MOUNTAINS & WINDOW SEATS

I used to go straight for an aisle seat. The aisle seat meant that, if I had to, I could get up and down without bothering anyone. A good flight was one where I sat down, buckled my seatbelt, pulled my hat over my eyes, fell asleep before take-off and woke to the bump of touch down at our destination. If my eyes did open, I might plug my headphones in and shift a little to get more comfortable; kick my shoes off and make fists with my toes. I’m not chatty on planes, and want them to simply bring me from one place to another. Cocooning myself in sleep, music and maybe a book seemed the best way to do that. Sightseeing could wait until landing.

Perhaps a part of it is growing up. Rightly or wrongly, I viewed the window seat as a feature of an excited childhood. The image of huge tracts of the earth passing in what seems to be slow motion, and in miniature, fires the imagination. Tiny towns, patchwork farmland, mountainous clouds obscuring all of them; more than any other experience of youth, looking out the window of an airplane gives the most incredible glimpse of the wider world around you. It’s your first introduction to the scale of the earth.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped caring about the scale of the earth. I wore my callousness to it like a badge of honour, and my cocoon on flights made me impervious to whatever might go on in the rest of the world.

In January 2008, after a flight from London to Perpignan, I decided to start sitting in the window seat again. I felt the plane begin its descent, and as our path got steeper and steeper, I kept looking towards the window, over the two people sat next to me. Through the porthole on one side, I saw a plain, dotted with the odd inland sea, stretching out alongside a slate, angry Mediterranean. On the other stood snow-capped mountains, dark forests and the singular peak of what I would later discover was the Canigou, the 9,000 foot mountain sentry that stands guard over the Plaine du Roussillon.

Lone mountains strike a nerve. Whether it’s the peak of the Matterhorn, the Paramount Pictures logo or Tolkien’s evocative description of Smaug’s lair, we feel some sort of deep awe when presented with such natural monuments. Like looking out of an airplane window, they provide a sense of scale.

I nearly gave myself whiplash switching from window to window, trying to see as much as possible.

Flying to the other local airport, Girona, is also rewarding for the window-seat sitter. The flight path takes you down the French side of the Pyrenees, right up until the coast, where the flight banks right, heading west into Spain. The plane’s in full descent at this point and the earth seems close, as do the foothills that begin the mountains, rising right out of the sea, stamped on the border like some giant mythical bear paw. If you look closely, between the paw’s claws, you’ll see the towns of Collioure, Port-Vendres and Banyuls. Closer still, and the vineyard terraces come into focus, with their vines looking for all the world like an ordnance survey map, complete with tightly drawn contour lines.

Within 15 minutes, you’ve landed in Spain. It’s farming country, and the fields around Girona quite famously smell of pig shit. It’s half an hour drive back to the border, and another hour or so to Collioure. Along the way are seedy border towns laden with cheap cigarettes and brothels, including The Dallas in Jonquera, a familiar stop for some of those that work in the vines.

So here we are, lying on the very bottom south-west corner of France. There are no palatial châteaux surrounded by immaculately trained vines (well, there’s one, Château Valmy, but compared to those in Bordeaux, it would barely qualify as a gatehouse). Nor are there the gentle slopes and gentrified rusticity of Burgundy, where they had the decency to make their vines accessible to the people that farm them.

Collioure and Banyuls sit near the edge, literally and figuratively. Spain is spitting distance away. Several of the small roads that cross the border bear no notice that you are doing so. As far as landscape goes, it can be difficult to determine where one begins and the other ends. Catalan is spoken on both sides, though less so these days. Legally, this is France, and has been so since the end of the Franco–Spanish War and the Peace of the Pyrenees in 1659. Emotionally, culturally, the people here are Catalan. In the past, they were ruled by both sides and kingdoms that now exist only in history books. They support Barcelona in the football but they play only rugby; union and league. Vines are planted mostly on terraced slopes, though in some places they’ll stick them on any spare piece of land. Higher up the hills, there’s decay, as the remains of the terraces and drywall slowly rejoin the hillside and the vines give way to scrub and brush. Two of the towns along this stretch of coast, Collioure and Banyuls, also provide the name for the local wine appellations. While they are part of the greater region of the Roussillon, they have been distinguished as warranting a separate classification. Dry table wines from the region are classed as Collioure, whilst fortified sweet wines are classed as Banyuls.

