by Caro Feely
Sophia, Ellie and I took slices of bread from our bread tin and scurried out. We scraped honey in great slow sticky waves. The aroma was rich and deep like an intense field of wild flowers but more concentrated. It was the best honey I had ever tasted. We swished and lavished honey on to bread and ourselves. I felt like I was taking a honey bath. By the end there was honey everywhere, even in our hair. We licked our fingers, our lips and finally the pans themselves. By the time we had finished the pans almost didn't need to be washed.
Seán had read that the best way to clean the honey racks and any other honey utensils was to put them outside the hive. He did this and the bees took every last sticky drop. The harvest of blossom-rich honey was especially poignant; Seán's mum's nickname was Blossom.
CHAPTER 13
GROWING PAINS
Seán left to see his dad in South Africa. With him away I was so engrossed in keeping the business afloat and being a single mum that I didn't have time to think about Sandrine's slowdown. Before we knew it, Seán was back, looking more at peace for having made the trip. The Friday evening before her return from a few weeks at school, Sandrine called.
'I have some news,' she said. 'I am pregnant. I will be on maternity leave from May to September.'
I felt a shot of panic. We had taken an apprentice so I would have help in the summer. The rest of the year we didn't need the help. Sandrine was on a two-year apprentice contract, the time her tourism diploma would take to complete. In term time she had two weeks with us then two weeks at school. It didn't make economic sense to have an apprentice unless you had the benefit of their full-time summer.
'I know this is happy news,' I said. 'But I am a little upset since we took you on specifically for the summer. What will you do about your studies?'
'I will continue until I go on maternity leave and then go back after the maternity leave,' she said.
A moment of silence passed where I didn't know what to say. I decided to say as little as possible to avoid saying something I would regret.
'Thanks for letting us know. We can talk about next steps on Monday when you're back,' I said. 'Congratulations. Have a good weekend.'
A whole summer of training had gone up in smoke. Despite Sandrine's assurances that she would continue after the maternity leave, I wondered if she would. In the meantime we were stuck, contracted for another 18 months. I could not cope on my own but we couldn't afford two apprentices. I felt trapped. My new hormone-driven aggression came out in full force and I hit the countertop then leapt back, hopping in pain and holding my hand.
I recalled a friend in Dublin who owned his own small business saying he only hired men because they didn't go on maternity leave. Now I completely understood. In his shoes I could see what it meant for a small business. A third of our manpower would be gone but the costs would keep coming. I ran to find Seán, my heart racing. He was pruning in the Hillside Sauvignon Blanc. He looked up in surprise.
'The mystery of the slowdown since September is solved. Sandrine is pregnant. She's tired and no wonder,' I said.
'Feck,' said Seán.
'She'll be on maternity leave for the whole summer.'
'Double feck,' said Seán.
'Exactly. What are we going to do? Already we've seen the effect of maternity on her motivation. It will only get worse. It's as good as not having an apprentice at all.'
'We should have seen it coming,' said Seán.
'All the signs were there,' I said.
'But it's not as if we haven't had our minds on other things,' said Seán. 'No wonder we didn't cop on.'
I thought of Mum Feely, felt tears and swallowed them back.
'We are where we are,' I said. 'We have to find a solution.'
'Have you looked up what happens with maternity leave? Do we have to keep paying the full salary?' said Seán.
'I had a quick look but it only confused me,' I said. 'She called after office hours so I won't be able to get any answers until Monday.'
I felt like a bomb waiting to explode. That night the sheets wrapped round me in a sleepless dance. On Monday I called our accountant for advice and information.
'Don't worry, the state will pay the apprentice salary while she is on maternity leave,' he said.
I felt relieved – at least for the maternity-leave months we would have a small budget to put towards getting a replacement – but I didn't want to put in the training again only to have them leave when our apprentice came back. I reminded myself of my sister Jacquie's words: 'challenge is opportunity'. What we were experiencing was necessary to our future; it was making way for something better.
Christmas was a couple of days away. We buried ourselves in preparations although there wasn't much to do since we would be having Christmas as our small family of four. Seán's brother Neal and family had cancelled their plans to be with us to go to South Africa to be with Seán's dad instead. We went to Bordeaux for the day before Christmas Eve. It felt great to be together doing something completely different to our everyday activities.
Compared to our first visit 15 years before on a holiday from Ireland, Bordeaux city was transformed. Quiet silver trams slid on green carpets – mostly living grass – through organised clean streets. A core of the central part of the city had been pedestrianised and was bliss to walk around. From the tram stop at the Place de la Bourse we walked up to the Grand Théâtre, whose restaurant Le Quatrième Mur was the new stomping ground for Top Chef judge and 'meilleur ouvrier de France' ('best worker in France') Philippe Etchebest, directly opposite Le Grand Hôtel, where Gordon Ramsay held sway.
