Grape Expectations Read online

  Sophia was handling a new country, new language and school for the first time in her life while I wasn't coping with a mouldy shower, mice and a leaking roof. At least the roof was about to be fixed.

  'Quelle vue,' (What a view) said the roofer, looking over the terrace that wrapped around most of the house. The late summer sun glowed down on the hillside, highlighting the contours of the vine rows. The Dordogne River, meandering towards Bordeaux, twinkled in the distance.

  He climbed the ladder and ranged across the roof like a mountain goat while we waited anxiously below. After pushing a few tiles into position he leapt expertly off the ladder.

  'It's fixed. You need to realign the tiles when they get out of line.' He quickly showed Sean how to do it and wouldn't take any payment. 'It will need to be completely renovated in time. You can probably get away with it like this for another couple of years,' he added as he left.

  It was a gesture of unexpected generosity that left me grateful and humble but I couldn't help my mind racing ahead to consider the costs required in a year or two. Through my roof-budgeting haze I heard Sophia shouting, 'Ellie's got that! Ellie's got that!' I ran to find Ellie chewing on the toilet-cleaning brush. I was failing as a mother. I couldn't find my way to the supermarket without getting lost, opening a tin of paint was a serious challenge and I missed my work and my friends. I said a prayer asking God to protect Ellie from the germs of the toilet bowl, moved the toilet brush out of her reach and told myself to get a grip.

  Some small but significant successes helped me do that. Two weeks of constant harassing brought France Telecom to their senses and they agreed to connect our phone line based on a certificate of residence provided by our mayor. Having a telephone and access to the Internet was like stepping out of the dark ages.

  The mice were proving more stubborn. I was on the brink of moving out when they met their match. The local one-man hardware store sold the world's most sensitive mousetraps. At 95 cents each they were the cheapest remedy so far and they took the entire hoard of rodents down. Sean was my hero. He valiantly removed the dead bodies as they succumbed, mouse by mouse. I almost missed them once they were gone. With these time-consuming challenges solved we turned our attention to the renovations and the farm.

  Chapter 3

  Homesick

  I wanted the glamorous part of owning a vineyard, not the hard work. Sean was to do the vineyard work and I would look after the kids, do light renovation and eventually the marketing. At the time there was little that could be called glamorous in what we had purchased save perhaps the view.

  What we had bought was a large old house that had originally been two houses, numerous ragged outbuildings including the fermentation winery or pressoir, the storage winery and a very large barn, and a chunk of about 30 acres of surrounding land of which 25 acres were vineyards in different stages of disrepair. One small part of the house was liveable: a large bedroom where we had installed our entire family, a kitchen where we had a makeshift set-up that included our new equipment and a very old hob, and a large bathroom that once thoroughly cleaned was passable but miles from glamorous. Looking after a very young family in a kitchen that rated just above camping was a full-time job. The gas hob had two working plates and we had no oven. We were scared stiff of spending any more money.

  The winery and its renovation were on the long finger – we might have to put them off for a while. It would be a year before we turned our attention to our first harvest and it seemed far, far away. Just coping with daily life in this new environment was enough; my mind could not take in the idea of making our own wine.

  Decades of garbage had to be removed from Château Haut Garrigue: fridges and ovens that didn't work, beds that hadn't been used in generations and mounds of unidentifiable detritus. Soon the dreadlocked young man at the dump was greeting me like a friend.

  We lived in one large room together while we worked on our first project – a bedroom for the girls. It was lightweight renovation, decorative rather than structural, and meant we would at last get a bit of parental privacy. It had a dirty neon light and walls covered with brown, flowery wallpaper that was peeling badly and stained dark yellow with nicotine. The window in the corner was black with mould. Below it were several fist-size holes that had been the main entrance for our late friends, the mice. The concrete floor was covered with filthy linoleum curling up at the edges like old tobacco. The door had several large vertical cracks running down the upper half and didn't close. We started by removing the linoleum. Once we had cleared the room I tackled the wallpaper while Sean took on the window. I steamed and scraped until my arms ached. Drops of boiling water, molten nicotine and soggy paper fell incessantly onto my arms and hair. I geared up in waterproofs with goggles and hood regardless of the heat. The wallpaper was beyond tenacious. An Internet search affirmed that what we had was not normal. Clearly something more serious than standard wallpaper glue had been used to attach it.

  Weeks later, my arms were toned but the room was still in an awful state. I was more at home with a keyboard than a screwdriver and found myself a reluctant renovator.

  'We're getting nowhere, SF,' I said, bursting into tears. Completing this room alone before Sean started pruning the vineyard was looking unlikely. I envisioned trying to do the renovations on my own and dissolved into further floods of tears.

  'Feck it, Carolinus, we have moved country,' said Sean, trying to cheer me up, but only making me cry harder. The stress of our move was taking its toll. We'd moved country before but not like this: then it was in the same language and with the security of the large multinational for which I worked. It wasn't just getting familiar with physically hard work. We hadn't made love in months – living in a room with our daughters didn't help. Romance was forgotten in change overload. We were spending more time together than ever, but I had never felt so estranged from Sean.

