The harvest of table grapes is a mere amuse-bouche compared with the serious business of vintage proper. The climax of the year’s efforts—from winter pruning to first bud burst in March, through flowering and setting and the long, slow ripening—it involves the whole community, for just about every family has its patch of vines passed down from one generation to the next. Women who happily stay at home for 11 months of the year go out to the vineyards and contribute their labour, and even sprightly 70-year-olds do their share. No one gets married during vintage, and anyone who is unlucky enough to die then is buried quickly, without the usual at-home ceremony and funeral procession. During vintage there’s no time for such frivolities.
Like every other vigneron in the district, Jean-Pierre keeps a close watch on his grapes, tasting the berries and checking their sweetness. Nevertheless, it’s not for him to decide when to start picking; it’s the commune that sets the date. And one day, after the first fresh, crisp morning of autumn, he returns from Caux with the news: la vendange commence lundi, vintage begins on Monday.
This is the signal for the butcher to keep his shop open seven days a week, for the boulangerie to bake an extra batch of bread every day. Schools open an hour early and provide a hot midday meal for the children, instead of sending them home for lunch. Clothing stalls at the weekly market display outfits for vintage, though most people simply wear their oldest clothes. Students and hitchhiking travellers make their way here to earn a little cash to fund further travels, and families, sometimes whole villages, arrive from Spain to add themselves to the work force.
It’s a boisterous, joyful, exuberant month. The countryside suddenly changes from a tranquil, never-ending sea of green to a series of vivid, animated scenes reminiscent of Breughel as brightly coloured headscarves and bold t-shirts bob up and down along the rows. Quiet lanes that normally see only the yellow van of Monsieur Poste become major thoroughfares for the busy trucks and tractors laden and overflowing with the harvest. In the village la vendange is the only topic of conversation and even the vendangeurs speak knowledgeably about carignan and aramon and oeillade, and the quality of the harvest; the higher the sugar content (as measured in degrees Baumé) the better. On a Saturday night, the Spanish contingent organises a Spanish-style ball at the salle des fêtes.
On his first day John returns exhausted after four hours picking. He barely has energy to eat a quick snack before grabbing an hour’s sleep, and it’s time to return to the vineyard for another four hours. At the end of the day he helps Jean-Pierre in the cave for an hour or so, but he’s in bed before nine. It’s exhausting work, especially after a month of lazing on the beach.
Sometimes I take the afternoon shift, but I have other duties. There’s the morning run to Caux, taking France to school and Mamie to do her daily shopping. With Vivette working in the vineyard, it’s now Mamie’s job to cook the midday meal. I assume the role of family chauffeur, driving Mamie to the doctor when she has a heavy fall and taking clean clothes to Vincent who has been offloaded to live with his grandparents in Fontès for the month.
The idea of Dylan and Stephanie attending the local school during vintage is abandoned after less than two days. Despite Vivette’s repeated assurances I’m not totally convinced that all French children begin school at two years—though école maternelle is really only nursery school. And Dylan and Stephanie have never even been to playgroup. Nevertheless, the first morning seems encouraging and I manage to slip away without them noticing. I return at noon to pick them up and hear Dylan’s plaintive sobbing as soon as I get near the door. They’ll soon settle, I tell myself. Stephanie seems happy enough. Dylan va à l’école, she announces to Vivette that afternoon. But the next day they both start crying as soon as we arrive in Caux, and when I leave them at the school I hear Stephanie at the gate calling me and saying, Want go outside. It is more distressing for me than for them, so I gather them up and take them home. Ecole maternelle will have to wait.
At Mas Laval I also have the turkeys to manage. With Christmas on the horizon Jean-Pierre has expanded his poultry flock with a couple of hundred turkey poults. It’s the first time he’s raised turkeys, and he calls them bête, stupid, since they can’t even find their way out to the green grass in the old orchard outside their barn. He has to place a few wily old hens in with them to lead them out when the shutters are opened. When they do make it outside, they fly up into the low branches of the fruit trees but lack the sense to jump or fly back to earth. I have to patrol every so often and rescue the adolescent birds from their adventurous perches or toss them back if their wings have taken them beyond the fence.
Grape-picking is hard, back-breaking work, for eight hours a day, six days a week. These are bush vines, around a metre high, and the bunches hide beneath the foliage. You have to bend over to cut them, and after half a row your back is suffering from the unaccustomed movement, so you change to a squatting position—until your knees start to complain, and you return to standing and bending. After less than an hour your back is aching, somewhere in the middle between shoulders and waist, and however you twist and turn the pain does not subside and you’re longing to hear the church bells that announce midday and the end of the morning’s work.
Jean-Pierre’s vines are laden and the buckets fill quickly. Every 10 minutes you straighten up and, if you’re near the end of a row, carry your 10-kilogram load to the large plastic comportes. Or a videur collects your full bucket and hands you an empty one. Grape pickers here are called coupeurs, and each coupeur is given two rows of vines at a time, working from start to end and back again. There’s usually one videur to every six coupeurs, and the videur is kept busy the whole day, collecting and emptying buckets and tamping down the grapes in the comporte with a large wooden pestle-like implement that Jean-Pierre calls une masse.
The ancient Roman vignerons have left their legacy in word and deed. Jean-Pierre tells me the team of pickers is called un colh, a term that recalls the old Provençal colhir, to pick or harvest, itself derived from the Latin colligere. But for the fact that he uses concrete vats instead of terracotta amphorae, Jean-Pierre’s winemaking scarcely differs from Roman practices. He relies on the natural yeasts on the skin of the grapes for fermentation, although he admits to adding a little levure de Bourgogne—Burgundy yeast—to get things going. Fermentation takes four to five days and each evening he does the remontage, opening the tap at the bottom of the vat and transferring the juice to a holding tank, then pumping it back through the top opening of the vat. Winemaking is the task Jean-Pierre likes best, and he grins and beams as the foaming crimson liquid gushes out, spraying him all over and causing dusty rivulets to trickle down his legs.
With fermentation finished, the residue is pressed. Jean-Pierre hires a press for the day—or evening, since much of the labour is provided by mates after finishing their own work. He pumps the free juice to a separate tank then climbs into the vat and forks out the marc—skin and pips—through a small trapdoor, while his mates transfer it to the press. It’s a very gentle press. Two plates at either end of the perforated drum slowly rotate, advancing toward the centre and squeezing the marc of its remaining juices, which trickle into a big tray underneath. The first pressing juices join the wine in the tank but the second, third and possibly fourth pressings go to the distillery, along with the marc.
By October vendange is finished. Jean-Pierre is reasonably satisfied with the result, despite a few days of rain, and the last pick comes in at about 12 degrees Baumé, promising a very good wine. After the final pressing everyone assembles around the big table to celebrate another year’s harvest. The dish Vivette always cooks for the occasion is soupe aux choux, a misleading name since its main ingredient is bread. Stale bread is arranged in alternate layers with a few blanched cabbage leaves and grated cantal cheese, the whole then covered with broth—though Vivette uses only water—and baked in the oven. Filling and economical, it satisfies hearty appetites before the grilled sausages and salad and cheese.
I feel that I’ve been extraordinarily privileged to share the whole experience of vintage with Jean-Pierre and Vivette, to have made new friends, to imagine my muscles and hard work contributing to a joyous drink that previously, when all I had to do was turn on a tap and fill the enamel jug, I had taken for granted.
These six weeks at Mas Laval have been the best of the past six years, says John.