was grubbed up,' said Madame. 'Unless we can verify that it was in the year you claim, we won't be able to help you.'

  The future looked uncertain for the old peach field. A month later Madame from the douanes called me.

  'We found a reference to the vineyard in a contrôle by one of our officials the year before you claim it was pulled up so we can permit you to do a late déclaration d'arrachage.'

  Christmas had arrived.

  'Par contre, the previous owners overplanted by four ares which we will have to subtract from the rights and you will have to pay a ninety-euro fine for the late declaration. You must come into our offices to do the formalities.'

  (There are 100 'ares' in a hectare, and for those on the imperial system 1 hectare is equal to 2,47 acres, which are not the same as ares.)

  'No problem,' I said quickly.

  The reduction meant my Christmas present was down by 10 per cent but I felt like I had conquered the world. We still had to plant it and then wait five years, of course. To get aid for the planting of the vineyard we would have to plant at a higher density which meant buying a new tractor and associated machinery. That was a dilemma for another day. At least this small success meant there was hope for a portion of the old peach field getting productive again.

  Sophia was going to school and enjoying it, Ellie was back to playing happily on her own even when I did such boring things – to her – as working on our direct sales campaigns. There was something about me being on the PC that generally made the kids want to interrupt. If I was doing something physical like gardening, cooking or hanging up washing they were happy to play alongside. Sean took time with the girls in the evenings playing and reading stories. I had noticed that his dad had been the same. I would often find John sitting head bowed deep in conversation with two small girls showing them something – a leaf from a tree, a ladybird, an acorn. Now that the harvest was over Sean shared the cooking duties like he used to; although washing and cleaning the house, which we had shared in Dublin, were still all left to me. He was back to being the person I knew. The four months around harvest time had been like living with a stranger. I still felt a little raw and suspicious but I cancelled my flight reservation. It would take time for the trust in our relationship to rebuild.

  Sean steadily made his way through his second year of pruning. One Sunday working in Hillside he heard hunting dogs. A giant wild boar dashed up the vineyard about 20 metres away from him and made for our small oak forest, followed by dogs and hunters. Sean waved frantically and yelled full throttle.

  We were a chasse interdite area, so no hunting should take place on our land, but it was his own survival he was worried about, expecting a shot to come flying in his direction. Before the hunters reached Sean, the boar came roaring back, leapt off the cliff above the vineyard, sailed several metres through the air and landed in the row next door. He sped past without giving Sean a glance and barrelled up the other side of the valley. By the time he reached Gageac the dogs were so far behind him Sean was sure he had got away. Having come so close to tusks that could have slashed him into small portions, never mind the gunshots, Sean took an early lunch to recover.

  While Sean tackled pruning in freezing temperatures, wild boar and gunshots, I zoned in on point three in 'operation survival': assessing the viability of a holiday house, or more specifically an 'eco' holiday house. The 'eco' was for environmental but also for economic. We had to do this on a shoestring. Internet research yielded wooden cabins, composting toilets and other innovative solutions. Even if we did most of the work ourselves, a new holiday house would cost us a hundred thousand euro. Banks were not giving loans against properties with vineyards because of the risk. In addition, since it would be a new building, there was no guarantee we would get planning permission. Construction bureaucracy sounded like it could rival vineyard rights.

  Helen and Derek, friends from New Zealand who were on a six-month trip to see their sons, both of whom lived in France, arrived to give Sean a hand with vineyard maintenance. I worried that retirees might not be up to jobs like pulling the wood – removing unwanted vine growth from the trellising – and was dreading another bout of 'Sean the Recluse'.

  Helen was blonde with wonderful apple cheeks, the look of a happy chef and a gift for creating gourmet delights. Derek was witty and wiry, with a doctorate from MIT, but preferred to spend his days making furniture or growing olives on their smallholding. Sean showed them how to pull the wood in the sémillon vineyard then came up for a meeting with a bottle supplier. At lunch Helen and Derek returned.

  'We've finished the vineyard,' said Derek. 'What can we do next?'

  We had estimated two days to get through that work.

  'You can relax this afternoon. I don't think Sean has finished pruning the next vineyard,' I said.

  'We want to clear the brush around the cliffs near the hangar. It looks like a satisfying job. I think it will take about three days.'

