Vintage (35 page)

Two weeks after the marathon, after consultation with their maîtres de chais and their chefs de culture, most of the wine-growers in the Médoc had made their decisions. Picking, at the majority of châteaux, had begun.

With her récolte already decimated by the hailstorm – damage exacerbated by her ill-advised decision to carry out the green harvest – Clare, who inherited her gambling spirit from her father, was determined not to be proved a failure once more by him. Aware of the risk she took by waiting, she stubbornly refused to be browbeaten into picking her grapes in anything but peak condition.

Jean Boyer and Albert Rochas monitored the vines several times daily. They were glued to the météo reports on their TV sets at night. They implored her to get in at least the Merlot, which ripened earlier than the Cabernet, before there was a change in the weather.

The opinion of the cellarmaster and the chef de culture was backed by Halliday Baines. Although the oenologist had been regularly checking the Château de Cluzac grapes in his laboratory, Clare had not seen him since he had run the Marathon des Châteaux du Médoc et des Graves in a record three hours, fifteen minutes and twenty-four seconds.

While Christiane Balard had chased after Halliday, who had beaten the Dane by fifteen seconds, Clare had waited more than an hour for Jamie. Looking anxiously at each runner in turn as they limped up to the finishing line, she had recognised only the anguished face of Alain
Lamotte. Leaving Delphine to minister to Alain, who despite his exhaustion had looked at Clare in triumph, as if seeking her approval, as if he had run the race for her, Clare had joined the slow-moving traffic to look for Jamie. She found him guzzling oysters at the
thirty-seventh
kilometre, where finally beaten by the heat, he had abandoned the race.

Back at the château, he had lain naked on the bed, giving instructions to Clare as she massaged his sore muscles.

‘Begin with the lower back and buttocks to get
intramuscular
fluids flowing…’

‘Oh yes?’

‘…then work gently on the legs with long, flowing movements towards the heart… Ouch!’

‘Sorry.’

‘If the massage hurts, ask the therapist to be more gentle.’

‘Like so?’

‘Like so.’

‘If it still hurts, thank the therapist graciously and get off the table. Or alternatively’ – he pulled Clare down on top of him – ‘suggest that the therapist gets on to the table…’

Squatting in the Cluzac vineyards, among the beautiful black grapes, which were now almost bursting their skins with sugar, Halliday, who had finally found time to visit the château, narrowed his eyes against the sun, which had been shining constantly on the Médoc for the past six weeks. He squinted up at Clare.

‘These grapes are ninety-five per cent, Clare. You don’t want them overripe.’

‘No.’

‘Then what the fuck are you waiting for?’

Bullied as a child by her father, Clare had been
indoctrinated
by him with the belief that nothing but the best was good enough.

‘One hundred per cent. I thought winemakers were supposed to take risks?

Halliday straightened up.

‘We’re not stupid! What if it rains?’

‘The thermometer hit the roof today, Halliday. The highest September temperature on record…’

‘This is not Spain, Clare. It’s not California. Bordeaux is like England – the weather can change overnight.’

Clare had done her homework. Alone at night in the Baron’s Room, the old records spread out about her, she had studied the history of past Bordeaux vintages. She knew that an extra half per cent of alcohol in her Cabernet grapes could make all the difference between a decent wine and a sensational one. The vintage of 1961, which now fetched astronomical prices at auction, had been made from ‘perfectly mature grapes’; the weather in the Médoc, prior to picking, had been as hot as it was now, and the size of the récolte reflected her own decimated vineyards as did the average age of the vines. Pitting weather patterns and laboratory reports against her instincts, she had made up her mind to wait.

‘This vintage…’ she said slowly, ‘my vintage, is going to be better than the eighty-two, better than the seventy, better even than the sixty-one…’

‘You’re taking a big, big chance.’

‘That’s my problem.’

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

Halliday, in shorts and dusty walking boots, moved away from her towards the end of the row of vines with their brown and curling leaves.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’ve got work to do. I get paid for my advice. Pick your grapes, Mademoiselle de Cluzac!’ He patted Rougemont who had followed him. ‘Don’t keep a dog and bark.’

Taking into account the fact that some of the pickers, who were cooling their heels on the estate, not only had to be housed and fed but paid for doing nothing, and that the oenologist was concerned with guiding and controlling natural phenomena in order to avoid damaging mistakes, Clare was not as sanguine as she seemed.

