Grape Expectations (22 page)

  I would look forward in my diary to find an available slot to call at exactly the time suggested. A few weeks later I called again on the suggested day.

  Me: 'Hello, please may I speak to Monsieur X.'

  Madame: 'Sorry, Monsieur X is on holiday please call back next week.'

  And so on. I finally got in touch with Monsieur X and discovered that the only way to get the
dotation
(official status) was to have a
jeune agriculteur
specific loan on purchase of the property or on a related investment very soon after the purchase. The doors seemed to be closed.

  A few days later, however, in a chance discussion with Cécile at our weekly meeting, we realised that the previous owners had not declared their
arrachage
or 'grubbing up' of a small vineyard a few years before. Grubbing up is the removal of old vines from a vineyard no longer in production. If they had declared this grubbing up, as was legally required, the rights for the vineyard would be available to plant elsewhere on the property, for up to eight years. Cécile thought it had been grubbed up about five years before so she was hopeful we would be able to use these rights.

  I called the
douanes
, the French customs department, who controlled active vineyard planting rights, and asked if there was any hope for us to declare the
arrachage
and reclaim the rights.

  
'Ça dépend,'
said Madame, the same lady who had helped me through the 'you have no white vines' crisis. 'Write us a letter and we will look into it.'

  A few months later two
douanes
officials arrived at the property to verify that the vineyard was indeed grubbed up. It was easy to see where the vineyard had been as the trellising poles were still in place.

  'The problem is that we don't know when it was grubbed up,' said Madame. 'Unless we can verify that it was in the year you claim, we won't be able to help you.'

  The future looked uncertain for the old peach field. A month later Madame from the
douanes
called me.

  'We found a reference to the vineyard in a
contrôle
by one of our officials the year before you claim it was pulled up so we can permit you to do a late
déclaration d'arrachage
.'

  Christmas had arrived.

  '
Par contre
, the previous owners overplanted by four ares which we will have to subtract from the rights and you will have to pay a ninety-euro fine for the late declaration. You must come into our offices to do the formalities.'

  (There are 100 'ares' in a hectare, and for those on the imperial system 1 hectare is equal to 2,47 acres, which are not the same as ares.)

  'No problem,' I said quickly.

  The reduction meant my Christmas present was down by 10 per cent but I felt like I had conquered the world. We still had to plant it and then wait five years, of course. To get aid for the planting of the vineyard we would have to plant at a higher density which meant buying a new tractor and associated machinery. That was a dilemma for another day. At least this small success meant there was hope for a portion of the old peach field getting productive again.

Sophia was going to school and enjoying it, Ellie was back to playing happily on her own even when I did such boring things – to her – as working on our direct sales campaigns. There was something about me being on the PC that generally made the kids want to interrupt. If I was doing something physical like gardening, cooking or hanging up washing they were happy to play alongside. Sean took time with the girls in the evenings playing and reading stories. I had noticed that his dad had been the same. I would often find John sitting head bowed deep in conversation with two small girls showing them something – a leaf from a tree, a ladybird, an acorn. Now that the harvest was over Sean shared the cooking duties like he used to; although washing and cleaning the house, which we had shared in Dublin, were still all left to me. He was back to being the person I knew. The four months around harvest time had been like living with a stranger. I still felt a little raw and suspicious but I cancelled my flight reservation. It would take time for the trust in our relationship to rebuild.

  Sean steadily made his way through his second year of pruning. One Sunday working in Hillside he heard hunting dogs. A giant wild boar dashed up the vineyard about 20 metres away from him and made for our small oak forest, followed by dogs and hunters. Sean waved frantically and yelled full throttle.

  We were a
chasse interdite
area, so no hunting should take place on our land, but it was his own survival he was worried about, expecting a shot to come flying in his direction. Before the hunters reached Sean, the boar came roaring back, leapt off the cliff above the vineyard, sailed several metres through the air and landed in the row next door. He sped past without giving Sean a glance and barrelled up the other side of the valley. By the time he reached Gageac the dogs were so far behind him Sean was sure he had got away. Having come so close to tusks that could have slashed him into small portions, never mind the gunshots, Sean took an early lunch to recover.

  While Sean tackled pruning in freezing temperatures, wild boar and gunshots, I zoned in on point three in 'operation survival': assessing the viability of a holiday house, or more specifically an 'eco' holiday house. The 'eco' was for environmental but also for economic. We had to do this on a shoestring. Internet research yielded wooden cabins, composting toilets and other innovative solutions. Even if we did most of the work ourselves, a new holiday house would cost us a hundred thousand euro. Banks were not giving loans against properties with vineyards because of the risk. In addition, since it would be a new building, there was no guarantee we would get planning permission. Construction bureaucracy sounded like it could rival vineyard rights.

