Grape Expectations

by Caro Feely

  At the same time as Sean and I were weeping over the cost of organic farming, a number of chemical products for use in vineyards were banned in the EU because of health risks for the people spraying them and also for the final consumer. And yet these EU laws only affected farmers in the EU, not wine producers in the New World. The EU happily continued importing low-cost wines farmed with these chemicals. It was two-faced and wine farmers were rightly up in arms. A holistic policy would have banned products using these chemicals from being imported too, thus offering wine producers a level playing field.

  For us it was a wake-up call about the dangers of agricultural chemicals. Sean's health was priceless. I read that the level of cancer among vineyard workers in California was four times the normal rate and it had been linked directly with vineyard chemicals. Organic farming was more labour-intensive and costly but its health benefits more than compensated. We knew the flavour of our wines was much better too, but right at that moment it didn't make the hard economic reality any easier. We had to keep the faith that the quality of our wines would shine through and help us get the prices we needed to stay in business.

  As a consumer my purchasing power was a significant lever in the quest for a healthy earth so I made more effort to buy only organic products, preferring to buy less in order to meet our ever-tightening budget.

  Farming organically that spring was challenging. Many farmers who were experimenting with organics threw their hands up in disgust and returned to their chemical dependence. We had rain, rain and more rain. In the small square in Saussignac where the war memorial stood opposite the castle, I bumped into Pierre Sadoux, the rake of a vigneron who smoked rolled cigarettes and flew a microlight. He was looking well.

  'Salut Pierre!'

  'C'est au feu. Harvest last year followed by this spring. A nightmare, and the pressure isn't letting up. How are things going for you?'

  Pierre was echoing what other local winegrowers had told me: our first harvest had been one of the toughest and this growing season was continuing the trend.

  'Sean's working all hours but the vines are looking good.'

  'How are you finding organic? I hear some organic vineyards have lost everything to mildew.'

  'Sean's vigilant – so far no problems. We know nothing different so we're lucky. We don't know how easy life would be if we were conventional farmers.'

  Pierre laughed. 'We're trying out mechanical weeding this year but we can't go organic. It's too complicated for us to do with the number of acres we have.'

  'Why?'

  'We can plan the work more easily, we're not so dependent on the weather. With systemic fungicides we are protected for fifteen days. For you, if you spray on Wednesday then you get a downpour and a storm is forecast for Sunday night you need to treat again. Our employees don't work on Sunday. If I got on the tractor I wouldn't get round the whole vineyard in time. We need three people out there to get around all our vineyards in a day. It's too risky for us.'

  Perhaps in time Pierre and his father would go organic. When we bought our property we did not realise we had fallen into an enclave of organic producers. Already almost half of Saussignac wine producers were organic or in conversion to organic, compared to a national average in France of around 3 per cent. When we arrived another wave were starting conversion and since then more farms had converted. It was a virtuous circle.

  'You must come round to taste the wines again sometime soon,' I said. 'It would be good to hear your opinion on the reds.'

  Pierre had visited us once the previous summer to taste the old Garrigue vintages. I was eager for him to taste our own wines to see his reaction. Perhaps he could give us some useful advice on our problem children, the reds that steadfastly refused to do their malolactic fermentation.

  Chapter 15

  In the Merde with the Merlot

  The apricot dawn filled me with joy. I stood on the balcony and felt uncanny delight and weightlessness looking down onto the Dordogne valley's bountiful patchwork of plum blossoms and manicured vines. We still didn't have the order confirmation, the malos hadn't started and we were broke, but I felt positive. It defied logic. Despite working harder than ever physically and mentally for no return, our new life was strangely fulfilling.

  That morning the Saturday magazine of a major newspaper that ran the cover story on us the year before called to say they were going to run my follow-on story as another cover feature. Perhaps the emotions I felt at dawn were a premonition.

  I called Dave, the wine buyer, with the news and suggested they take the wine in immediately so it would be in store in time for the publication date. Within hours we had the order confirmation and a date for pickup. I didn't know why they had been delaying but right then the only important thing was that we had the official order. The chunky payment would hit our bank account in a few weeks and we'd be able to get our creditors off our backs. It was a major milestone.

  Our second offer of our summer wines went out to our subscriber list. Within two weeks we had sold out of our rosé and our sauvignon blanc. Some customers bought five cases of sauvignon blanc at once. It boosted our morale. People wanted our wines.

  Even with these successes, the wine business would not be able to support us on its own. We had to develop new streams of revenue. I was renovating frantically to make half of our house available as a self-catering unit. Adding a second unit would make the prospects a little more rosy, but the old building Helen and Derek had uncovered was still in its ruined state. I measured up every perspective and realised the second level was too low to be useful for human habitation.