At Médaillac and Ribagnac troupes of pickers worked their way methodically along the vines, cutting the bunches and placing them in the light wooden panniers to be collected and tipped into the larger hottes on the backs of the stronger workers. At Kilmartin and Estaminet, costly mechanical harvesters, with their containers of inert gas, which would prevent the grapes from oxidising before they reached the vats, flailed noisily and effectively between the rows.

While both Jean Boyer and Albert Rochas, like Halliday Baines, had made it clear to Clare that they thought she was making a big mistake, it was left to Sidonie, who was tired of providing for the bored and disgruntled harvesters, to tell Clare exactly what she thought of her.

‘You are as pig-headed as Madame la Baronne,’ the old cook said as she sweated over the iron pots in the kitchens. ‘As obstinate as your father. What experience have you had with the harvest? Don’t you think Jean and Albert, who have grapes in their bones, who have claret instead of blood in their veins, who imbibed
wine-wisdom
with their mother’s milk, who live, eat and breathe Château de Cluzac and its vineyards, know better than you?’

‘I told Papa…’

‘And your oenologue, with his fancy laboratoire. I don’t see you taking his advice.’

‘I told Papa, I would…’

‘Told Papa, told Papa! I regret the day I took you to the Baron’s Room, that I showed you the Mémo de Chasse. Château de Cluzac would have been better off with Monsieur Balard, better sold to that Monsieur Lamotte – don’t think I haven’t seen the two of you with your heads together in your office – better off with the South African and his bonsai trees, than with someone who doesn’t know a grape from a gooseberry. Look around you, Mademoiselle! Ribagnac is picking, Estaminet is picking, Gélise-Rose has nearly finished picking, even your cousins at Kilmartin…’

‘Sois patiente,’ Clare said.

‘Vous dites que je dois patienter? C’est bien ça. C’est tellement drôle. If you wait any longer the rain will come. And if the rains come… Bonté Divine, Mademoiselle Clare…’ Sidonie crossed herself. ‘We will all be out of a job!’

‘They’re all gunning for me,’ Clare told Jamie on the phone.

‘I’m on your side.’

‘I wish the harvest was over.’

‘So do I. There’s a trauma meeting in Brazil in October. You’ve always wanted to see Rio. You can go on the spouse tours…’

‘Jamie I can’t.’

‘Can’t what?’

‘Come to the conference.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Nonsense? You sound like…’

‘I thought that after the harvest…’

‘After the harvest I have to watch the fermentation.’

‘…it was all over bar the shouting.’

It was Halliday who had explained to her that her constant presence in the chais was crucial, not only until the grapes were in, but until after she had made her wine.

‘I have to make sure that the vats are heated, that there are no glitches before the assemblage…’

‘No sweat.’ Jamie’s voice was breezy but she knew that he was hurt. ‘I’ll go by myself.’

Ten days later, the neighbouring châteaux were making a start on their cabernets sauvignon. Although they had papered over the cracks, Clare was still feeling guilty about Jamie, as Albert Rochas, Jean Boyer and Monsieur Boniface, who had been holding a council of war in the cellars, made their way in a disgruntled posse to the Bureau d’Acceuil where they confronted her.

‘The report from the laboratoire!’ Albert banged a sheet of paper triumphantly in front of her. ‘Thirteen degrees for the merlots, and a full twelve degrees for the cabernets!’

‘La météo!’ Monsieur Boniface waved a fax in her face. ‘The long-range forecast is for rain.’

Out of the habit of praying, Clare yearned suddenly and unaccountably for the comfort of her rosary. Beseeching inwardly that her one small vintage, like that of Palmer in 1961, which had created unparalleled excitement in the Gironde, would produce an exceptional claret, she recalled the promise made by Our Lady to St Dominic that you shall obtain all you ask of me by recitation of the rosary.

Glancing at the three grim faces, at the sun, which still bathed the courtyard in golden light, although the temperature had dropped dramatically and there was a distinct hint of autumn in the air, she asked Jean Boyer, Albert Rochas and Monsieur Boniface to accompany her to the cellars.

In the chais, aware of the glum looks, the mutterings and the puzzled glances behind her, she drew four glasses of last year’s wine, still tannic from the wood.