France’s appellation system can be labyrinthine, and while it nominally exists to preserve the identity of the thousands of wine-producing regions in the country, it seems mostly to produce endless amounts of paperwork, lab tests, self-sustaining bureaucracy and headaches for winemakers. Their rules range from common sense to the mundane and ultimately idiotic. I’ve never met a winemaker who looks upon their control boards with any sort of fondness or pride (even those that sit on the control boards hold them in a certain measure of disdain). Most importantly, they are boring to write about, read about and talk about. There are numerous wine tomes out there that will help you get a grip with them. This book is not one of them. I shall keep their mention to a minimum.

Vintage begins early in these parts, usually before the end of August. It is one of the earliest harvests in France, and often one of the shortest. It’s dry here, and the sun is hot. Too much rain is rarely a problem, though too little frequently can be. The first time I flew here to make wine was August 2008. I had been in the wine trade for eight or so years and when one of my mentors moved from wine merchanting on to winemaking, he invited me over to help out with the harvest.

Just a side note, because sometimes people get confused. Words can be used in perpetuity without a meaning ascribed to them. ‘Vintage’ is one of those words. People seem to take its meaning as the year a particular wine is made, but that’s not the case. Vintage ≠ year. Vintage comes from the French vendange, which means harvest. So when you see vintage and then year; that was the year the grapes were harvested. The difference isn’t huge between the making of a wine and the harvesting of the wine, but there is a difference. As you’ll find out through the course of this book, a wine isn’t ‘made’ when the fermentation is finished. There are other steps that take it through the autumn, winter and spring of the new year. It’s a long process. Vintage is used because even though the making of the wine can take place over the course of many months (in some cases, with certain wines, over a number of years), much of the character of it is, in most cases, determined by the conditions of the year the grapes were harvested. I will use the term harvest and vintage interchangeably throughout this book. If you already knew this, then this paragraph probably wasn’t for you. If you didn’t, then you’ve learned something new. Don’t worry, there isn’t a test. I’ve told you to fulfil my own issues with wine pedantry, rather than any mission of enlightenment.

The borders here exist on all levels: physical, national, cultural and geological. The coastal towns sit in natural harbours, bookended by vine-clad cliffs of gnarled schist. The layered stone looks folded, running perpendicular to the earth. The hill peaks are dotted with watchtowers, relics from more war-torn times. Invasion would be signalled from them by the lighting of a bonfire, which would lead to the others following, the flames travelling over the peaks, warning those below of impending conflagration.

Battles these days come on the rugby pitches. While both the French and Spanish sides are Catalan, there are stark differences between the two. The Spanish side is immensely prosperous. It is the industrial and commercial capital of the country whose fortunes were so grand that it enraged Franco, and much of the domestic policy under him was set forth to tip the scales towards the rest of the country.

The French side does not fare as well. It is, in the traditional sense of the word, a peasant region. Small-scale fruit farms and vineyards dot the landscape, while the harbours are filled with small, now-idle, fishing boats. Port-Vendres, sat between Collioure and Banyuls, boasts the deepest harbour in the region, and as such large container ships of fruit from Africa land their produce there, but for the most part everything is on a small scale. Locals farm and fish, or work in Perpignan, the area’s largest city that also forms the eastern border of French Catalonia. Then there are the outsiders, those that came for the beauty, the lifestyle by the sea. There are artists and expats, folks from all over France who ran away to find themselves here. Having spent a lot of time in Key West, I see many of the same sort of people – people looking to live on the edge of something. Key West is only 185 miles from Miami, but in many ways, it’s as far as you can get from the sense of being in the continental United States while not actually leaving. You’re aware that you’re closer to Cuba than the mainland, not just geographically, but culturally. Collioure, Banyuls and this little coastal stretch of the Roussillon is as far as you can get from the French and still be in France. Except for during the height of tourist season. Then it’s full of French from the rest of the country reminding you constantly that you’re definitely in France.