St Catherine Street stretched from there into the distance, the longest shopping street in Europe. We walked its entirety, Sophia and Ellie in heaven. At the largest bookshop in southwest France, Librairie Mollat, we found copies of Grape Expectations and Saving Our Skins next to the full set of Harry Potter books. I felt like I had arrived.
We found an organic restaurant down a small side street in the old town and revelled in delicious fresh salads and quiche. Like the holiday on the coast, it felt like pure luxury to have a day off. But our apprentice dilemma nagged in the back of my mind. That night we tucked the girls into bed then Seán and I finished the tidying up.
'I can't take the uncertainty of this apprentice thing,' I said. 'We have to find a solution. I think we have to bite the bullet and take a second apprentice.'
'But the same thing could happen. I looked it up online. There are special forums to discuss how to organise and get the most out of summer maternity leave as an apprentice. It seems like a popular thing to do.'
'I will only hire men,' I said.
Seán guffawed, remembering my outburst to our friend so many years before.
'A French man cleaning gîtes, setting tables, serving lunches? I don't think so,' he said.
'You're right, it's a long shot,' I said, biting my lower lip.
France was still chauvinist, decades behind the UK and Ireland, and even further behind places like Canada and New Zealand.
'But even if you find the right person can we afford two?' Seán asked.
'We will be financially strained,' I said. 'But I don't think Sandrine will come back.'
'But we won't know until the end of her maternity leave after the summer,' said Seán.
'We'll have to play Russian roulette,' I said.
'I'm not sure,' said Seán. 'I think you should look into finding someone just for the summer. Maybe search for both and see which candidates are best.'
With that decided, we enjoyed our quiet Christmas en famille. Friends Pierre and Laurence de St Viance and Thierry and Isabelle Daulhiac joined us for New Year. We usually had New Year with Pierre and Laurence in the great hall of Château Saussignac that was their living room but that year I announced that the party was chez nous; a fancy-dress party with the themes of the colour pink and pointy shoes. Seán had a tradition of ragging Thierry about his pink sweaters and Pierre about his pointy shoes. Pierre generated hearty laught
er attired in bright-pink pointy shoes, pink cape and pink underpants, his solid frame and receding ginger hair perfectly offset by his rosecoloured Superman outfit.
After the break I put a job specification on the internet, contacted schools specialising in wine tourism and started the process of sorting through résumés again. It was time to move on.
A couple of years before, I was waiting for a friend in Bordeaux airport when the automatic glass doors of the arrivals hall opened and a slight man, with greying brown hair and spectacles, clad in a tweed jacket, stepped out and stopped in the sensor zone, suspending them open.
He announced in English-accented French, 'Can someone lend me a portable phone? Mine is in my suitcase in the hold and I need to get in touch with someone urgently.'
He didn't dare step out for fear of being shut out and not being able to get back for his luggage but he was desperate for a phone.
I came forward.
'Thank you!' he said, exuding relief. 'Our flight was so delayed. I should already be at an event.'
As he talked I realised he looked familiar. By the time he finished I thought I had it.
'Are you Steven Spurrier?' I asked.
'Yes, as a matter of fact I am.'
In front of me was one of the most renowned wine journalists in the world. He was a columnist for Decanter magazine, the wine magazine in the UK, and in fame probably second only to Jancis Robinson. Steven was a household name in wine circles across the globe, perhaps even more so since the screening of Bottle Shock, a film about a wine competition he had organised in Paris in the seventies when he owned a wine shop and school there. The despair of some of the scenes in the movie captured the angst of being a winemaker so perfectly I found it truly artful. We knew those feelings only too well.
'I'm here as guest speaker for a wine dinner,' said Steven. 'Thanks to you at least they know I'm on my way. May I ask who you are?'
'Caro Feely. Enchanté,' I said, using the French term but holding out my hand to shake his in the English way rather than leaning over to give him a kiss on each cheek. 'We're organic winegrowers in Saussignac.'
'Oh, very interesting. I regularly visit friends near there. Do you have a card? I will come and visit you next time I'm in the area.'
I dug into my bag and handed over a bent and lipstick-smeared home-printed business card, the only one I had, kicking myself for being so ill prepared and unprofessional. Steven didn't seem bothered.
'Well, it's been a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for lending me your phone,' he said and disappeared behind the glass doors with a wave.
I was enveloped by a warm feeling of unexpected good fortune.
Since then Steven had fulfilled his promise and visited us at the farm and I had seen him at Vinexpo.
'You will have no trouble selling these,' he said on tasting our wines.
His prediction was turning out to be true. We were turning wine buyers away instead of chasing them. I kicked myself for not taking a photo of him in the tasting room. I had missed the opportunity with two famous Irish personalities that had visited too. Our wall of fame could have been growing and with it our social media following. Taking photos had not entered my head.
