Grape Expectations (23 page)

  We didn't want to crack through our beautiful ceiling that had taken my parents weeks to renovate without being sure so we decided to contact the family that owned the property for fifty years prior to the people we bought from. We had not met Monsieur and Madame Battistella but we had heard a lot about them. Monsieur Bonny was a close friend of theirs so I asked him for an introduction.

  The Battistellas arrived in a smart new car. A fit and handsome couple, they looked like prosperous, retired bankers rather than winegrowers wizened by decades of hard work. Monsieur told us that heart problems had forced him to sell the property. I completely understood: with the quantities of chocolate I needed to manage the stress of Garrigue I was sure I would have heart problems in a few years myself.

  
'Vous avez fait des travaux!'
said Monsieur Battistella. 'It's good to see Garrigue getting back its beauty. We had gardens all around the house. And down here,' he pointed to the jungle to the left of the house 'there are stone stairs down to a well. We built the chimney with the second level of the house but never used it. It will work perfectly. Now, when can I collect my two hundred litres of red wine?'

  We had forgotten the
ancien droit
that meant we had to hand over 200 litres of our precious wine to Monsieur Battistella.

  'The malos aren't finished,' said Sean. 'You can have some white in the meantime. We'll call you when it's ready.'

  Monsieur Battistella took a few litres of dry white but he wanted red. After the sweat that had gone into it, handing the wine over for free was difficult. But the chimney meant our flue would remain inside the house, providing more warmth than if it had gone up the exterior wall, and the bathroom would be toasty in winter. That was worth at least 200 litres, if the malos ever finished. We regularly did a malo paper test and intermittently a laboratory test but we had heard that it was possible to tell just by looking at the wine: little bubbles would appear and it would become lively, plus if we put an ear to the barrel we would hear a 'pop-pop' like popcorn. Sean was worried. He continued to heat the red wine but nothing was happening.

The wood stove was installed with a perfect exit through the chimney, just in time for the serious cold of December. On Christmas Eve I took the girls up to bed and returned to find Sean listening to Christy Moore with tears rolling down his cheeks. This was the third time in our lives I had seen Sean crying. The first was on Sophia's tumultuous first day of her life, the second was when I announced I was leaving.

  'What's happened?' I said, worried sick that one of our parents had died.

  'I miss home, Carolinus.'

  I sat down and we talked about the things we both missed about Christmas in Dublin: swimming at White Rock in freezing temperatures on Christmas morning to help clear the head after too much wine, walking up the Sugar Loaf in Wicklow on St Stephen's Day, but most of all our friends and the craic.

  The life of a vigneron was solitary, even though friends and family came and went. It was stressful, risky and lonely. But it was also wonderful. We were following our dream and we were working towards a new life that despite our current circumstances was full of hope. We shared a bottle of wine in front of the newly installed woodstove. With the lights off, the fire bathed the room in a warm, romantic glow. It felt like years since we had sat quietly together.

  Sean's shoulder-length curls gleamed golden. He was fitter and stronger than ever. The magic of candlelight made me feel twenty-something again. We made love in front of the fire with the abandon that we had known when we first met. It was like a tsunami crashing through all the hurt of the previous six months.

  'That stove was a great investment,' said Sean.

As the new year got underway Sean continued to heat the red wines for malolactic fermentation but there was no sign of progress. We decided to stop heating all except one. It was better for the wine to develop at its own natural pace.

  The house boiler stopped working. It was a while since I had called Jean-Marc and it was good to hear his upbeat voice on the phone.

  'A simple restart may be all that's needed. Press the red restart button on the boiler.'

  I pressed but nothing happened, then I realised I was pressing the emergency light instead of the large red restart button. Lucky I was mostly just the housewife and not operating wine-related machinery. I pressed the correct button and the boiler leapt into life.

  
'Ça fonctionne?'
asked Jean-Marc patiently.

  'Oui.'

  
'Ça fonctionne! A demain?'
(Until tomorrow?)

  Three days later the boiler stopped and the restart would not work. Jean-Marc blamed our fuel provider for giving us dirty fuel and suggested his brother-in-law as a supplier. After he had fixed the boiler I showed him the ruin Helen and Derek had uncovered and asked if he could give me a quote for solar power and a bathroom.

  
'Quelle vue!'
enthused Jean-Marc as we walked around the winery to the newly uncovered building, facing south up the valley of Saussignac. On our side, the peaceful winter vines were white with frost; on the opposite side a stark winter forest clung to the hillside. To the south Saussignac Castle rose like a giant keeping watch over the village.