  I drew up some plans then called Monsieur Fracasse, the builder who had helped with the terrace. He arrived, tape measure in hand. We walked round the side of the tasting room.

  'Quelle vue,' he said, whistling through his teeth. 'I can see why you want to turn this into a house. From the upper level it must be even better.' It was a tranquil piece of heaven.

  'Yes, but look, it's too low for a house.'

  'Hmm, I see.'

  'So my big problem is how to get enough living space for two people if we take the second floor out.'

  'I've an idea,' he said, scribbling urgently in his notepad. 'What if we put in a mezzanine for a double bed? That way we get access to the views from the top too.'

  Now Monsieur Fracasse was talking, measuring and drawing at speed. He was full of suggestions.

  'Tiens, autre chose, we could put the bathroom out here. Or we could put the kitchen out here then have a window here so someone working in the kitchen could enjoy the views.'

  'Super idea.'

  'If we put the kitchen here what will we do about the bathroom? Where will we put it?'

  'We could use the winery extension on the right.' I motioned in the direction of the building. 'Perhaps we could break through the concrete vats and put the bathroom in there?'

  'But what about the out-pipes? From here it won't be the right angle and also we couldn't install the sewage pipe underground since the building is built on solid rock.'

  We walked across to look at the size of the extension. He measured the walls. I looked at the angle and could see his point.

  'Attends, j'ai une idée. We could put in a broyeur. That would solve the problem, we could…' His voice trailed off. He could see that I did not find this particular idea super at all.

  'Absolutely no broyeur,' I said categorically.

  'Oui, t'as raison. A broyeur is not good, yes, in fact, a broyeur is not good at all.'

  I couldn't have said it better myself.

  We agreed he would do the initial quote with the bathroom on the side where sewage pipes could be safely installed and with a mezzanine for the bed. We waved at Sean who was in the vineyard below carefully removing unwanted shoots from the heads of the vines. Having all his body parts intact for once he was taking on the épamprage, rather than me. I yelled, 'Watch out for snakes!' He laughed and waved me off. I had seen several snakes and Sean had seen n
one. He doubted their presence but I knew better.

  Before coming to France I had a notion that making wine was easy; the diagrams used in Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) set books and Jancis Robinson's The Oxford Companion to Wine made it look like a few simple steps. Our problem children, the reds, were making me appreciate how wrong I was.

  A multitude of decisions go into making the final product and each decision can have a dramatic impact on the end wine. It is never as simple as 'choose A or B'; there are always several variables to consider and in many cases the formula is not fully understood, thus a large dose of artistic judgement is required. Winemaking is art and science. It is also a work of agony and ecstasy: agony on the days where the wine made us question all our decisions along the way, ecstasy when it tasted like a grand cru classé and filled us with joy akin to that of a new parent.

  The red wines were still tannic, acid monsters that had not completed their malos despite much coaxing. With them representing two thirds of our production, we couldn't afford to miss a year but neither could we release a wine that was not the quality level we wanted. We spoke to Lucille, who shrugged her shoulders in Gallic style. We tried another starter culture. It did not work.

  Jean-Paul, a travelling wine consultant, appeared, and we leapt upon him with glee.

  'Is there any hope for this wine?' I asked.

  'Of course! It has good structure and great phenolic matter. It's a good wine. It needs time. The malos will start soon, don't worry.'

  But I did worry. We monitored the wines every day, praying for signs. Finally, as I prepared to fire our oenologist and to write a blistering letter to the company that produced the failed starter cultures, the malos started on their own. The wines got active, bubbling slightly and making the signature 'pop-pop' we had heard about. I listened and stroked the barrels lovingly. Sean and I checked them morning and evening, anxious that our babies would finish this key step successfully.

  Grateful beyond measure, Sean got back to work in the vineyard, which was in full growth with our grapes ripening beautifully despite the wet start to the season. Summer was back and with it the bounties of free food that I gathered eagerly. Baskets of plums from a neighbour's unfarmed orchard alongside Upper Garrigue were turned into compote, jam and tarts. Sophia's holidays meant she was home to play with Ellie and to help harvest. We set up the paddling pool my mum had bought the previous summer and spent hours outside. The girls played in the sandpit or the pool while I designed and laid out our new potager; an ambitious 100 square metres of geometric beds.

  Within weeks the malos were complete. After almost a year of watching and waiting, heating and grinding our teeth, we were stunned at how simple it was. We had to trust our wines. They were living things that set their own agenda.

  The timing was perfect, the end of August, giving us a couple of weeks to rack the wines before the harvest started. Racking wine is the process of removing clear wine from the vat in order to leave the sediment settled on the bottom behind. We had a meeting with Lucille to taste the wines and plan the bottling. They had softened but they were still tannic monsters.

