My Kind of Vendanging

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Enjoying yourself, grape harvest, Vendange

A couple of weeks ago friends who have a small patch of vines over the other side of the river in Sauternes issued their annual invitation to come and help them vendange.  As usual they were practically flattened in the rush to say yes and on Monday last week some 14 of us gathered to bring the grapes in.

The day goes likes this: everyone rolls up at about 9.30 for coffee and a chat.  If you have a pair of grape cutting scissors you bring them otherwise they’re issued, along with a bucket, by the patron.  At about 10 we start picking.  Or those who didn’t have a power cut which shorted the alarm clock do.  That was our excuse for turning up as everyone was returning from rows of perfectly picked vines and we’re sticking to it.  I reckon that another picker overslept; he claims the reason he was wearing pyjama bottoms to vendange in was because it didn’t matter if they got splashed with grape juice.  Yes, we all really belive that.

Inspecting the grapes

The next stage is settling down to strip the grapes off the stalks – bigger châteaux have people standing at sorting tables, this one has the workers on garden chairs chatting and being served coffee and biscuits by la patronne while they work.  The stripped grapes are then measured and put in a tank where, instead of using their feet,  the patron and his helper crush the grapes with a large oak stick.  This of course also helps to add a subtle tinge of oakiness to the year’s vintage.

Seriously downtrodden workers having a miserable time…

Some two hours later all the grapes are in the vat, the perennial question of whether we picked more than last year has been answered – yes, 43 buckets compared to 38, and after cleaning our buckets and clearing up we’re summoned in for lunch.  This is five courses, pumpkin soup, salmon mousse, chorizo and cous-cous, cheese and salad, peach crumble and cream for those who had room – most did, la patronne is a wonderful cook and you really don’t want to say no to any of her food.  At four o’clock we arose reluctantly from the table, we had dogs to let out, and were given a party bag to take home with us – half a case of last year’s rosé and white.

If only all party bags could be like this.

That was approximately three hours work followed by three hours lunch, an excellent work/play ratio in my opinion.  And we got given a present.

It wouldn’t surprise me if there isn’t already a waiting list for next year’s vendange.

Bringing the grapes in.

Tags

grape harvest, grape picking, Loupiac, Sauternes, Vendange

The vendange – the grape harvest – started in earnest around here about a week ago.  A lot of it is done by machine now but there’s enough hand picking still done, especially over the other side of the river in the Sauternais, for people to get  misty eyed about how old traditions still continue.  Tour buses come out from Bordeaux to drive slowly around in the hopes of catching a group of photogenic pickers sufficiently close to the road for them to stop so passengers can have a photo opportunity.

Just what the tourists orderd

I admit that I get a buzz when I see the first signs of the vendange, the rightness of bringing in the harvest is engrained deep, but my feelings when I see the rows of pickers with their baskets isn’t, ‘Oh how romantic to see the happy vendangers,’ but, ‘You poor sods.’  I’ve been there, done that – and never again.

There’s a saying around that to be a true Bordelais you have to get your hands red – meaning stained with grape juice from the vendange.  But I think that what most people mean by ‘doing the vendange’ is a morning or so of light picking, not the real thing which is hard labour. In spades.

Picking grapes for red and dry white wines is murder on the back because the pickers are bent over all the time. It’s a different pain when you’re picking for sweet whites like Sauternes and Loupiac; there the vendangeurs have to squat and snip out only the ripest grapes a pair of scissors.  It’s hell on your inner thigh muscles, by lunchtime on the first day nearly everyone is walking like cowboys.  Many are also sporting bright blue plasters because it’s extremely easy to take off part of your finger at the same times as the grapes.

Sauternes with added protein, anyone?

The remaining grapes are left to ripen more for a few days, then you come back and take out a few more (and lose a bit more blood).  On average each row is gone over three times.  Chateau d’Yquem, the undisputed top de la top of Sauternes châteaux, has its pickers go back a minimum of seven times which is one of the many reasons it’s so expensive.  But good.  Very, very good.