Anne Twist, mum of Harry Styles of One Direction, visited incognito. She enjoyed a tasting and a cheese platter on our deck with friends that were regular visitors. I wouldn't have recognised Harry, let alone his mum, so I was blissfully oblivious. She posted a photo of a glass of wine and our tasting-room deck and vines on Instagram. Chiara Wilson, a friend of ours and a Harry fan, spotted it. By the time I looked, the photo already had 470,000 likes but alas no Feely branding. My daughters berated me for not recognising fame when it slapped me in the face and I berated myself for another lost photo opportunity.
Soon after, Martin Moran visited en route to a master of wine bash in Bordeaux. It was a while since we had seen him.
'God, I can't believe how much this place has changed. You have been working hard,' he said.
'The buildings have changed, the tasting room and Lodge are new since your visit, but the biggest fundamental change is the vineyard,' I said. 'Perhaps it's harder to see on the face of it but every year we see an improvement, a change in the health of the farm. Claude Bourguignon, a top soil scientist in France, reckons if it has been farmed chemically for thirty years it will take thirty years to get full health back.'
'That will take some stamina,' said Martin drily.
'Indeed,' I said and laughed, picturing us in twenty years. 'But already after three years of organic conversion we saw a big difference: the chemical residues were gone; the wild orchids came back. Every year the disease resistance of the vines increases; more of the natural clover and other beneficial plants install themselves; the biodiversity increases.'
I pointed to the clover thick around our feet as we made our way back up from the vineyard.
In the tasting room I placed two glasses and a spittoon on the table and we tasted through the range.
'Your wines have changed too. They're good – I mean, really good,' said Martin.
He wasn't one to mince his words or to give unearned compliments.
I poured the last wine.
'I think it's worth getting a Riedel glass for these reds if you have one,' said Martin. 'I sense another layer that isn't coming through.'
Riedel is a brand of crystal wine glass and it's considered one of the best because of the quality of their glass and their varietal specific shapes. I found our two Riedel glasses that were kept for special occasions and poured the pure Cabernet Sauvignon, a new cuvée recently christened Vérité.
We compared the two different glasses of the same wine.
'Incredible,' I said.
'I was at a Riedel tasting a couple of weeks ago and it reminded me just how much difference it can make. This is the Vérité,' he said, holding up the Riedel glass.
We laughed.
'Wow,' I said, shaking my head in disbelief. 'It has far more fruit. The barrel aromas are still there but they're playing a support role rather than being in front like they are in the other glass.'
We tried it with the other reds. There was a difference but nothing as dramatic as with the Vérité.
We finished tasting and took our glasses inside to delight hungrily in Seán's duck breast in a red wine reduction sauce with homegrown potatoes and spinach paired with our nosulphite-added Grâce. It was the perfect match; a dense, rich and mineral blend made for duck. Intense chat about Ireland and wine sparked. We proceeded on to a selection of organic cheeses, revelling in Valérie's tarin.
'I know it's a weekday for you so I won't keep you up,' said Martin. 'I might take a glass of that Vérité with me – I have some writing to do and it will be a good companion. Thanks for a great dinner.'
I filled his Riedel glass and he set off to write in the Wine Lodge.
The following morning I knocked on the door with the offer of coffee and muesli in our kitchen.
'Sorry to hurry you, Martin, but I need to turn the room around before the tour guests arrive,' I said after settling him in with a strong brew.
'No problem. I'll be fine here now I have coffee and Wi-Fi.'
I tore across to the Lodge, removed the sheets, raced round to put them on to wash, then returned with fresh sheets, vacuum and cleaning equipment. As I finished making the bed, Martin returned to fetch his suitcase.
'Ready to go?' I said.
'Another hard day of wine-tasting ahead of me,' he said and laughed. 'By God, you work hard. Another role you have to play: chambermaid.'
I laughed. 'Yep! I'm really sorry to rush you but I have to get this ready for clients this afternoon and I have wine-school guests arriving at ten.'
'No problem at all. It was fantastic to see you again and to see the progress you've made. You can be proud of yourselves. I know it isn't easy. Look at my friend Charles Martin. He worked hard, made great wine and still had to sell up.'
When Charles was forced to sell I f
elt desperate. He was one of the iconic estates in the region. Looking at the backdrop of him and others that had closed their doors reminded me how fortunate we were to be surviving as a small farm business.
We said our goodbyes and I raced on with the rest of my day. A few weeks later Martin covered no-sulphites-added Feely Grâce as his wine of the week and wrote about how we were back on 'terroir firma' and had turned our farm around. As I looked at the article I slapped my head. Martin was a celebrity wine journalist regularly featured on the radio and in print in Ireland, and I had missed another photo opportunity.
I waded through countless CVs and interviewed four candidates in person. None of them fit what we were looking for. Spring had arrived, the pace was gathering, and I felt like an Olympic sprinter limbering up for the spurt required to get through the six months of manic that was our season. I didn't want it to include falls, memory lapses or 14-hour days every day. It wasn't good for me or the rest of my family. We had to find someone – and soon.
