It’s my Vineyard

In November the start of the pruning was finalised with the two Turkish gentlemen. They were extremely proud of the quality of their work last year, you remember we engaged several people last time, including the Monk and the Poles. This winter just the two Turks and some help from Fernand, the father of our old vigneron. Their price per vine agreed, a little high, but included cutting the ‘cornes,’ the old knobbly growth and burning the cuttings, trimming last years growth, selecting and leaving the choice new shoots and digging a shallow trench around each vine.

The work is nearly finished now, in February, and the vines look neat and tidy all ready to receive their new green shoots in a few weeks time. The skies are blue and the colours still muted but beautiful and the whole landscape is calm as if quietly gathering strength for the forthcoming efforts of the new growing season.

We put all our efforts into selling, going back and forth between London and Beaujolais. Making sure we have stocks of wine in London to supply our customers for the Christmas and New Year festivities. We presented our wine at a dinner, a finale to the Beaujolais Marathon, a regular feature in the Beaujolais calender. This year the Cru Beaujolais wines were featured at this event for fifteen hundred people. in the past it had only been a celebration of the Beaujolais Nouveau, a fashion that we think has had its day and on which subject I have spoken about with feeling in previous posts. So thank goodness for the opportunity to show off the superior Crus. We circulated among the guests offering our wine. texas holdem strategyparadise poker,paradise poker com,code bonus paradise pokerregles poker 2regles de jeu pokertournois de pokertournois de poker en lignetournoi poker en ligneachat jeu pokerunibet pokerregle du pokerjouer au poker sans telechargementacheter jeu de pokerjouer texas holdemtournoi texas holdemregles au pokertelecharger jeux poker gratuitespoker 770casino poker en lignepoker tour reglepoker gratuites cadeaucomment jouer au pokerpoker en ligne sur macstreap poker en lignetelecharger poker holdpoker en ligne funjeux poker onlinestrip poker gratuitementjeu de poker sur pcpoker sur internetpoker 3d gratuitescalculateur poker gratuitestournois de poker gratuitespoker texas holdemle poker en ligne sans t?l?chargementpoker totalement gratuitespoker gratuites hold7 card stud gratuitesjeu streap pokerune r?gle du jeu de pokercasino poker texasкомпютри втора употребаgagner au poker en lignepoker internet gratuitespoker en ligne bruelworld poker series tournamentjeux poker en ligne gratuitestelecharger poker holdem gratuitescuartos del pokersexy poker onlinecard studtexas holdem poker There was some interest but the tasting started far too late and our marathon runners had already over indulged. We had to compete with the cacophony of the live cabaret…..we were exhausted! I have to mention though that one of the guests I met among the hundreds had been reading my Blog!!

In the next posts we go to Amsterdam and Paris. We discover new customers in London, take our wine to the Reform Cub, the starting point for Jules Verne’s 80 day adventure around the world, and dine at The Duke of Wellington ‘Gastro Pub’, recently receiving rave revues, and our Regnie on the wine list! We work with an artist to plan our bottle label for the 2007 vintage, and plan our website…….

The quality grapes that had travelled up the tapis and tumbled effortlessly into the cuves began, if you remember, their fermentation process almost straight away, encouraged by the addition of yeasts and sugar. The deliciously developing juices had been tasted regularly, the first, an exciting moment as we had all felt so close to this year’s production.

Mr Dory continues to visit each day, rather like a doctor tending his patients, he tastes and makes notes.

The day before the pressing we were, amazingly, encouraged to tread the grapes!

This would help break down the sort of crust that forms of fermenting fruit and there is no better tool than clean bare feet! It was a strange experience of partial sinking and the feel of the grapes between our toes, legs and feet becoming quickly stained a wonderful vibrant purple. Apparently treatment for the skin better than any spa.

Now it was time for the pressing; exactly one week after each cuve had been filled with its bounty.

For five consecutive days the special vendange pump brought the contents of each cuve to the press while we helped spread by hand the heady mixture evenly into the bowels of the machine.

The alcoholic aromas were intense and overwhelming. The pressing for each cuve took about two and a half hours of carefully programmed turning and churning, the resulting juices returned to clean cuves.