  'We could get water here no problem. I'm not an expert on solar panels but I think we could get good exposure on the roof that's facing due south.'

  He promised to send his patron, the good-looking Monsieur Lambert, around to get the details so they could provide a
devis
. In true Lambert fashion I heard nothing for months.

  There was still no sign of the malolactic fermentation in the red wines and the white wines had gone flat, their aromas were muted and the flavour seemed dull compared to before. Sean was worried sick but Lucille assured him it was normal for young white wines to 'close up' in winter.

Despite our fears about the wines we got on with planning our first bottling. Sean invited a bottling company to a meeting so they could explain the choices for this auspicious process. Jean-Philippe arrived in a smart suit. He talked a lot but didn't tell Sean anything.

  'We need to make sure we get everything right well in advance of the bottling: bottles, corks, capsules, labels, people, machinery. We stress before the day, not on the day and absolutely not after the day.'

  'But how much does it cost?' asked Sean.

  'I'll send you a quote.'

  'What choices do we have?'

  'I'll send you the options.'

  Sean told him exactly how much wine we planned to bottle and Jean-Phillippe said he could organise bottles, corks and the bottling plant; all we had to sort out were the labels.

  We had been working on label ideas for months. We sent a presentation of our ideas to ten friends. I liked the image of an owl that was on a third of the label examples. I felt it gave the messages we wanted to deliver: natural, elegant, powerful; plus, we had one living in the roof. Soon responses were pouring in.

  'The owl looks like an Australian brand. You need to look more French.'

  'I'll be brutally frank, you cannot have a sun which conjures up images of light, alongside an owl which conjures up night-time images.' It was supposed to be a moon but client's perception is everything. 'We like the curly writing and the French look of your original label.'

  'Do not use curly writing. No one can read the words.'

  'The owl makes it look like Wolf Blass. Not what I would buy, but maybe you'll appeal to the average punter.'

  'The owl makes it look like whiskey. You need to have a picture of a château on the label so you look French.'

  'All the wines with a château on the label look the same. I can never remember what it was so I never buy it again even if I like it.'

  There was no 'one size fits all' solution in wine labelling. Our first bottling was approaching fast. This was no time for confusion but we were thoroughly confused. But the feedback on the owl was clear, it would get Garrigue confused with whiskey, Australian wine and who knows what else. We axed the owl and created a new label with the outline of a roof or a mountain and a moon… or a sun depending on the client's perspective.

  I sent copies of the label to the two wine buyers I had met on my marketing trip.

  'I like your label. Smart.'

  'Good, clean label,' said the other.

  We decided to go ahead with the design. There was no time for any more trials. We'd still had no quotes or options from the smartly dressed Jean-Philippe. A few people recommended a local independent bottler so I called and he came round that evening.

  Pierre de Saint Viance looked like someone out of
Asterix
. He was solid and red-haired with the air of a temper that would flare fast and be assuaged as quickly, but his keen sense of humour was to the fore. At that first meeting he gave Sean all the information he needed; his tariffs, suppliers of bottles, corks and capsules; who to contact and more.

  'Make sure they give you the preferential rates they have agreed with me,' said Pierre.

  In less than an hour we had all we needed. We were euphoric.

  'Have you received your
agréments
yet?' asked Pierre.

  'No, I need to get them this week,' said Sean.

  Our labels had to state the details of our AOC so we needed our wine of origin agreements quickly. This approval was based on a laboratory analysis and panel-tasting of the wine. If the wine received the thumbs-up we would be able to call it AOC; if not, we would have to call it
'vin de table'
.

  While the French AOC system is rigorously controlled and each wine appellation – there are around 400 – has their own production rules,
vin de table
or table wine has no quality controls but must comply with EU regulations. It is typically associated with large-scale industrial production, although many quality wines are appearing under
vin de table
to avoid the constraints of the AOC.

  We didn't have any concerns about the wines as their analysis was perfect and their taste had changed dramatically from their mid-winter doldrums. It was hard to believe they were the same wines; they were 'absolutely delicious' as the French
Reader's Digest
magazine said in an article at the time. They had called us up out of the blue after finding us on the Internet hoping to include us in an article about farmers in the Périgord. The journalists had taken some great photos, tasted through our range of wines and written a very positive article. Feeling confident, thanks to that and what our own taste buds told us, we sent in the paperwork and a few days later the wine samples were collected.