The military is also there, in various shapes and forms. The French marines train in Collioure, whilst there is a not-so-top-secret military base on the Cap Bear peninsula. I’ve often seen the marines taking their rubber boats out on training exercises, and Collioure is often full of fatigue-garbed French soldiers. I’ve never seen any vehicle leave or enter the Cap Bear installation.

There are plentiful bars and cafés. A good general rule to follow is that the closer they are to the water, the more expensive they will be. That is true whether you’re in Collioure, Banyuls, Port-Vendres or Argelès.

I’ve not mentioned Argelès yet. I should do, but it sits outside the appellation, and so it can’t just be lumped in with all the others. This is how my mind works now, for better or for worse; I categorise and organise on the basis of appellation and wine style. Argelès-sur-Mer is the next town to the north of Collioure. It sits at the very beginning of the Plaine du Roussillon. The mountains stop before they get there. The soil changes. The weather is different; not as windy. The changes between places are at once infinitesimal and gargantuan. Argelès is split in two: the old town, which is just Argelès-sur-Mer, and Argelès-Plage, a seaside resort with all the hilarious tackiness that comes with being a seaside resort. Argelès has what I would call a boardwalk area, except that it’s an entire village of boardwalks on the beach, with countless t-shirt shops, dodgy fast food stands selling Americains (a baguette stuffed with two burgers and generous amounts of chips, usually sprayed liberally with both mayo and ketchup – tremendous hangover food), bad cocktail bars, the odd nightclub, rotating postcard racks, too many tapas bars with bad, low-res photos of what their food is meant to look like, swimwear shops peddling brightly coloured wares; everything is neon, pastel or both. It’s a temple to holiday spending. The campsites around the town swell to a population of about 70,000 during the summer – some even have their own water parks.

The older part of town is somewhat more staid. It’s in the commuter belt for Perpignan and boasts the usual assortment of bakeries and the like. On the outskirts lives the hypermarché, for when you need to buy Pringles, socks and a 50-inch TV. The offices and warehouse that we use are located right by the hypermarché as well – it’s the industrial neck of town. While most of the restaurants in these parts are the kind of pizza, sandwich, McDonald’s sort of dives you’d expect for speedy lunches, there is one corner of the industrial estate that boasts an excellent restaurant run by a chef who trained under all sorts of Michelin-star types and, for some reason, decided, when searching for his own corner of the restaurant world, to open up on an industrial estate in Argelès-sur-Mer. I either can’t remember the name or want to keep the place a secret so that it doesn’t get too busy. It may be a mixture of the two.

The wines from Argelès belong to the Côtes du Roussillon appellation. This is the largest AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) in the region. I make wines here, at Mas Cristine, as well as in the Collioure appellation, at Coume del Mas (though that winery actually sits between Banyuls and Port-Vendres, and the grapes come mostly from around Banyuls).

Going from east to west (and north to south along the coastline), it’s Argelès, Collioure, Port-Vendres, Banyuls and Cerbère. I will most likely never write about or mention Cerbère again as it is an utter shitehole and the most interesting thing I can think of to say about it is that we once blew out a tyre there on the drive back from Spain. We’d gone to Spain for lunch, because we can do that in this neck of the woods, and had one of the truly worst lunches I have ever willingly eaten. Ever. Blowing out the tyre was better than the lunch. I don’t think anyone present that afternoon would disagree with me. I once saw an article recommending Cerbère as a good place to go in France as its beaches were always empty, even in August. There’s a good reason for it to be empty, even in August; it’s not a very nice place.

 

Harvest moves from south to north. It starts in the vines around Banyuls first, with those around Collioure following about a week later, and Argelès another week after that. From there it spreads both east and north, moving as the vines and the grapes on them reach their full ripeness. Why does it move that way? Temperature and sunlight, mostly. The berries form in the late spring. By July, veraison begins to set, where the fruit reaches its full size. From there forth, the grapes ripen. Sunlight feeds the leaves, which put most of their energy towards making sure the berries are packed with as much sugar as possible. Sunlight = sugar. People talk about warm temperatures all the time, but heat and haze makes things difficult. The result on the growing season is remarkable. We discovered in one year that heat without direct sunlight can be disastrous. Bunches do not ripen evenly, with some grapes being laden with sugar and others barely registering on the refractometer. You want to make wine with evenly ripened bunches.