  'How will you do it?' Sean and I had looked at the wall of brush he was referring to and decided it was not a job for a man, but for a very large machine. The brush was 5 metres deep, 3 metres high and about 100 metres long.

  'With your chainsaw that I saw in the shed. I'll cut it down with the chainsaw, Helen will help me pull it out, then we'll burn it.'

  Derek had sussed out the brush and done an inventory of our tools. The next day when I went down to give them a hand they had uncovered the first section of a magnificent amphitheatre of white cliffs that had been the old quarry. Derek cut back swathes of plant matter then Helen dragged the trees and brush out to feed the bonfire. Some of the brambles were as thick as a man's arm and 50 metres long.

  When Sean came up from pruning and saw what they had done he said, 'We're wimps.'

  On the third day they moved up to the section on top of the cliff. This dense wall of wood ran from the tasting room to the far side of the winery. From the vineyard below we could see th
ere was something on the back of the winery, perhaps old rabbit cages. Sean and I had tried to reach it by cutting a path through the wood a few months before, and failed. It was like Sleeping Beauty's forest, impenetrable. Or so I thought.

  Sean got back that evening exploding with excitement. 'Come and look, Carolinus!'

  Around the side of the tasting room, a magnificent view had opened up, and the building wasn't old rabbit cages: it was a solid stone structure on two levels of 20 square metres each. To the side of it were two tiny, low stone buildings. It was a miracle.

  The following day I visited Tim, our building engineer friend who had helped Sean with the tasting room roof, armed with photos and hoping to get some ideas for how to transform this ruin into a gîte, a self-catering cottage.

  'Is the building on the cadastrale?'

  'I don't know.' We had a copy of the cadastrale, or commune map, of our property which included all the official buildings, but I hadn't thought to look at it.

  'If it is you should get planning permission more easily. It looks solid from the photos. I'll have a look next time I'm over your way.'

  As soon as I got home I checked the cadastrale and found the ruin on it. I was over the moon with excitement.

  That Christmas, we sold the last of the stock we'd bought. Now the pressure was on to finish the new wines as we needed some to sell. While the whites and the rosé were behaving like perfect children, the reds were unwilling teenagers. They had made it through their alcoholic fermentation but steadfastly refused to progress with their malolactic fermentation (often referred to simply as 'malos'): the process in which tart malic acid is transformed into softer lactic acid. It is a natural deacidification allowed to take place in almost all red wines save those like beaujolais nouveau, the light red wine that is bottled immediately after its alcoholic fermentation, but mostly avoided in white wines so they keep their fresh Granny Smith apple acidity. Sean diligently heated the wines to the optimal temperature, monitoring and carefully timing our equipment which, of course, was far from automated.

  Meanwhile, to heat the house we bought a wood-burning stove to augment our struggling system. After the purchase the installer explained that the old exit pipe was no good as it passed through the wall horizontally so would never draw correctly. Creating a new exit would be difficult in our 300-year-old building with walls almost a metre thick. It needed a minimum of a 45-degree angle so the hole had to traverse about 2 metres of wall. We spent hours trying to find an elegant solution.

  In the roof over the lounge was something that looked like a chimney. It ran through our upstairs bathroom then stopped, concreted over where it should have come out in the lounge below. Why hadn't the previous owners used it instead of cracking through the wall at right angles? It didn't make any sense. Sean climbed onto the roof and verified it had all the makings of a chimney.

  We didn't want to crack through our beautiful ceiling that had taken my parents weeks to renovate without being sure so we decided to contact the family that owned the property for fifty years prior to the people we bought from. We had not met Monsieur and Madame Battistella but we had heard a lot about them. Monsieur Bonny was a close friend of theirs so I asked him for an introduction.

  The Battistellas arrived in a smart new car. A fit and handsome couple, they looked like prosperous, retired bankers rather than winegrowers wizened by decades of hard work. Monsieur told us that heart problems had forced him to sell the property. I completely understood: with the quantities of chocolate I needed to manage the stress of Garrigue I was sure I would have heart problems in a few years myself.

  'Vous avez fait des travaux!' said Monsieur Battistella. 'It's good to see Garrigue getting back its beauty. We had gardens all around the house. And down here,' he pointed to the jungle to the left of the house 'there are stone stairs down to a well. We built the chimney with the second level of the house but never used it. It will work perfectly. Now, when can I collect my two hundred litres of red wine?'

