Grape Expectations (29 page)

  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.

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.'

  I felt sick to my core.

  'How much would it cost to get a whole new unit?'

  'They start at around twenty thousand.'

  We had to do the repair. I called Sonia to book a sleepover for the girls. We needed to be up and working by four in the morning. There would be no room for little people amongst the heavy machinery of harvest time.

  Benoit messaged that the part would arrive that afternoon. We were right down to the wire but we could not push the harvest out by another day. Ad and I paced up and down each row carefully, removing everything that had the slightest hint of rot. It was sunny and the vineyard was glowing with an early hint of autumnal orange on some of the leaves, but we hardly noticed. The grapes were clean; only three bunches had to be removed. On our return we found Benoit and Sean huddled over the Kreyer.

  They were in the same position when I got back from fetching the girls. They ran to Sean yelling 'Papa, Papa!' and leapt into his arms. It was the first time I had seen him smile all day. He kissed them then sent them to me for their
'goûter'
, the afternoon snack of brioche and juice. Getting dinner ready, the stress was almost insupportable. As the sun set over the ancient stone barn I heard the hum of a healthy Kreyer rebound across the courtyard and ran outside, overjoyed.

  
'Ça marche,'
said Benoit, giving me a relieved smile. Even the machine artisans working in the wine industry felt the pressure of the harvest. They went to extraordinary lengths to make sure equipment was fixed. I dressed the girls in their pyjamas, packed their overnight bag and walked them up to Sonia. It was their first night away from home.

  'You must listen to Sonia and make sure you eat all your breakfast.' Ellie cried and Sophia comforted her with a big hug. They bravely said goodnight. I tried to control the tears welling up and gave them each a
bisou
.

  Sean and Ad were finishing up. We were ready and it wasn't ten o'clock. How different it felt to the chaos of the previous year.

  I slept well and woke at four the next morning to a clear sky filled with stars. After wolfing down some muesli and a cup of strong tea I stepped out into the night. Minutes later the harvest machine arrived with a fine-looking chauffeur named Jean-Louis. He was tall with dark curly hair and should have been on the cover of
Men's Health
, not driving a machine in the depths of the Dordogne at four in the morning. I got up onto the harvest machine with renewed vigour.

  A short ride and we were in the first vineyard of sauvignon blanc. I indicated our markers to him and headed back up. The first load was perfect and pressing went smoothly. In an hour all the sauvignon blanc was safely up at the winery. The juice was exceptional and super-concentrated but the yields were extremely low. As long as this was unique to the sauvignon blanc, we'd be OK. We had done a yield estimate and were expecting a reduction of a third, not more than half.

  That afternoon Ad disappeared over the horizon on his bike while I did a second pass through the vineyard. It was looking good. The sémillon would be our most intense harvest day. I took the girls over to Sonia again. Ellie cried even harder and Sophia tried to comfort her. She was still adjusting to school and now she was being shipped out for another night. I hugged her tight and promised it would be the last night away. We would have to find another solution for the harvest nights of the reds. I couldn't do this to Ellie again at two and a half.

  A few hours later the winery was buzzing with activity and light in the cold night air. Jean-Louis hummed into the courtyard and I showed him our carefully marked sémillon. Soon the harvesting was complete and we had two trailers waiting to go into the second pressing.

  We emptied the press in haste aiming the pressed grape skins carefully into our small trailer so we could carry them away to the property entrance where the government distillery would collect them. We wanted the waiting grapes to be in the press before sun filled the courtyard. Time was of the essence. With the pressings removed we started up the harvest trailer to refill the press. A third of the way through the load the trailer jammed.

  'We'd better unhitch it and empty the other trailer,' said Sean.

  'How will we get the grapes out?' I asked.

  'We could empty it by hand,' suggested Ad.

  'That could take hours. We can't have it sitting around that long.'

  We moved the blocked trailer aside and covered the grapes with a layer of carbon dioxide gas followed by a large canvas sheet then emptied the other trailer.

  There were about 2,500 litres of grapes left in the jammed trailer. By hand, that was the equivalent of about 250 10-litre bucketloads. A quick review of options made it clear that the manual solution was the only viable one. It was a race against the clock. Ad was like a machine, bucketing load after load across from one trailer to the other. Sean and I took turns bucketing, putting carbon dioxide into the tray and watching the press to pump the free-run juice into the vat.

  In thirty minutes we had the harvest trailer emptied of its two and a half tons of grapes. As the sun crept into the courtyard we transferred them smoothly into the press. While I monitored the level of juice in the press tray, Ad and Sean carefully removed the back of the auger from the trailer. Stuck in the screw was a large metal hook, the kind we use to fix the vineyard trellising. I vowed we would stop using them.

  All our whites were safely in the winery and Sean was delighted with the taste. I plugged the yields into our finance spreadsheet and discovered it was more depressing than I thought. If the yields of this harvest were the norm there was no way the farm would ever be able to pay us for our hard work. In fact, we had to pay in for the privilege of working long hours and getting no holidays. It was gutting. But if we didn't have the wine harvested and made, the situation would be worse. I closed the spreadsheet and promised I would not look at it again until the harvest period was over. I could not support the stress of the harvest and that spreadsheet at the same time.

  A friend, John, arrived for a holiday thinking he would be in time to help us with the reds. He texted his mum, who had farmed all her life.

  'On my way to the wine farm in France. At last, some real farm work!'

  'That's not real farming, it's farming for the rich,' came his mother's reply.

  The perception was reaffirmed by the wine industry with photos of winemakers seated in idyllic locations, vines and peaceful oak barrels miraculously tending themselves in the background. It gave an image of history, tradition and calm, a vision of a peaceful existence well away from the rush and chaos of modern life, something timeless. We were in the midst of the period of the year where this delusional view was most at odds with the reality: a period of extremes, of pressurised physical work.