At Coume del Mas, the winery near Banyuls, we start checking the bunches in early August. It’s a simple process. You wander around the vineyard with a wee ziplock sandwich bag, picking grapes from a random selection of vines spread out across as much of the plot as possible. Then you scrunch the grapes in the bag, crushing them and smooshing them until it’s all a big wet, gooey mess. Then you pour the juice onto the end of the refractometer, a nifty little cylinder that looks like a weird telescope or kaleidoscope. You hold your eye to the non-juiced end and the light passing through the grape juice bounces differently according to the level of sugar. This is important, as the amount of sugar translates directly as the amount of potential alcohol you can expect from the finished wine. Boozy spyglasses are one of the many fine toys you get to play with as a winemaker.

So that’s it, right? If there’s loads of sugar in the grapes, they’re ready to pick, obviously. Not so fast, boozy mcboozehound. Sugar is all well and good, but if that were the only important thing we’d all be wrecked on cachaça. For every grape you put in your ziplock baggie, you also pop one in your mouth. Boozy spyglasses are all well and good, but while they can tell you how much sugar is in something they can’t tell you anything else. They can’t tell you how acidic the grapes are. Nor do they whisper in your ear the texture of the grape skins. And most importantly, they don’t tell you how they all work together, how the acidity balances the sugar and how the texture of the skins grips your mouth. Tasting grapes is a serious business, and while sugar levels give you a literal translation of ripeness, it tells you nothing of harmony and balance within the fruit.

Plenty of wineries pick entirely based on sugar ripeness. I’ve met some high level winemakers who see no reason to do otherwise, but we use it to provide a rough window. With dozens of different vineyards to pick, scattered over much of the region, our decision is down to taste. There are some very wealthy wineries that do a full analysis of particular phenols (anthocyanins and tannins) to determine picking time. I’m told it’s a big thing in Bordeaux.

Vineyard holdings down here are piecemeal. The idea of long stretches of unbroken plots of singularly owned vines is nice, but not applicable in these parts. The terraced vineyards that dot the hillside display a patchwork of different ownerships. Each bit of patchwork with its own wee casot: a small shed for storing water and equipment, looking too much like a beach hut out of place. I don’t think any of our vines sit next to any of our other vines. If they do, they’re in the minority. The vines around Banyuls stretch right into frontier land, outside of civilisation. Wild forests, cork forests, armies of wild boar (sangliers in the local parlance), ancient, decaying farmhouses and the occasional hippy are all that you’re likely to see in these parts. The roads that bring you are one lane, and rarely paved. The stream beds are dry, as they are for most of the season. They run freely in the spring, swollen and fast. But now, in harvest, their beds are raw with stone and dust. These valleys trap the sun, and in the heat the vivid green of the foliage hangs in stark contrast to the arid schist soils that hold the vines.

And what is schist? Schist is old rock formed from older clay. The name’s evocative, onomatopoeic. It suggests shards in my mind and lo, that is what you see all around as you wander the vineyards, shards of rock, sometimes terribly brittle. Often the rock looks as though someone’s kicked up the edge of a carpet. Good wine grows on schist soils, some far more famous than the ones here. The Douro Valley, renowned for Port, boasts schist soils, as does the Spanish region of Priorat. Both regions feature rough terrain and precarious terraces on which their vines are planted. Both Port and Banyuls produce profound fortified wines whilst both Priorat and Banyuls make great, dry Grenache-based wines. One of my favourite wines is named Schistes, in honour of the soil from which it comes, and shapes its character in ways that we still don’t entirely understand.

It used to be thought that certain soil characteristics were directly passed from root, to vine, to berry, to wine. There are still some that cling to this, though scientific study disproves it almost entirely. A Chablis may taste chalky, and the soil it comes from may be composed of mostly chalk, but chemically speaking, there is no chalk in the wine to speak of. The research is conclusive in that regard, but it leaves more questions unanswered than answered, as much good science does. In my head, the soil’s impact on good wine is much like a sculptor’s chisel. The finished sculpture bears no obvious mark of the chisel, but its effect is evident throughout.

I have no research to back this up but thousands of wines tasted, and the anecdotal measure of my palate.