I picked for one of the largest and best Sauternes châteaux, over 90 hectares (about 220 acres) of premier cru grapes and I walked every hectare, again and again for nearly six weeks.  The picking team was huge, about 90, which is probably why the management treated us like an unruly rabble and stationed their permanent workers, dressed in green boiler suits, at the end of each row of vines to stand there with their arms folded and glare at us like prison guards.  And to dole out blue plasters, before telling to get back into line and pick.

There were periodic attempts on the part of the guards to stop us chatting and concentrate on the job, but they were realistic enough to know that it’s impossible to silence a Frenchman or woman for long, anyway the real experts could simultaneously smoke, talk and pick at speed.  There was a clause in our contracts which forbade the use of all illegal substances – some hope.  It wasn’t only the students who moved around in a cloud of sweet smelling smoke, so did the mothers of a couple of my daughters’ school friends.

Management forgot to put anything in the contract about no sex on the job.  The local doctor’s daughter who no doubt showered regularly but seemed to be imbued with a vague grubbiness that excited the male vendangeurs was rumoured to have nipped two rows down for a quickie with an environmental activist (he was later sacked when he was found peacefully asleep while everyone picked around him).

The less said about the lunches we were given as part of our pay the better.  Just put it this way, one of the vendangeurs bought his dog with him, a Labrador, and even that refused to eat the meat we were given on the second day.  His owner looked at me and said, ‘I hope you are not judging French cooking by these meals…’  And contrary to popular stories we didn’t get offered wine with every meal either.  We didn’t get offered wine at all until the last day when we had an appero to celebrate.

So when all the pickers were asked to come back to a vendangeurs lunch a week later we weren’t expecting much.  Instead of the barn we usually ate in we were seated in a proper tent with silver, seven courses and about seven different wines.  I can’t list what we ate because I can’t remember – the meal started at midday and we left the table at five.  It was really something, even the prison guards got friendly with a bottle or two inside them, and made me look back on vendanging with something akin to affection.

And a good time was had by all

I’m still never doing it again.

Grapes and Vendanging

Tags

Dalmatians, grape harvest, Vendange

One of the things that really appealed to me about our house when we first saw what the estate agent called ‘a house needing some renovation’ – ie a complete conversion job – was its setting.  The house is down a track in the vines, well off the road so it’s pretty animal safe (neither of our cats is in to running marathons) and the wood in front of the house is securely fenced which meant that we weren’t going to be plagued by visiting hunters believing that they have the right to blast small birds wherever they like.  The other priority was being able to walk the dogs, we’ve got Dalmatians and they need a lot of exercise.  There’s practically no livestock around here, it’s nearly all vineyards or woodland so the thought of being able to walk straight out of the door on a walk where the dogs don’t have to be on the lead was a huge plus point.

For ten months of the year we have wonderful long walks all around here, the people around here are friendly, like a pretty dog when they see one and unlike when we lived on the other side of the river the hunters don’t shout at me because they think that the dogs may be disturbing some non-existent game.  They’re more inclined to ask me if Dalmatians are hunting dogs as I think they really fancy having a striking retriever.

Then the grapes start to ripen.   Desi, the younger of the dogs, loves fruit.  I’ve had to enclose the tomato patch, otherwise she’s down there every morning sucking off newly ripe cherry tomatoes, she practically lives under the fig tree when it’s in season and we always know when they will start to pick grapes soon because Desi goes down the rows sniffing at the bunches and, if she can get away with it, having a nibble or two.  She knows that she’s absolutely not allowed to tear at bunches of grapes, Dalmatian popularity locally would go down rapidly if she did, but once the grapes have been picked she reckons that the bunches and odd grapes left on the vines are hers by right.

So at this time of year our walks become me striding on ahead while two dogs stuff themselves in the vines, only reluctantly moving forwards to another patch of succulent fodder when they can tell that I’m really beginning to get cross.  Grapes aren’t good for many dogs but luckily my two seem to be unaffected by them but what is suffering is their figures.  Instead of spending forty minutes or so every afternoon charging around, they’re barely moving while ingesting numbers of calories.  The results are inevitable.  Desi’s now been nicknamed Tubby.

Hunting for grapes