Grape Expectations (17 page)

  It was nearly midnight when I dredged the last of the rinsing water off the winery floor. The faint hum of harvest machines could still be heard in the distance. Farmers were working all hours to get their grapes in because of the rising risk of rot.

  Jean-François called to let us know it was all go for Thursday. He sounded exhausted. He was working almost round the clock. Thierry Daulhiac assured me that this was the most difficult
vendanges
he could remember. Normally, in our area, the harvest took place over about four weeks with at least a week between each grape variety. This year, because of the weather, it was all happening the same week and we were getting a baptism of fire.

  Sean and John worked through the day, cleaning the vats, pipes and buckets for the merlot harvest. Around ten that evening Sean prepared to spray tartaric acid onto the cement vat we planned to use as I read the French instructions.

  'This says it needed to be done at least three days before use.'

  'Feck,' exclaimed Sean, 'you'd better phone Lucille.'

  
'C'est vrai,'
said Lucille, thankfully answering her phone in spite of the late hour, 'the tartaric acid needs several days to dry otherwise the wine could react with the cement of the tank. You must find another vat.'

  The only option was one of the semi-underground tanks that we had in the
pressoir
. I wanted to avoid them because they were dangerous but now we had no choice. Sean quickly filled his hand pump with the required sterilisation product then squished himself through the lid in the floor of the
pressoir
and descended into the heart of the vat.

  I felt like I was on a high-pressure technology project. We were working crazy hours and under intense conditions but a camaraderie was developing between the three of us. Things were going a lot better with Sean now that the harvest was in full swing. I was still being treated like the weakest link but since establishing myself as the 'expert' on the finer points of winemaking like yeasts and analysis, I was getting a little respect. Sean emerged from the underground vat and we did a final check that everything was ready. Ellie was much better and we got four hours of solid sleep.

We woke to a star-studded sky. Ten acres of merlot made it our biggest day. At five sharp the blue monster hummed into the courtyard. I climbed up to hitch a ride to show Jean-François what we were picking for the day. Riding high on the open wing of the harvest machine I felt awed by our starlit vineyards laid out peacefully under the infinite velvet sky.

  Back at the winery the lights were on and it was buzzing with activity as Sean and John connected pipes and checked vats. Sean backed up the first load of merlot, a trailer of perfectly formed berries with no foreign matter to be seen. Around dawn as we hooked up the fourth trailer the church bells in Saussignac started ringing and carried on eerily all morning.

  'Someone's died in the village,' I said.

  'Always look on the bright side,' said Sean.

  'No, I'm sure that's what it is.' I hoped I was wrong.

  On the ninth load fatigue was setting in. John and I tried to get the harvest pipe onto the trailer and it took on a life of its own, reared up and whacked us around the heads. We sat down for a few minutes until the world stopped spinning. Neither of us was seriously hurt, just a little bruised.

  After a total of eleven trailers we declared victory. Ravaged by the exertion and stress of the week, we were relieved that we only had one hectare of cabernet sauvignon and our Saussignac dessert wine left to do.

  Later that day we heard two vignerons had been killed in a tragic accident. The father and son were suffocated by carbon dioxide in a subterranean vat in their winery that morning. They lived down in the valley a few kilometres from us; we could see their property from Garrigue. Though we didn't know them personally, after hearing the news I stood on the balcony looking at their farm with tears pouring down my cheeks. It was gut-wrenchingly sad.

  We had filled one of our semi-underground vats with the merlot. The thought of it made me nauseous. That night I had nightmares about Ellie falling into it. The tank lid was in the middle of the floor of the
pressoir
and when filled with fermenting wine, the
chapeau
, the thick cap of grapes that forms over the juice, was about 40 centimetres from it.

  I kept picturing Ellie leaning over to pick a grape out of the
chapeau
and falling in. This spells instant death as the carbon dioxide suffocates and the liquid drowns. I woke up in a cold sweat. It happened over and over again. I took a double dose of my sleeping remedy.

  The following day I struggled to keep my eyes open but the fermenting white juice needed to be kept cool to hold the fresh fruit aromas, while the red juice needed to be kept warm, to extract the colour and the flavour from the grapes. Our Kreyer temperature control system helped us do this, but it was far from automated. Nothing was as simple as a flick of the switch. Constant pump work was required, manoeuvring heavy pipes and equipment in an endless dance. There was more work than we could handle, even with no weekend. I didn't know then that there would be no weekends for more than two months.

  Lucille arrived for her Friday visit.

  'More bad weather is forecast. You should harvest the cabernet sauvignon early, perhaps next week,' she said, reaching for our winery file.

  I tried to snatch it back: the densities were adjusted, but the graphs were still missing.

  'I haven't done the graphs,' I mumbled, expecting to be severely reprimanded.

  
'C'est pas grave,'
said Lucille. 'You are in full harvest.' At least I knew our 'serious
oenologue
' would cut us some slack in 'full harvest'.