When I arrive for vintage, I fly into Girona, a small town in Spain about an hour’s drive from Barcelona. Andy, my old friend/former boss/mentor picks me up from the airport and we catch up along the way. I’m tired from travel but giddy with the sunshine. The car smells a bit of sulphur and farm gear. The stereo pumps out one of his mix CDs and he brings me up to speed on the harvest so far: what’s been picked, what’s next to be picked, how big it’s looking and where I’ll be staying.

Andy Cook was my first boss in the wine trade, the manager of a small shop in St Andrews called Luvians Bottleshop. He taught me about wine and taught me to teach myself about wine. He started as a sommelier at the age of 17 and from then on had sold wine, bought wine, made wine and drunk quite a lot of it as well. After ten years running the wine shop in Scotland, he moved to New Zealand to learn both viticulture and winemaking at a higher level. He then moved to France with his (now) wife Kirsten to work with Philippe Gard at Mas Cristine and Coume del Mas, taking head winemaker duties at Mas Cristine and running most of the sales for both wineries.

Our shared history is one of too much whisky, the occasional sevens rugby tournament, too much beer, lots of blues music, the occasional AC/DC air guitar session, bankrupting fine dining dinners, too much wine, boozy milkshakes, beach frisbee, too many Brandy Alexanders and hard work. Andy has remarkable impatience for most things except wine, though his two young boys, Theo and Angus, have forced him to count longer than five before he loses his temper. Andy works harder than anyone I know, and expects others to do the same. He won’t tell anyone to do anything he hasn’t done himself or isn’t willing to do himself. I’m reflexively lazy. My work ethic, if you can call it that, is based on the fear of being discovered to be as lazy as I actually am. It’s why I work well with Andy, and now Philippe as well. They work so hard that if I don’t, it becomes very apparent very quickly. I would really rather be sleeping until 2p.m. and drinking peanut butter and bourbon milkshakes in my pyjamas while watching Mythbusters on Netflix. But I can’t, so I bust my ass with them in a winery. Two wineries.

So, born out of my fear of getting caught napping, I’ve become a member of this team, helping my friend make wine.

That team changes from year to year, with the stagaires – interns from oenology school, usually Toulouse or Bordeaux – and the vendangeurs – migrant pickers from as close as Spain and as far afield as French Polynesia – rarely coming back. The core remains the same: Philippe, resident genius, director, winemaker, viticulturalist, geological expert and head honcho; Julien, the vine grower and Catalan native who knows literally everybody, has played rugby with them and who they all undoubtedly owe a favour; José, the retired Spanish banker who now ‘runs the vines’, which is a lot more difficult than it sounds, and the senior picking team, including Vincent, José’s son, the improbably named Igor and the grumpy dude with a goatee who thinks I’m crazy for coming back every year. His name’s Stephane. He thinks I’m an idiot. Which is probably true.

We drive straight to the winery. Time is limited at harvest, and unpacking and getting settled are luxuries not afforded to anyone. I’ve learned this and have my boots and work clothes right at the top of my bag. I find a private corner of the cave and slip into my tattered shorts, stained t-shirt and a battered pair of hiking boots that, at this point, can be used for nothing but winemaking. This is my uniform for the next month or so. I will maybe have three days in 35 that I don’t don some variation of this kit and get very, very messy.

The village of Cosprons sits between Banyuls and Port-Vendres. It is famous for artisan Banyuls vinegar and the ruins of one of Alfred Nobel’s first dynamite factories. A dry river bed runs next to the village, so long barren that rows of Mourvèdre vines now grow where the water used to flow Vines rise up the banks as well, some terraced and some slopes gentle enough not to require it. Many of these vines were irreparably damaged, not by hail, but by Andy’s old labrador, Alfie, careening through them to fetch sticks we threw to keep him occupied. Just before you get to Cosprons, coming from the main road, is a small dirt track descending down towards the river bed. There is a battered white wooden sign that marks the road, saying simply ‘caves’. Caves is French for caves, but also for winery. This particular winery is Coume del Mas, though there is nothing to indicate that this is the case. There’s no sign above the large barn doors. There’s no street number. I’m not even sure the dirt track has a name.