The juice is now traditionally called le paradis and restaurants all over Beaujolais offer this fruity paradise to customers before their meal.

Each evening of the five days it took to press at Maison des Bulliats, the left over dried stems and exhausted fruit, like flattened raisins, called the genes was raked from the press into the trailor and taken to a designated dumping ground from where it would be collected and made into marc a sort of eau de vie that would not belong to us!

There will also be a sludgy substance at the bottom of each cuve called the lie which will too be taken away to make an even stronger brew!

There is a regional dish which is quite delicious, pork sausage cooked in wine on a bed of genes. I made this dish before and after the vendanges many times but using bunches of whole grapes instead of dried, adding a few bay leaves, served with wonderful Mona Lisa potatoes and green beans. The sauce that results is heavenly. Chris agrees.

The fermentation continued and M. Dory and our friend from Morgon are visiting regularly. The secondary fermentation known as malolactic is more subtle and this would take another week. This is the fermentation of the acids that can also be found in milk that are not so evident by taste. We were right to delay our vendange by a few days, to wait for more sun and north winds which developed and concentrated the natural sugars in the grapes and enabled this final fermentation to take place in good time.

Now, a few weeks later we tasted the young wine from each cuve. The cool of the cuvage made it difficult for us to be critical, we drew a bottle from each cuve and left it at room temperature in the kitchen, ready to taste with experts. What a difference this made, we could begin to appreciate its qualities and the exotic blend of fruits and minerals. It seeems we have the potential to win some medals. our protegy will certainly be entered for the forthcoming competitions at Macon and in Paris.

We had a fabulous party to celebrate the end of our vendange with family and friends. There were ten of us and ,of course we had the famous sausage cooked on a bed of grapes.

I stuffed fresh figs with goats cheese and ham for a starter and we finished with a selection of delicious tarts. Our 2006 Regnie was an excellent accompaniment to the rich sausage with its aromatic sauce. It was a splendid evening and all who were there were tired but happy with a very successful vendange!

The leaves on the vines started to change their colour early this year, from an October full of vibrant shades of burnt umber, ochre’s, gold, deep pinks and vivid reds, to now in November only a few left, a frail faded yellow awaiting the first strong winds which will expose the gnarled brown vines.

The willows lining many of the roads in Beaujolais, whose stems can form the most elegant of baskets and in the past were used to tie the vines, are turning a rusty red. I love the way they form majestic landmarks in the autumnal landscape here.

Our first grape year has come to an end. The vines must be pruned again as soon as the last leaf has fallen, around the middle of November. We have already engaged the two Turkish gentlemen who helped us at the beginning of 2007, they arrived a few days ago to discuss the trimming, bearing a plate of sugary Turkish sweetmeats and little pink jewels of Turkish delight!

We turn our thoughts to competitions and finding new markets for our wine, we have great hopes to expand in Canada where we managed to find a few days exploring and meeting new potential customers. We will enjoy following the progress of our 2007 Regnie. It has to pass its cru test soon but we do not have any worry there, and by March or April of next year it will be ready for bottling.

Some still in this region are selling the primeur the young wine that was for a time a big fad and fashion and is less so now. This will be on sale very soon to the worlds wine drinkers. We feel that this Beaujolais Nouveau has somewhat damaged the reputation of the cru wines. They deserve better press. These wines are so compatible with good food and have such character and complexity, and can be kept for several years. The world should rethink these jewels from southern Burgundy and re visit them, especially ours of course!, and also get to know the beauty of this region in all seasons.

Up at 6.30am monday 3rd sept. The Turkish team of grape pickers would be arriving at 7.30 and all the paperwork must be filled and faxed to the Social Security Centre in Lyon before anyone starts work. The identity and health insurance cards photocopied. Unfamiliar names and complex spellings and worn numbers difficult to read made the task more arduous and it all had to be done before the first grape is picked. Four Bulgarians had arrived but they needed special work permits so were turned away.
Clean buckets and Plastic bennes, that I was going to become very familiar with as the week progressed were put in place amongst the vines.

Fred and I a few days earlier had walked the length and breadth of our property to mark the extremities of our vines with red and white tape tied to vines at each corner, of each parcelle or patch so there would be no mistaking which were our grapes.