  'We can't sell this,' I said. 'How long will it take for these tannins to mature?'

  'It's hard to say,' said our oenologist. 'It could take three years.'

  'What? We can't wait three years!'

  'Perhaps in six months it will be better.'

  'It had better be,' I said bitterly taking another mouthful and spitting a long red jet into the spittoon. My spitting technique was almost professional, a great improvement on my initial attempts that left me covered in red splats after each tasting session. But our plan to bottle in time for Christmas was scuppered. It was clear that even highly educated, experienced oenologists could not accurately read young wine.

  'What else can we do? We need to have some red wine ready for bottling soon.'

  'If we age more of the wine in oak barrels it will round out the tannins and help to express the finesse,' said Lucille.

  Wine scientists are impervious to financial realities. We already had our top red wine in barrels. Oak barrels cost around €700 new. We'd need at least ten to make any impact on the volume of pure merlot we had. We'd have to find more second-hand ones. I spat tacks. It would take time for us to be better judges of unfinished wine. For now we had to control the panic that took hold each time we tasted an acidic monster in infancy. I called Pierre and cancelled the October bottling. We had to tighten our belts and wait for March when we would bottle the new whites that were still on the vines as well. At least the payment for Dave's order had arrived. Sean began vat planning for the harvest. In a couple of weeks it would be on us again. I felt a bolt of excitement and dread.

  Chapter 16

  Vendanges Tranquilles

  With vendanges around the corner, our Dutch friend Ad arrived, looking fit and younger than ever. He had retired a week before and was now free to roam around France at leisure. Perhaps it was retiring that had given him a flush of youth or perhaps it was returning to the Dordogne where he had spent so many happy summers. Lijda couldn't come; maybe she remembered the stress of our first year and wasn't coming back for another dose of hell.

  Ad set up his campervan down in the amphitheatre. The trees were loaded with figs and the limestone cliffs shone white in the summer sun. The girls zoomed down to mob him like bees to a honeypot. Ad was becoming like a grandfather to them. A few hours later he set off on his bike to visit some friends, flying along the district road like a comet.

  The next day Sean's finger tingled ominously as if it remembered the harvest the previous year. While he cleaned and sterilised equipment, Ad organised Sean's workshop. Each tool soon had its home on the wall; after years of rummaging through piles on shelves it was a revelation. He extended electricity cables and connected new lights for the new workbench. When the workshop was organised, he made the half-plough that Sean wanted attached to the oil reservoir on the tractor.

  Each day Sean and I walked the vineyards and tasted the grapes. We were more confident about making our decision on when to harvest. It was tranquil; there was no rain. Ad taught Sean to weld and time slowed.

  Then the sauvignon blanc grapes were ready; sweet and full of flavour, their pips brown and nutty. I called to reserve the harvest machine and got my booking without having to negotiate. Sean did a final check of the equipment.

  'I'm going to do a dry run,' he said. 'We're ready and we have two days to spare.'

  I went inside. A half-hour later Sean crashed through the door, his steel-toe boots clomping aggressively across the kitchen.

  'Feck it,' he said, peering through the lounge door. 'The Kreyer's not working. You'd better call Bonny's.'

  The Kreyer was critical for making the white wine; it cooled the white juice for cold stabilisation, then later on, if the fermentation got too hot, it would enable us to keep the fermenting juice at the cooler temperatures required to keep the fruit flavours intact.

  'You can't wait,' said Lucille, who had arrived for her visit, 'but you can't harvest without the Kreyer.'

  Sometimes we wanted to shake her and say, 'Wake up to the constraints of real life!' But we also knew she was right. At that moment the grapes were perfect and we wanted them to stay that way. One extra day of waiting could make a difference.

  We had thirty-six hours until the harvest machine was booked to arrive. Monsieur Bonny promised to send over his refrigeration expert tout de suite.

  Ellie had started school a week before, but her first few days were overshadowed by the looming harvest. At two and a half she had to get on with it, catch the bus and settle in. I collected the girls and got home to find the Bonny van parked outside the winery and Éric hard at work. He tried a few things and refilled the gas canister. The unit hummed back to life. I felt intense relief.

  To be sure, Sean asked Éric to do a start with him before he left. Sean tried starting the Kreyer and it would not murmur. They tried again. Nothing.

 
'C'est bizarre,' said Éric. 'I will have to call a refrigeration specialist. It can't be the gas.'

  'C'est très, très urgent,' I said, anxiety cramping my stomach.

  The artisan could be with us at eight the next morning. By then we would have less than twenty-four hours before the harvest machine arrived. Benoit arrived right on time and tested the Kreyer. An hour later he came in with the motherboard of the unit.

  'C'est ça.' His finger pointed to a large burnt-out section. 'I have ordered a replacement. It's two thousand euros.'