The building is large and simple, with a sloped roof and concrete floor angled downwards that allows liquid, be it wine, water or whatever, to drain into a narrow central gutter. The two large wooden doors open inward, revealing an open-plan winery with a cool room in the back. That’s where the barrels of white live. Above the cool room, in the attic, lay barrels of fortified wine, ageing in the warmest part of the winery. Some of these will become ‘Rancio’ style Banyuls and some ‘Grand Cru’. To the left of the main floor sit five large stainless steel fermentation tanks, shiny, numbered 1 to 5. To the right is a massive, 4,000 litre ancient oak foudre (a barrel too large to be called a barrel anymore) and next to that is a 5,000 litre brand new oak fermentation vat. In front of the foudre is a glass display shelf, with dummy bottles from old vintages, a few tasting glasses and a nice wine thief. A wine thief is a large pipette used to take samples of wine from a barrel. In the back is a ratty-looking plastic wine thief – that’s what I use when I have to get samples out. The customers get the pretty wine thief.

The view from the cave is stunning: the old river valley below and ahead, nestled between two cliffs, the Mediterranean spreads out into the horizon. Early mornings made far more bearable by the ghostly dawn that grows over the sea until a tangerine sun rises from the deep blue. Everything goes quiet for the sunrise, even though the work doesn’t stop.

We make a bunch of different wines: red, white, rosé, sweet, dry, fortified, unfortified. Most of our wines fall within the local classifications as either Collioure (dry) or Banyuls (sweet; fortified). Then there are some weird and wonderful cuvées that don’t necessarily fit within the narrow confines of appellation law. These tend to be small batches from small parcels of grapes that show something a little bit special. Maybe they’ve ripened slower and need a bit more time on the vines; or perhaps they’re from a particularly old group of vines; maybe something has happened during ferment to mark them as a breed apart; regardless, they warrant a separation.

 

We meet in the dark, in an old parking lot in the centre of Banyuls. There are maybe 20 of us in total, winemakers and pickers. It’s mostly pickers. Nobody is awake yet, bar Philippe, the founder of Coume del Mas, who apparently needs far less time to achieve full consciousness than the rest of us. There’s no list of the top winemakers in the south of France that doesn’t include him. You wouldn’t know it to look at him. He’s diminutive, with a mop of dark hair that seems to accent the look of constant problem-solving on his face. There’s not much written down at the winery. There’s no rule book or game plan or even floor plan. It’s all in his head. I’ve never seen him puzzle too long over a decision. He gets through vintages with the same wounds, scrapes and bruises the rest of us do, and yet he keeps going. One year, while moving the sorting table on to the back of the truck to bring it through from Coume del Mas to Mas Cristine, it dislodged and hit him in the head. Another inch or so and it would have killed him. Instead, it concussed him and left a nasty gash in his skull. He was back in the winery the next day, much to the annoyance of both his doctor and his wife, Nathalie.

One particularly brutal vintage, about four weeks in, my right arm went dead. I could no longer lift from the elbow. I had never had muscle fatigue before. My fingers still worked, so I could grip things tight. It was an enormous harvest that year. I probably lifted about six or so tons of grapes a day, plus the other muscle-intensive tasks. I cheated to my left as much as I could and it got to the point where I dreaded using my right arm. When I did have to use that arm to shift weight, usually a comporte, up above my chest, I did it with my legs and back, using my grip to guide it. It was dangerous. One afternoon when the Mourvèdre was coming in, Philippe and I started unloading the truck and I cheated to my left. He stopped and signalled to his right arm, shook his head and made the ‘cut’ sign across his neck with his left hand. It wasn’t just me. We both had dead arm. Philippe cheated to his left and I somehow managed on the right.

That moment sticks with me. Everybody hurts during harvest, even the boss; especially the boss.