Chief Turk arrived with team in a variety of ‘old banger’ vehicles. Secateurs and serpettes [a special scythe shaped tool for cutting the bunches] were handed out, I was going to get used to washing these every evening ready for the next day together with sticky buckets and bennes.

With our family helpers as much needed extra help, the morning went quite smoothly and it became evident that the team picked well, sorting the grapes and cutting everything but only putting the very best in their buckets. the problem was that there were not enough pickers, the team that was promised was too small and they were to get used to our help which did not bode well for later on in the week when Fred and I would be on our own.

There were two types of days during what turned out to be eight and a half days of the vendange. Half our grapes if you remember were to go to the Cooperative not a huge distance away but a significant drive with the landrover pullig our 100 euro trailor with twenty or so bennes each filled with 50kg of grapes….

The first day all the grapes picked were to go to the co-op, where it was up to us to unload the containers into huge wagons that we pushed into a weighing bay where each load was tested for sugar content and quality,I have to say that all our grapes received ‘category one and we were saving our very best for our wine, which brings me to the second sort of day.

On tuesday it was this sort of day, the tapis as it is called installed in the cuvage where our wine would be made feeds the grapes tipped into its hopper at its base and the conveyor belt transports the grapes up and over into the vat or cuve.

As the grapes are tipped from the backed up trailor into the hopper we had another opportunity to sort and select, getting rid of leaf and substandard grape. Many people it seemed in the area had the dreaded josmine a type of fungus that could make wine turn to vinegar, we had none. Our vines had been looked after so well during the year, we have been lucky, our land and fruit are envied, we will certainly make another excellent vintage!

The weather was superb, blue sky ,hot sun by the middle of the day and the team picked fast, but they were not loading the bennes onto the trailor or even taking the heavy heavy bennes out from amongst the vines, so this was done by us. Thank goodness for our family help it was becoming difficult to keep up and we only had 50 bennes the Turks kept crying out for more as we took time feeding the loads into the cuves. Daniel was our man in the cuvage who had been one of our stalwart workers during the previous months. As the cuve gets fuller and fuller large rakes are used to distribute the grapes evenly and when each cuve is full we start another.

I escape when I can to prepare food for us, we have been up since 6.30 and everyone is hungry tired and very sticky. The palms of my hands and forearms are black with the stain of grape juice from pushing the huge piles of grapes from the hopper up the tapis.

A journalist arrives in the middle of all the activity, I had forgotten completely that he was coming. From Linformation Agricole he had phoned to ask if he could write an article about us and our vendanges experience…. Luckily the Turks were having their lunch in the shade of the cherry trees and we had a few minutes spare.

The grapes are beginnig to ferment, sulfite must be added to each filled cuve to protect the juice from unwanted bacteria. Then the yeast is added, a yeast that has been developed from the natural yeasts that form on grapes.

I mentioned in an earlier post that the choice of yeast has an important part to play in the resulting aromas and flavours of the wine. We have used three different types of yeast between 5 cuves. When the wine is finished we may well mix cuves to achieve the very best blend of structure and fruit.

Mr Sylvain Dory begins his visits after the first cuve has been filled, and a little juce can be released from a tap at the bottom of each cuve. We will be filling one and a half cuves per day but in between we have to supply the co-op with its agreed quota. Mr Dory is our Oenologue or wine maker who is well known in Beaujolais and we are very lucky to have him working with us this year. At first his serious, rather reserved, manner is a little disconcerting he has a charming smile but gives nothing away. During the last ten days or so I have become fascinated by the way he tastes and considers each cuves developing wine and I am learning and experiencing so much as we taste it with him. The question often asked about wine making is how much is science and how much is art or talent and intuition? I think the answer is a bit of all those ingredients and certainly without good grapes we can not make a great wine. The slight adjustments he makes each day are very subtle and temperature in the early stages is important and the addition of natural tannins help the wine keep its colour and body.