  That afternoon, a neighbour we met in passing at the village fête dropped in. Jamie was an impressive character who had worked his way up to being vineyard manager of one of the largest wine estates in our region. He had spent half his life in England and half in France and the speed of his French when he talked on his mobile left me breathless and envious. We had a chat then he looked uncomfortable.

  'I've got a favour to ask of you,' he said. 'I need a chai. We've got problems with some of our vats. This year will be a catastrophe if we don't find somewhere else to make our wine and since you're not using yours this year I thought of you.'

  A winery is called a chai, pronounced 'shay'. We hadn't worked up the courage to venture into ours.

  We leapt at Jamie's proposal which provided the opportunity to watch a harvest in our own winery and to get to know the equipment. A week later we rose early to see him bringing in the first of his grapes with François, his colleague. The weather was changing, autumn had arrived and with it that morning a chilly five degrees. With Ellie wrapped in blankets in her pram and Sophia bundled up in her winter coat we watched, enthralled, as the dawn poked long gold fingers through the vines. The harvest machine was already motoring up and down the rows and soon the trailer loads were arriving every half-hour. Jamie explained the idiosyncrasies of our winery as he and François worked frenetically to move their machine-harvested grapes from the trailer into a vat. He had to yell above the noise of the tractor that drove a pump in the trailer to push the grapes into a massive pipe oriented into the vat. I hung onto Sophia, anxious to keep her out of the way of the large machinery.

  A few hours later the harvest machine left and there was a moment of peace before I had to take Sophia to school. Jamie offered us cups of fresh, pure sauvignon blanc. It was super-sweet grape juice but with the classic aromas of lime and gooseberry and a delicious zesty finish. We had learned these terms in textbooks and tasting finished wine; now we were getting to apply them in the process of winemaking. This was why we were here. It raised us out of our renovation rut and made our dream feel real.

  Jamie was a regular vi
sitor from then on, arriving at the winery at least once a day and sometimes twice a day. His arrival would often be accompanied by noise as he pumped liquids from one vat to another or heated or cooled them with our heat exchanger. Just moving the heat exchanger and associated pumps and pipes to the different zones of the winery was heavy work. We exchanged few words most days, but having him come by made me feel less lonely. We were also getting an idea of how much physical work went into making wine.

  Jamie did a lot more than rent our chai. He taught Sean how to drive the tractor and was an infinite source of advice, encouragement and contacts. One of the contacts was the Chamber of Agriculture; we were the right side of forty to get some free help and perhaps some financial aid under the jeune agriculteur, young farmer, banner.

  One of the chamber's representatives, Monsieur Ducasse, suggested we meet. I took copious notes on the phone about how to get to his office and he remained remarkably restrained as I asked him to repeat everything many times.

  Without a single wrong turn we arrived on time, and clean – Ellie was still in the habit of throwing up on me. Monsieur Ducasse was chunky and dark with serious eyes framed by bushy eyebrows. He welcomed us politely, clearly taken aback by the arrival of a seven-month-old to the meeting. I wedged Ellie's buggy between Sean and myself, gave her a bottle of milk, then explained our situation. Sean's French wasn't up to participating so he left it all to me.

  Monsieur Ducasse's severe look darkened with each word.

  'We want to know what help we can get from you since we are new to this business,' I said.

  'What farming experience do you have?' he asked.

  'None really... But we both grew up in a rural environment,' I said helpfully.

  Monsieur Ducasse's Gallic eyebrows rose.

  'But you must have some practical farming experience?' he pressed.

  'Well, we had a small organic vegetable patch in our city garden,' I replied.

  The eyebrows shot up.

  'We had two grape vines in the garden,' I added quickly.

  His eyes popped out.

  'What about an agricultural degree?' he asked.

  'No, we have masters degrees in economics and finance,' I said.

  Ellie watched him suspiciously, sensing his discomfort, while he made urgent notes on the page in front of him.

  'How many employees do you have helping in the vineyard and winery?' he asked at last.

  'None. We can't afford employees. Anyway, the property is small enough for Sean to farm on his own.'

  'Not even part-time?' he gasped, wedging his hand under his chin to stop his mouth from gaping open.

  'No... But we have a neighbour who is giving us lots of useful advice,' I said hoping to save him from cardiac arrest. 'He told us to contact you.'

  His eyebrows were now within a whisker of his hairline. There were a few minutes of silence wherein he sought to regain control of his facial parts. Ellie watched him intently, finding the drama of his expressions very entertaining.

  'There is nothing we can do to help you,' he said eventually, delivering a massive blow to our hopes of aid money to help keep our leaking ship afloat.

  Seeing my dismay he tried to explain his position.

  'You need an agricultural degree from a French university to get onto the young farmer aid programme, or you need to do a university equivalent programme in Périgueux.'

  I started to ask something about the programme.

  'It's in French,' he said, stopping me in my tracks and making it clear he didn't consider my language skills up to the level required.