That same year, right at the beginning of harvest, I had an accident with the liquid CO2, which is quite the most rubbish liquid to have an accident with. I was gassing a tank of Roussanne at Mas Cristine before sealing it up for the end of the day and the handle slipped. I was on top of the ladder and the gas tank stood to my right. The only way to not lose balance or knock over the tank (which, being a highly compressed gas, could explode, both killing me and, worse, ruin all the whites in the chill container) was to grab the tank with my free hand and somehow keep grip on the nozzle whose handle had broken. This involved grabbing a metal joint at the end of the hose. One that, it turned out, had a bit of a leak, and was frosted over with the remnants of the liquid CO2. The webbing between my thumb and forefinger froze tight to the metal joint. It stung like a motherfucker. I could feel the cold burning through the skin down to the muscle. Still off-balance, I tried to drop the nozzle and hose to the ground, and hope that it didn’t upend the gas cylinder, but that joint on the hose was now just stuck to my hand. So I tore it off, expecting a massive chunk of my hand to come off with it.

The cylinder didn’t upend, and the ladder held. My hand felt very hot and very cold at the same time. I got the hat on the tank of Roussanne and sealed it. I then put the ladder away in the corner. Then I realised the gas was still on, and using my good hand, I turned it off and gently shimmied the tank to its spot in the gap between the two large tanks in the centre of the container. I looked over the container a few more times to make sure that everything was put away. By the door sat a red comporte full of water and SO2, used for quickly cleaning bits of kit and flushing through the pumps and hoses when they’re finished for the day. I still couldn’t look at it, but I put my left hand in the comporte and sucked in air as it met with the mix of water and sulphur. It hurt. I lifted it out of the water and looked at the spot where the metal had frozen itself to me (it was the metal’s fault entirely). There was no gaping wound, no hole in my hand. Instead rose an enormous blister; it grew so quickly that within a minute or two I couldn’t close my hand properly. I couldn’t work with only one hand, so I lanced it. It went deep, through the skin to the flesh. Within a day’s work, it had torn off completely and for the rest of harvest the burn was exposed. There was nothing I could do. The work was too wet to dress it properly. To this day, I have what looks like a cigar burn on the webbing of that hand, though it’s faded somewhat now. After a few days I didn’t really notice it while I worked. It was only when I tried to sleep that it burned.

Philippe lays out the day for us in that parking lot. We’re told where we need to be. It’s all in French and my stunted linguistic abilities leave me searching for some sort of signal. I usually know, though, that I’m going to the winery. The pickers are going to the vines, often with Philippe going with them.

The pickers are a mix of known and unknown. The locals run the crew. They’re young and still look on me like some sort of alien. I don’t envy their task. The migrant pickers are a cocktail mix of hippies and hipsters. Some come from Spain, some from elsewhere entirely. We’ve had the odd Brit on gap year, but they never last long. The chasm between the romantic ideal of working in the vines and the reality of working in the vines has no gentle bridge for them to cross, and so usually they get sent packing. The hipsters and hippies seem a bit better suited for the work. They need the money, so they do the work. They don’t know much about wine, but that’s no problem. They bust their humps from the early hours of the morning to the late afternoon and then go home with some unlabelled co-op wine we keep just to reward their hard work.

The first grapes picked are white. We pick them before the pickers arrive. It’s a family affair, with Philippe and his wife, Nathalie, taking their girls up to the Roussanne vineyard that sits high in the hills above Banyuls. Roussanne tends to ripen early in these parts. It’s a white grape made famous in the Northern Rhône, gaining popularity among those who like big whites but with perfume and a bit of spice. We grow it in both appellations. These grapes get blended with Vermentino to make one of our smallest cuvées. It’s for local customers only, though on occasion it travels as far as Toulouse.

This small family ritual heralds the harvest. I’ve never arrived early enough for it, but there’s no shame in that. Vintage is long and family time is scarce in the meantime. To welcome it with family is a good thing. The cuvée label bears the names of the family members who pick the grapes. Even though I don’t pick the grapes, I always smile when I analyse the barrel. Every year, regardless of the harvest conditions, those vessels of fermenting grape juice mark the beginning of a new year. No matter what order everything else comes in, those are the first. And when so much relies on the weather, and the fickle ripening habits of grape, it’s nice to have at least one thing you can count on to be constant, year in and year out.