The days are incrediblly long and exhausting as there is very little time to take rest. It gets worse for us when on the thursday T and M have to leave, helping lift fully loaded bennes and trips between co-op and cuvage right up untill their moment of departure. Friday was a cuve day, the grapes were coming from field to cuvage, we lost no time unloading at the co-op, where by now we were receiving star status due to the article about us in Linformation Agricole and the photo identifying us to all! Fred and I had managed to get all buckets and bennes cleaned and stacked for the next day, and I had even managed to prepare a special dinner, saussices cooked on a bed of grapes that we would share with some Dutch friends visiting Beaujolais who were customers last year and who had been so hospitable to us when at the wine fair in Utrecht in April. It was not the best time but we enjoyed seeing them in spight of our exhausted states!

But Saturday, I have called it Black saturday…. It was a co-op day and Fred and I were hard pressed to load the full bennes onto the trailor, unload and get back with the empty bennes.

The picking team downed secateurs at one point as they had no empty bennes to fill, it was crazy because if they had helped load ,the operation might have gone more smoothly but they were pickers and their team had got smaller as the week wore on and they, being paid by hectaire and not by day, wanted to just get the grapes picked as quickly as possible. And they picked well we have to say but it was all too late to give new instructions although we insisted that they brought the full bennes out of the vines so that we could load more easily but we had to straddle ditches at times, lifting the 50 plus kg containers between us. We loaded and unloaded that day about 120 bennes, and finally,Turks finish at 5.opm, we finished late in the evening and could hardly raise our well earned glass of Regnie to our lips!

Pascal, our old vigneron, had seen how difficult it had been and on sunday when he was not working arrived like a knight in shining armour with the tractor and the huge bac or container behind it and between us with the trailor and Pascal with the tractor we made up some time and the pickers at last were not crying out for more bennes! Fernand, Pascals father, also borrowed more bennes from a cousin who had finished his vendanges, they were oval in shape with metal handles sticking oot each side which were quite painful on the hands…. why didnt I put on some powerful barrier cream? I dont like wearing gloves, but it is only now that my hands have stopped feeling sore and my fingernails are still quite grubby.

There was a great feeling of comradery that day and it was so hot and the sky an incredible blue and the colours in the vines were unbelievably beautiful.

We had more help from our other son too on sunday and monday, it was all more manageable but the team of pickers was smaller every day and it was becoming evident that there was some serious internal squabbling going on between chief and chiefs brother concerning remuneration…..We were paying the chief, he was paying his team, but how much to each and was it farly divided? We did not get involved in spight of the, by now, furious brothers attempts to get us to intervene.

Back in the cuvage the 5 cuves are full and, picking finished at last on tuesday morning the first cuves grapes are ready for pressing where the raft or stems will be separated from the juice and we are another step further to our 2007 Regnie which I have to say feels totally ours. We have taken part in every step, have learned an enormous amount and know that we will have an even more superior wine to give we hope a lot of people a lot of pleasure. How to manage our vendangeurs? Yes we will do things differently next year!

The bottling took one long day, on our property but carried out by the company ‘2000 Embouteillage’, this allows us to put ‘Mis en bouteille au domane’ on our label.  We have always used this company who have an excellent reputation in this area.

In the morning the wine is fitered through degrees of fineness of silica, the last, and finest, like powder.

In the afternoon the wine is put into bottles and corked

then stacked against the wall in our cave where only a few months ago we had our 2005 Regnie.

I remember looking at the quantity of bottles thinking how will we ever sell this amount of wine? In fact we only have about 3000 bottles left from the 20 thousand bottled!

We are very pleased with the quality of 2006 and I am sure it will go as fast. The new label looks great and already the pile against the wall is reducing in size.

One of our sons and a friend arrived, count down to V day. The vendanges will start on sepetember 3rd and they are here to help us, we have a weekend of calm before the storm! Our grapes are looking good and their sugar content is going up each day. The north wind that is blowing is drying out moisture and concentrating the sugar. Getting it right so the grapes are ripe but not too ripe is tricky and requires experience, good judgement and just a little bit of luck!