Albert Rochas exchanged glances with Jean Boyer who rolled his long-suffering eyes towards the ceiling. She heard the impatient click of Monsieur Boniface’s false teeth.

Clare raised her glass.

‘A la vendange! We start picking tomorrow!’

‘Finalement!’ A smile of pure joy illuminated Albert Rochas’ face.

‘La vendange!’ Even Monsieur Boniface was smiling.

‘La vendange!’ Putting down his glass on an upturned barrel, Jean limped towards the door.

‘Ou vas tu, Jean?’ Albert looked surprised.

‘I’m going to tell them in the château!’

Scarcely able to contain her excitement that her harvest – Clare de Cluzac’s harvest – was actually going to begin, Clare was anxious to pass the good news on to Halliday.

After a long time, the telephone was answered by a female Australian voice.

Clare was puzzled. ‘I’d like to speak to Halliday Baines…’

‘Halliday’s not here; this is Jenny speaking.’

‘Jenny?’

‘Jennifer Patterson. Can I give Halliday a message?’

‘Not really. What time are you expecting him?’

‘It’s anybody’s guess. He’s bringing in the harvest. This is his busy time. Who shall I say called?’

‘Nobody. It doesn’t matter.’

‘Cheers then.’

‘Cheers.’

Two days later, the motley troupe of pickers – Spaniards from Andalusia, Portuguese and gypsies,
students from Holland and Germany, Rambos and Tarzans – each of whom had been assigned a particular position by Albert Rochas, made their methodical way along the rows cutting the ripe bunches of grapes. As they worked the muscular ‘carrier’, who had been allotted to them, emptied their baskets into the heavy plastic hotte strapped to his back. When the hotte was full, he dumped his load into the trailer on the sandy path at the end of the rows, to be collected by the tractor.

Clare watched the stooped shoulders, the agile fingers, the arms executing the ritualistic movements of some ancient ballet. As each picker made obeisance at the foot of the vine, before making his cut and holding out the swollen bunch like some votive offering, she realised suddenly that throughout her childhood the responsibility of getting the grapes from vineyard to vat in the shortest possible interval had always been her father’s. This time terrifyingly, it was down to her.

As she walked along the rows among the curses directed at blisters and at aching backs, among the snatches of song and the ribaldry, among the camaraderie forged in previous vintages, she caught sight of Halliday Baines, in his familiar bush hat, stopping now and then to take the secateurs from the hands of a slow picker, making his way towards her.

‘You’re a gutsy sheila!’ He looked up at the sky in which there was no sign of cloud. There was grudging admiration in his voice. ‘Where’s your chef de culture?’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘I just came from Ribagnac. There’s a trailer load of your grapes standing by the roadside.’

‘Merde’

Once the grapes were mature, it was not only speed of picking that was essential. A trailer load of grapes left standing in the midday sun, with the attendant risk of
oxidation, could spell disaster. Nothing that would detract from the final quality of the wine could be left to chance.

Clare had been up since five supervising the freshly sluiced pressing house where the sight of the previous day’s skins and bits of twig left in the giant screw of the égrappoir had sent her baying for blood. Later on she had had to give the women at the sorting table, who were so busy laughing and joking – using language that would make a publican blush – that they were letting rotten grapes into the égrappoir, the sharp end of her tongue.

Trembling with rage at the thought of an entire load of her precious grapes being left in the sun to rot; and, screaming as she went at a ‘carrier’ with a dirty hotte to replace it with a clean one, she returned to the château with Halliday in search of her chef de culture, who was responsible for the tractors.

‘Who’s Jenny?’

‘A mate.’

‘Is that it?’

‘What more do you want, her shoe size?’

‘Sorry.’

‘I’m sorry. I was over at Kilmartin last night. I had too much too drink.’

The atmosphere of carnival that pervaded the vineyards by day continued in the châteaux at night. Last night at Cluzac, when a weary Jean had finally closed the heavy doors of the pressing house, the sunburned pickers had trailed back through the vineyards to the château. Over dinner at the long tables, at the end of their first day, the wine had flowed freely.

It was midnight, by the bonfire they had made, by the time the gypsies got out their accordians and the Spaniards their guitars. Singing until they could sing no more, dancing to music which crossed the boundaries of
language, clapping their calloused hands, the troupe made their own entertainment, until even the most stout-hearted gave in, and, one by one, they drifted off to bed.