  'I thought your organisation was here to help farmers, especially new farmers, like us,' I said bitterly.

  'I think there is someone who can help you in the vineyard. I'll give you the number for Cécile Bernard, she's our vineyard advisor for your area.'

  We thanked him despite feeling that we got nothing from the exchange except depression at our lack of farming credentials. The young farmer programme opens the door to layer upon layer of aid, something he didn't explain. By not being on it at the start, we were excluded from benefits that multiplied through the system.

  Fortunately, we got more than we realised when Cécile Bernard became our advisor.

  Cécile was a wonderful woman with a heart of gold, brown, curly hair, and a ready smile. She was in her thirties and knew vineyards. When she arrived to meet us a few weeks later Sean dragged me out despite my reluctance to get involved in vineyard work. His lack of French meant that I already knew more about tractors and other farm equipment than I wanted to.

  With Ellie on my hip we walked the vineyards with Cécile. She and Sean made good progress despite the language barrier. I tuned out and busied myself with eating the delectable botrytis sauvignon blanc that had been left on the vines. Botrytis is a miraculous 'noble' rot that develops on late-harvest grapes under special conditions. It concentrates the flavours and sugars to produce the most heavenly taste. The way the late-harvest grapes develop is unique, and hence considered worthy of a special designation, giving the wine of Saussignac its commune appellation.

  Appellation is an ancient concept developed in France to denote a quality food or drink from a geographic area. The first food to gain the pre-cursor to appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) was Roquefort cheese back in the 1400s. Wine appellations were relative latecomers, only officially initiated in 1935. Our reds, rosés and dry whites fell under the Bergerac appellation, one of the original areas to gain AOC status. Saussignac was made a commune appellation in 1982 but its dessert wines were famous as early as the 1500s. At the time all I knew was that those grapes were so good I could not stop myself.

  As I stuffed the fifth bunch into my mouth, I noticed that Sean was having difficulty understanding something Cécile was saying. Cécile repeated herself. Sean turned to me.

  'I think she's trying to ask us a question.'

  'I know, but I didn't catch what it was.'

  Cécile looked at us as if we were aliens from outer space.

  'Are you trying to ask Sean something?'

  Cécile cracked up and all three of us roared with laughter while Ellie looked on in mild amusement. I think she had realised just how little we knew about how to farm vines. Here we were trying to learn something completely new and complex – winegrowing – in a language we didn't even understand. If we didn't laugh we would have cried. I felt like I was Alice in Wonderland. We had a long way to go.

  My birthday card from our closest friends, Barry and Aideen, arrived with the caption: 'The road to a friend's house is never long.' I dissolved into tears. There was a silver lining inside the card; they were coming to visit us in a few weeks.

  The night they arrived we set up camp for them in the second half of the house where renovations we still seriously required. Cillian, their nine-year-old son, and Juliette, their seven-year-old daughter, were ecstatic; it was a real adventure being in an abandoned semi-ruin. Mattresses, sleeping bags and boxes as side-tables offered simple comfort. We put the kids to bed early and settled down to catch up, starting with an aperitif of the Saussignac dessert wine we bought with the property.

  'This is fantastic,' said Barry.

  Aideen followed with more superlative comments. She grabbed my notebook and took tasting notes. Then we tasted the reds.

  'You must sell these wines direct this Christmas,' said Barry.

  We had been enjoying the wines but we didn't feel confident enough to sell them. Sean had taken samples to a négociant nearby who had voiced interest – but at outrageously low prices.

  'Are they good enough to market to our future customer base?' I asked.

  'You have to. If you wait, people will forget you. Get the offer out there.'

  'But how will we do it in time for Christmas? It's nearly November.'

  'It can't be that hard,' said Barry. 'Do the sales over the Internet.'

  We had worked on large-scale transactional Internet projects, Sean for the bank and myself f
or diverse clients, but that seemed far away in the past, although it was a mere three months since we'd moved. The bottles we bought were 'nude' so we needed labels and capsules, the covers that go over the corks, then we'd need a shipping partner and approval from the customs authorities to ship the wine.

  Undaunted by the logistical problems, we spent the evening coming up with labels and tasting notes for the sales campaign which in a few hours had become a reality. 'Ho Ho Haut Garrigue' became our Christmas tag line, but 'Sassy Saussignac' in bold gold with lurid pink lips underneath didn't look quite as appealing the following morning when we all got up to participate in our first ever hand-harvest of 'sassy' dessert wine.

  We arrived at the Barses', the family that had hosted us at their B&B. Their ancient uncle was in the winery and didn't recognise us. When we'd stayed in the B&B we visited his half of the Barse house, which was like stepping back in time. Medieval cobbles on the floor were cracked and worn from centuries of use and, opposite the door, a huge fireplace with hooks and pots hanging over it was still in use as the primary cooking facility. He greeted us warily and escorted us to where the extended family was picking grapes. To him, after a lifetime of working this vineyard, anyone offering to help hand-harvest for fun was regarded with suspicion.