  We had forgotten the ancien droit that meant we had to hand over 200 litres of our precious wine to Monsieur Battistella.

  'The malos aren't finished,' said Sean. 'You can have some white in the meantime. We'll call you when it's ready.'

  Monsieur Battistella took a few litres of dry white but he wanted red. After the sweat that had gone into it, handing the wine over for free was difficult. But the chimney meant our flue would remain inside the house, providing more warmth than if it had gone up the exterior wall, and the bathroom would be toasty in winter. That was worth at least 200 litres, if the malos ever finished. We regularly did a malo paper test and intermittently a laboratory test but we had heard that it was possible to tell just by looking at the wine: little bubbles would appear and it would become lively, plus if we put an ear to the barrel we would hear a 'pop-pop' like popcorn. Sean was worried. He continued to heat the red wine but nothing was happening.

  The wood stove was installed with a perfect exit through the chimney, just in time for the serious cold of December. On Christmas Eve I took the girls up to bed and returned to find Sean listening to Christy Moore with tears rolling down his cheeks. This was the third time in our lives I had seen Sean crying. The first was on Sophia's tumultuous first day of her life, the second was when I announced I was leaving.

  'What's happened?' I said, worried sick that one of our parents had died.

  'I miss home, Carolinus.'

  I sat down and we talked about the things we both missed about Christmas in Dublin: swimming at White Rock in freezing temperatures on Christmas morning to help clear the head after too much wine, walking up the Sugar Loaf in Wicklow on St Stephen's Day, but most of all our friends and the craic.

  The life of a vigneron was solitary, even though friends and family came and went. It was stressful, risky and lonely. But it was also wonderful. We were following our dream and we were working towards a new life that despite our current circumstances was full of hope. We shared a bottle of wine in front of the newly installed woodstove. With the lights off, the fire bathed the room in a warm, romantic glow. It felt like years since we had sat quietly together.

  Sean's shoulder-length curls gleamed golden. He was fitter and stronger than ever. The magic of candlelight made me feel twenty-something again. We made love in front of the fire with the abandon that we had known when we first met. It was like a tsunami crashing through all the hurt of the previous six months.

  'That stove was a great investment,' said Sean.

  As the new year got underway Sean continued to heat the red wines for malolactic fermentation but there was no sign of progress. We decided to stop heating all except one. It was better for the wine to develop at its own natural pace.

  The house boiler stopped working. It was a while since I had called Jean-Marc and it was good to hear his upbeat voice on the phone.

  'A simple restart may be all that's needed. Press the red restart button on the boiler.'

  I pressed but nothing happened, then I realised I was pressing the emergency light instead of the large red restart button. Lucky I was mostly just the housewife and not operating wine-related machinery. I pressed the correct button and the boiler leapt into life.

  'Ça fonctionne?' asked Jean-Marc patiently.

  'Oui.'

  'Ça fonctionne! A demain?' (Until tomorrow?)

  Three days later the boiler stopped and the restart would not work. Jean-Marc blamed our fuel provider for giving us dirty fuel and suggested his brother-in-law as a supplier. After he had fixed the boiler I showed him the ruin Helen and Derek had uncovered and asked if he could give me a quote for solar power and a bathroom.

  'Quelle vue!' enthused Jean-Marc as we walked around the winery to the newly uncovered building, facing south up the valley of Saussignac. On our side, the peaceful winter vines were white with frost; on the opposite side a stark winter forest clung to the hillside. To the south Saussignac Castle rose like a giant keeping watch over the village.

  'We
could get water here no problem. I'm not an expert on solar panels but I think we could get good exposure on the roof that's facing due south.'

  He promised to send his patron, the good-looking Monsieur Lambert, around to get the details so they could provide a devis. In true Lambert fashion I heard nothing for months.

  There was still no sign of the malolactic fermentation in the red wines and the white wines had gone flat, their aromas were muted and the flavour seemed dull compared to before. Sean was worried sick but Lucille assured him it was normal for young white wines to 'close up' in winter.

  Chapter 13

  Goodbye Owl, Hello Château

  Despite our fears about the wines we got on with planning our first bottling. Sean invited a bottling company to a meeting so they could explain the choices for this auspicious process. Jean-Philippe arrived in a smart suit. He talked a lot but didn't tell Sean anything.