  After Lucille left I prepared the yeast for the merlot. Part way through, two buckets of yeast didn't puff up in the normal way. Convinced we hadn't fully rinsed the disinfectant off the buckets I made ready to dash for more of the expensive stuff but Sean convinced me to wait. By the time the yeast was ready it had risen the same as the rest. It was a different strain, the one for our premium wine from Hillside and Cimitière vineyards, clearly a yeast of a more restrained and refined character. We knew next to nothing then about the benefits of the natural yeasts we could extract from our own organic vineyard that could offer us the unique flavour of our terroir; that first year we followed Lucille's instructions to the letter.

  We stole a few moments every morning and evening to review the wines' progress, taking the temperatures and densities and tasting them. The constant tasting of the red wines left my tongue ravaged by tannins, making it difficult to drink my early morning cup of tea brewed so strong you could walk on it – but it didn't stop me.

  The wines were like people, each with their own individual characteristics. Garrigue and Hillside were merlot grapes that were picked the same morning, had similar care through the year and were barely 500 metres from one another in the vineyard but they behaved and tasted totally different. Hillside was more intense and cool, while Garrigue was fruity and hot. So far our yields were well below what we had hoped for but the quality and concentration compensated.

  Another weekend passed in a blur of winery work. On Tuesday, while Sean did the winery pipe dance, I ran round the cabernet sauvignon vineyards collecting sample grapes to take into the laboratory for analysis. Later Lucille arrived with the analysis and told us we should harvest the cabernet sauvignon the following day.

  'We won't be ready even if we work all night,' said Sean. 'The sauvignon blanc needs to be moved out of the
garde vin
to make way for the cabernet sauvignon and that alone will take a couple of hours with the cleaning and sterilising required.' A
garde vin
is a vat with a floating lid that offers more flexibility as the volume can be adjusted by changing the height of the floating lid. This
garde vin
was nearly 4 metres tall and only about a metre wide, making it relatively unstable in comparison to fatter, shorter vats. We nicknamed it 'Tower'.

  'Can't we wait until next week?' asked Sean. He had a bad cold and wasn't feeling up to another harvest day.

  'We must get the grapes in,' said Lucille. 'More rain is forecast. If we wait, the rot could set in.'

  We took her advice. We didn't want to risk our precious cabernet sauvignon. I called Jean-François to book the blue monster. He promised to call back as soon as he had a slot. The next day he confirmed for the following morning. We were in the harvest hurricane. There was no respite. Nature was calling the shots. Sean emptied, cleaned and sterilised the
garde
vin
then we spent hours wrestling the harvest pipe onto the top of it. I was terrified that it wouldn't hold with the force of the grapes coming through, and having been whacked by the pipe once before I was nervous, but there were no other options. I was still having nightmares about Ellie and the underground vat. Sean had a bad sore throat. I went to bed totally shattered.

  The blue monster arrived just after four. At 3 metres high with fiercely powerful lights it was great for game-viewing. As we drove down through the vineyards a hare loped nonchalantly down the row in front of us and veered off into the next row then a deer took off into the shadows. I pointed out the markers and waved goodbye to Jean-François.

  Our first load came in and we hooked up what we called the Serpent pipe then watched nervously as Sean slowly increased the revs. The first few grapes shot over the
cuve
(vat) onto the winery wall but the pipe stayed in position and Tower remained stable. After a minor adjustment the load went in smoothly. All the cabernet sauvignon was safely in Tower before dawn. We felt a deep sense of relief that it was the last time we would see the blue monster that season. All that was left was our Saussignac to hand-harvest in a few weeks.

  Sean took the
vendanges
trailer round to the side of the house for cleaning. I heard the girls crying and went inside. As I reached the top of the stairs I heard Peta-Lynne, Sean's mum, yelling full throttle for me. Both girls sensed something serious and screamed in earnest. I told them to be calm, closed the security gate firmly behind me and ran back down the stairs.

  Sean was standing over the sink holding a bloody tea towel over his hand. I had nasty déjà vu.

  'I've chopped my finger off,' he said.

I grabbed a bundle of clean tea towels and the car keys and helped him into the car. Then we were flying along the Route des Coteaux. In spite of the high speed it was the longest drive to Bergerac ever. Sean was remarkably calm but cursing his mistake prolifically; he had accidently stuck his finger into the exit pipe of the harvest trailer with the auger going. It was another strike due to fatigue.

  'Perhaps we shouldn't be doing this,' I said as we passed the Barses' turn-off. 'It's too dangerous. Your health is more important than making wine.'

  'But I love it,' said Sean through gritted teeth. 'Now is not the time to discuss this, Carolinus.'

  'But is it worth it?' I asked. Trips to Bergerac Hospital, the death of our neighbours and my nightmares about Ellie were taking their toll.

  We got to the now familiar
urgences
(A&E). It was a mere three months since we were last there. Sean was taken away. Fifteen minutes later I was told to go home as he would be in hospital for the day and perhaps longer, depending on the surgery.

  I felt desperate on the way home. Sean had been in charge. I didn't know how John and I would cope now Sean was off the team. The whites still needed to be cooled and the reds needed to be pumped over. I couldn't contemplate where to start. I didn't know which pump should be used for what or how the Kreyer refrigeration unit worked. I left a message for Lucille asking her to call me to prioritise the work, then I called Jamie and asked him to stop by. I walked into the
pressoir
and John said, 'So what now, chief?' which heightened my panic.