Helen and Derek, friends from New Zealand who were on a six-month trip to see their sons, both of whom lived in France, arrived to give Sean a hand with vineyard maintenance. I worried that retirees might not be up to jobs like pulling the wood – removing unwanted vine growth from the trellising – and was dreading another bout of 'Sean the Recluse'.

  Helen was blonde with wonderful apple cheeks, the look of a happy chef and a gift for creating gourmet delights. Derek was witty and wiry, with a doctorate from MIT, but preferred to spend his days making furniture or growing olives on their smallholding. Sean showed them how to pull the wood in the sémillon vineyard then came up for a meeting with a bottle supplier. At lunch Helen and Derek returned.

  'We've finished the vineyard,' said Derek. 'What can we do next?'

  We had estimated two days to get through that work.

  'You can relax this afternoon. I don't think Sean has finished pruning the next vineyard,' I said.

  'We want to clear the brush around the cliffs near the hangar. It looks like a satisfying job. I think it will take about three days.'

  'How will you do it?' Sean and I had looked at the wall of brush he was referring to and decided it was not a job for a man, but for a very large machine. The brush was 5 metres deep, 3 metres high and about 100 metres long.

  'With your chainsaw that I saw in the shed. I'll cut it down with the chainsaw, Helen will help me pull it out, then we'll burn it.'

  Derek had sussed out the brush and done an inventory of our tools. The next day when I went down to give them a hand they had uncovered the first section of a magnificent amphitheatre of white cliffs that had been the old quarry. Derek cut back swathes of plant matter then Helen dragged the trees and brush out to feed the bonfire. Some of the brambles were as thick as a man's arm and 50 metres long.

  When Sean came up from pruning and saw what they had done he said, 'We're wimps.'

  On the third day they moved up to the section on top of the cliff. This dense wall of wood ran from the tasting room to the far side of the winery. From the vineyard below we could see there was something on the back of the winery, perhaps old rabbit cages. Sean and I had tried to reach it by cutting a path through the wood a few months before, and failed. It was like Sleeping Beauty's forest, impenetrable. Or so I thought.

  Sean got back that evening exploding with excitement. 'Come and look, Carolinus!'

  Around the side of the tasting room, a magnificent view had opened up, and the building wasn't old rabbit cages: it was a solid stone structure on two levels of 20 square metres each. To the side of it were two tiny, low stone buildings. It was a miracle.

  The following day I visited Tim, our building engineer friend who had helped Sean with the tasting room roof, armed with photos and hoping to get some ideas for how to transform this ruin into a gîte, a self-catering cottage.

  'Is the building on the
cadastrale
?'

  'I don't know.' We had a copy of the
cadastrale
, or commune map, of our property which included all the official buildings, but I hadn't thought to look at it.

  'If it is you should get planning permission more easily. It looks solid from the photos. I'll have a look next time I'm over your way.'

  As soon as I got home I checked the
cadastrale
and found the ruin on it. I was over the moon with excitement.

That Christmas, we sold the last of the stock we'd bought. Now the pressure was on to finish the new wines as we needed some to sell. While the whites and the rosé were behaving like perfect children, the reds were unwilling teenagers. They had made it through their alcoholic fermentation but steadfastly refused to progress with their malolactic fermentation (often referred to simply as 'malos'): the process in which tart malic acid is transformed into softer lactic acid. It is a natural deacidification allowed to take place in almost all red wines save those like beaujolais nouveau, the light red wine that is bottled immediately after its alcoholic fermentation, but mostly avoided in white wines so they keep their fresh Granny Smith apple acidity. Sean diligently heated the wines to the optimal temperature, monitoring and carefully timing our equipment which, of course, was far from automated.

  Meanwhile, to heat the house we bought a wood-burning stove to augment our struggling system. After the purchase the installer explained that the old exit pipe was no good as it passed through the wall horizontally so would never draw correctly. Creating a new exit would be difficult in our 300-year-old building with walls almost a metre thick. It needed a minimum of a 45-degree angle so the hole had to traverse about 2 metres of wall. We spent hours trying to find an elegant solution.

  In the roof over the lounge was something that looked like a chimney. It ran through our upstairs bathroom then stopped, concreted over where it should have come out in the lounge below. Why hadn't the previous owners used it instead of cracking through the wall at right angles? It didn't make any sense. Sean climbed onto the roof and verified it had all the makings of a chimney.