Grape Expectations (35 page)

  With my heart beating like a helicopter rotor and my adrenalin pumping I went up to the chicken house fearing the worst. A bundle of chickens were huddled in one corner. I consoled them quietly and counted. Eight. I did a circuit of the garden and the fields around the house then came back to count again. The number was the same. I was devastated. Sophia and Ellie came out. Sophia counted and burst into tears.

  'Don't worry, Sophia,' said Ellie sagely, not clear on what was happening.

  'Ellie's right,' I said. 'Don't worry. She is probably hiding because she's scared. We'll have a good look with Dad when he comes in for some water.'

  I didn't hold out much hope. I felt sad, far more affected than I thought I would be. I hadn't realised how much a part of the family they had become with their beady eyes, pointy beaks and hilarious lacy skirts.

  When Sean came in from doing his anti-fungal treatment we did another circuit looking for the missing chicken. Sean went up to the hen house and counted again. As he closed the gate, fearing she was lost for good, the hen stepped cautiously out of the thick hedge behind the coop. She had been hiding in fear since the incident. Hearing Sean's voice, she felt safe enough to come out. All of the chickens were safe and sound.

  Our gourmet hens were producing enough eggs to provide much of our protein requirements. We tightened our belts and stopped buying meat. Alongside decreasing our cost of living I had to create some income. The wine tourism had to succeed. My first reservation for a Médoc wine tour had just come in. Although it was far – almost three hours' drive – it was such an iconic part of Bordeaux I had to include it in my offerings. I read up frantically, filling in the gaps in my knowledge. It was like cramming for exams but more fun.

  Winemaking is one of the most ancient arts practised by man, dating back to around 8000 BC in parts of Asia; in parts of France, including our little corner of the Dordogne, winemaking predates Roman times by a few hundred years. The Médoc, an exception, was marshland until the late 1600s, when Dutch engineers were brought in to drain it for agriculture.

  Austin, my client, was a Scottish oenophile doing a grand tour of France. He was on his way through the south of France and once in Bordeaux, he was keen to visit a premier grand cru classé in the Médoc. I planned our day around a visit to Château Mouton Rothschild where they offered tasting as part of the tour. When we arrived for the tour I discovered an additional bonus was their art museum. Wine is widely depicted in ancient art. Walking around the ruins of Pompeii at twenty years old, I was impressed by the sophistication of two things: their art and their plumbing. The art depicted scenes of people enjoying wine and sensual pleasures that would make a regular Playboy-reader blush.

  The museum at Mouton was filled with similar ancient treasures. We passed millennia-old Greek pottery with scenes of the grape harvest and winemaking painted on their smooth round sides, magnificently erotic and celebratory. One showed nude men with massive erections lifting baskets of grapes into a press. There were scenes with dancing, music, winemaking and mystical elements like a man with horns and goat feet. Then we entered the modern art section with lurid pink pottery tea pots and other strange collectibles.

  Not a moment too soon for Austin, we left the museum and headed for the important bit – tasting wine. Before being allowed to taste the really good stuff we had the Rothschild's other two grand crus classés wines. The tour guide poured large helpings of each. They were delicious but nowhere near the greatness of the Mouton finale. It was deep, full and rich, not in a cloying overripe way, but in a structured, robust way.

  'Now that's a wine for me,' said Austin, draining his glass. 'Nothing like a little Pauillac for breakfast.'

  By the end of the day Austin had a selection of grand crus classés in his boot. He was a true bon vivant, someone who drank for pleasure and could afford to drink the really good stuff. I hoped all my clients would be as much fun.

  Alongside the tours I offered wine classes in our newly completed tasting room: the two-hour session that I called 'Introduction to French Wine'. It was an idea we hoped would bring clients to our tasting room door. My knowledge and my tasting and teaching skills were on a massive learning curve.

The old friends of Garrigue, the mice, continued to be part of the landscape. As I pulled the flat-pack boxes off a pallet to prepare a new wine order, a mouse leapt off the stack like a small, grey flying saucer and scampered across the room. I screamed and ran in the opposite direction, my heart beating like a runaway train.

  I could not help my reaction of 'scream and run'. This one had created a beautiful nest out of shreds of paper from some of the packing around the boxes. Fortunately there were no baby mice in it. Mice are tiny but I was scared witless by them. It was illogical but I couldn't stop it. Sean, grumbling about my lack of country wife skills, checked for the mouse and set a trap.

  Once he was sure there was no sign of the intruder, I got the boxes I needed and cleaned the stockroom from top to toe to make sure there were no more unwanted guests. At every moment I expected another mouse to leap out at me.

  The same week, as I was walking home from Hillside vineyard, a large snake slithered off the vineyard track into the limestone cliffs. According to Myreille's theory, I had to remain calm if I was bitten. Here I was, far from being bitten, but my heart was racing. Clearly I was one of the ones who would be DOA at Bergerac Hospital if I ever had the misfortune of receiving a snake bite.

  Sean mocked me. He had never seen a snake despite being outside far more than I. A little while before, I had nearly stood on a snake in my flip-flops. The racket the snake made slithering clumsily across the gravel path was like tambourines but Sean, a couple of metres away, heard nothing. I leapt a metre into the air and ran away screaming, proving to Sean what a wimp I was.