There are only 13 independent wine producers in Collioure and Banyuls, an area that covers 1540 hectares of vine. It’s quite small by most standards. A hectare, by the way, works out at about 2.2 acres, and is essentially 100 metres by 100 metres. The more vines you plant per hectare, the more wine you get (in theory). The problem, round these parts, is that the hectares aren’t flat. They’re steep. It’s also incredibly dry, so the vines are subjected to what we call water stress. Meaning that they’re stressed that they can’t get very much water. This has huge effect on the wine. Less water means more concentrated grapes, but it can also prevent the fruit from developing properly. And, of course, irrigation for viticulture is illegal for appellation wines in France. Fortifying wine originated in these parts, for good reason, as wine made from very ripe grapes could be inherently unstable, due to high sugar levels leading to re-fermentation.

Most 1540 hectares worth of vines would boast a lot more than 13 independent vignerons. Throughout the rest of France, it may be as many as ten times that number. Those 13 independent vignerons (ourselves included) account for only 15% of the production. The rest of it goes through the enormous co-operative in Banyuls. Co-ops are just what they sound like – consortiums of grape growers that group together their individual parcels of grapes, split costs and share revenues. If it sounds like a socialist ideal, that’s because it is. Except for the attempts to make profits. That isn’t terribly socialist. The hideous state of management and internal bickering is, however, and is enough to make a Fox News anchor drool. I should say that there are plenty of brilliantly run co-ops throughout France, because there are. They make great wine and provide a living for the growers that supply them. The level of quality considering the enormous quantity is admirable, and requires truly brilliant winemaking. There are even those elsewhere in the Roussillon that manage to make good wine, reward their growers and turn a profit. But the cave co-op in Banyuls, in spite of making some great wine, doesn’t seem able to reward its growers or turn a profit. And the one in Argelès, in spite of being reasonably well-run, makes truly dreadful wine.

 

Morning starts at Coume del Mas before sunrise. The winery door opens to the dry river bed lined with vines and the sea in the distance. We move slow, but with purpose. Sometimes the truck is sat outside, waiting with grapes in its refrigerated container. If it is, we set up quickly.

If the grapes are white, we get the press ready. A press is a giant cylinder with a bag in it. Well, our press is. It’s called a bag press. The grapes go into the cylinder and then we inflate the bag. Half the cylinder is grated, allowing the juice to pour through it as the bag inflates. The juice pours into a tray attached below the cylinder, and then pumped from that tray into an old milk tank to settle over night. The first time I saw a press, so much dawned on me. As a piece of kit, it’s a great reminder that all you’re dealing with is grape juice. The grapes get squeezed, their juice comes out, you put that juice into a tank and then it ferments and becomes wine. I knew that on an intellectual level, obviously. But there’s a big gap between the knowledge of something at an intellectual level and truly understanding; truly ‘getting’ it; to be watching torrents of sugar water drip off stainless steel and knowing that that’s what you’re working for. That’s your raw material to make wine. The continuing work of years and the immediate work of the last ten or so months, vineyard management and pruning and pulling out weeds and ploughing, all of that for a steady stream of juice dripping into a big plastic tray. It’s remarkable and simple all at once.

The grapes are transported and stored in comportes. A comporte is the modern version of a peasant’s wicker harvest basket. Sometimes they’re called bins – comporte is the French term for them. They’re made of plastic, hold about 50 kilograms worth of grape bunches, and are designed to fit together like a child’s building blocks, so that they can be stacked atop each other safely. Sort of like giant, grape-bearing Lego. There are two types that I’ve come across: red comportes and fucking bastard comportes. Red comportes are moulded from a single piece of plastic, are watertight so that you don’t lose any juice, and have rounded handles that provide comfort to whoever has to lift it.

Fucking bastard comportes are yellow, brown or grey. They’re prone to snapping in odd areas. Odd areas like the handles, so that they can slice and pinch the webbing between your thumb and forefinger. There are plenty of holes for grape juice to piss out all over the poor bugger dumping its contents into the press or de-stemmer. Their handles are squared, ensuring that they cut deep into the hands when carrying any weight over two or three kilos. I’m quite sure that fucking bastard comportes were designed by a vengeful teetotaller whose heart was broken by someone unloading grapes off the back of a refrigerated lorry.

You should not lift a comporte on your own. You frequently have to, but always try to find someone to help first. Standard practice is one person on each side, each holding a handle. You then count to three and lift as one. The first comporte is the easiest, as you aren’t sticky and slippery yet.