  The next mouse episode took place during a course by the Syndicat des Vignerons Bio d'Aquitaine (SVBA), the organic wine producers' association.

  The instructions to find the first class in Entre-Deux-Mers were typically French. I had a farm name in a
lieu-dit
in an obscure village and no phone numbers. All communes are made up of many
lieu-dits
, the old name of the place, almost like a street name. Our area in Saussignac was La Garrigue so that was the address for all the houses on our road including ours, which was the final property at the end of the cul-de-sac. I found the village but could not find the
lieu-dit
. Panicked at running a few minutes late, I called the association to see if they could help but got the answering machine. After circling the village several times I stopped at a winery that looked open.

  Finding no one inside I paced around hoping for a call back or for the appearance of life. Five minutes later two burly farmers came out of the nearby house. They were taken aback to find a mobile-phone-packing foreign woman in their yard but they knew the property and quickly explained how to get there. Soon I was flying along vague roads in the middle of nowhere.

  At Château Ferran a small group of people consisting of the owner, the oenologist giving the course and the woman who ran the organic union were talking in the courtyard. I was fifteen minutes late but the first attendee to arrive.

  A half-hour later when the other vignerons, mostly handsome young men, arrived, there were no introductions. I thought perhaps everyone else knew each other but later realised most of them didn't. The course was aimed at experienced winegrowers looking to extend their knowledge and would offer a solid grounding on principles of organic and biodynamic winemaking. The eight sessions would take place over a full year so we could chart the progress of the wines through a full winemaking cycle. It was another step on the road to understanding the mysteries of winemaking. At the end of the session the other attendees gave me a familiar kiss on each cheek. It was strange having good-looking men whose names I didn't know kiss me but it was a French habit I knew I could get used to.

  The next class, a month later, was at a St Émilion grand cru property. I had learnt my lesson about timing and arrived a half-hour late as the class was starting. This time there were many new people but again no introductions. Halfway through the class a little mouse ran along the shelf a few metres from our table. I would have been screaming had I not lost my voice from the shock. The mouse looked relaxed and not put off by the human voices in his domain. I was ready to leap onto the table but noting the calm demeanour of the other farmers I remained frozen in my chair. Anne, the owner of the property said fondly 'There's our little mouse.'

  If I was to be a true farmer's wife, I would have to overcome my insane fear of tiny rodents. I didn't want them in my house but after experiencing the calm of all those vignerons in that converted barn my reaction to mice was transformed. If they could remain calm, I could too.

A few days later, Sean prepared some bottles for a Friday evening mystery wine session for the two of us. It was a game we had started to play a few months before. He poured a glass and set it down in front of me. I lifted, sniffed, swirled, sniffed again, then took a swig. The wine filled me with warmth. It was rich.

  'That's delicious. What is it?'

  'You tell me.'

  I looked at the glass in the light. It looked quite bright but on the rim it was turning slightly tawny. All wine browns with age. Red wine goes from purplish red to brick red, and unoaked dry white wine goes from straw yellow with perhaps a hint of green, to deep gold, as it ages. Cabernet sauvignon is particularly purple when it is young. This one was well past its purple stage and into mahogany territory.

  The next clue was the aroma. The wine was ripe blackcurrant with a hint of spice. Wines range from upfront fresh fruit in a young wine to complex and cooked fruit aromas in an older wine.

  Finally, and most importantly, comes the third element, the taste of the wine. I reflected on my memory bank. The wine was reminiscent of a vintage I had tasted in Médoc.

  'Tastes like a ripe Médoc grand cru.' My range of vision was Bordeaux-centric. 'Definitely oaked.'

  Salvador Dalí said: 'Who knows how to taste wine never drinks wine again but tastes secrets.' Wine is an expression of the place and the year that it was produced, a magical journey back to the summer of its birth. As I learned more about wine tasting, I realised that with practice, one could tell what age a wine was, where it was from and the grape variety without looking at the label.

  The wine whispered its secrets; messages in the form of look, smell and taste. The colour was the first clue about its style and age.

  'I don't know. It seems slightly "cooked". No, I don't think it's Médoc. It seems too hot.' Sean played the wine along, not ready to give me the answer. We discussed other clues that it offered: the alcohol, the acidity, the tannins, the aromas. I named just about every place except the correct one. Eventually he relented and gave me the answer.

  'It's a ripe, expensive cabernet sauvignon from Walla Walla in Washington state.'

  A client who booked The Wine Cottage gîte had given it to us as a gift. The self-catering unit was paying off in more ways than one. 'That's where Jeff and Sheila have their vineyard,' I said. Jeff and Sheila were my first tour customers, the people who I almost subjected to the most disgusting toilet in the whole of France.

  Many grand crus in the Médoc have a large percentage of cabernet sauvignon so I had been in the right arena with the varietal on my first guess but on the wrong continent.

  'Now that I know what it is, it's reminiscent of the South African cabernet sauvignon we had a few weeks ago,' I added. 'In fact, I think I would struggle to tell the difference if they were both here. It's the globalisation of the wine industry.'