During the days leading up to the vendanges there was intense cleaning activity. When making wine everything from the huge concrete vats where the wine is made to every bucket and hose must be spotless. Nothing must be allowed to contaminate our wine. The vats or cuves are washed under high pressure, Fred with the help of Pascal got right inside them in waterproof gear and wellingtons until all were satisfied that they were ready to receive our grapes.
On the eve of the vendange we had some disturbing news, the oenologue who was to oversee the wine making had had a serious accident while on holiday and would not be able to work with us!
The good news was that Sylvain Dory would be able to take over. This man was recommended to us by a local character and expert vine grafter Paulo Cinquin who I described in an earlier post if you remember; young and dynamic with a very good reputation in the region. With the continual help and support of our friend in Morgon they would make sure that our 2007 production was better than ever!
We look forward to the arrival of our son and a friend who will be here for a few days before and at the beginning of the vendange. I fear for them a lot of heavy duty lifting of bennes charged with grapes to feed our cuves and those at the Quincie cooperative.

Before all this we have arranged a mise en bouteille for 8000 bottles of our excellent 2006 Regnie, this involves a days work from a local company who come to our property and filter, bottle, cork and stack the wine in our cave. The highest quality corks and bottles are ordered and delivered in time for this big event..

So Sevarine and her colleague, who looked like a birdwatcher, both suitably clothed and sporting wellingtons arrived at 8.30 am to collect samples of our grapes. They showed us how it was to be done as, during the next week, we have to take two more lots of samples and deliver to the co-operative for analysis.

The grapes must be taken from the same patches of vines each time and 200 berries must be picked at random, hence the blindfold! Placed in a plastic bag and sealed. The juice will be extracted and tested for acidity, sugar content and Ph.

A telephone call this afternoon confirmed that our grapes had reached enough maturity to be picked, the sugar content must be at least ten and ours were exactly ten. The date remains fixed for the 3rd September for the team to start picking, if the sugar level increases in the next few days it will not be a problem.
Today was one of those fully charged days; unexpected visitors, our friends who manage the Chateau de la Terriere who make a fine Brouilly, we invited them to stay for lunch. They brought us a bottle of their 2001 which although had the duller colour that age brings tasted delicious with our melon and smoked duck and quiche accompanied by a beetroot, carrot and tomato salad, from the vegetable patch. The cheese was served with our 2006 Regnie and was much appreciated by our guests.  We ate in the garden in perfect warm sunshine and exchanged new ideas about how we could promote Beaujolais! Fred has an excellent plan which you will hear more about in later posts.

Pascal visited this afternoon and we delightedly accepted his offer of help to prepare the cuves for the forthcoming bottling next thursday, the bottles and corks, all eight thousand of them were delivered this morning, Fred moved the seven huge pallettes of bottles into the cuvage with the forklift truck so they would be out of the sun. Because we are mixing half the wine from each of two cuves the left over wine needs to be transferred to a newly cleaned and prepared one ready for another bottling another time.

We have to decide from which vines we choose to take the grapes for the co-operative and let Sevarine know by monday. We also have been doing a little research, contacting some regular customers in the UK, as to whether we make some Rose Beaujolais, or sparkling rose or some sparkling red Regnie which seems to have become quite popular in France.

What do you think?

The start time for the vendanges is getting close. Today G and Didier who have been helping us all along came this morning to examine our grapes to assess their maturity and quality.

We walked through each parcel of vines, looking, tasting and discussing each grape sample taken. We were extremely pleased that it seems, in spight of the bizarre mixed weather that we have been experiencing recently, the grapes are in excellent condition! Slightly acid but with a good flavour and very little rain damage. Some of the stalks of the bunches are quite tough and this is why our pickers should use secateurs as pulling the stems by hand will without doubt bruise the fruit and start the fermentation process too soon.

The soil or ‘terrain’ varies from parcel to parcel, some clay and on others more sandy. Grapes that grow on a clay based soil will produce wine that is more ’structured’ as the French say, perhaps deeper more rounded flavour whilst the sandy soils will give a fruitier wine. This is why we mix the wine from different cuves before bottling to make sure we have a good balance of characteristics and qualities.

We are in the process of doing exactly that at the moment. A bottling is arranged for 8 thousand bottles on the 30th August of our super 2006 vintage, to make room in the cuvage for the new 2007 wine. Two cuves will be mixed, filtered and bottled on the premises; this will take one whole long day and I will take photos of the operation for you to see.

Tomorrow at 8.0 am the team from co-operative at Quincie will visit us to do the same sort of inspection. They will take samples of our grapes, sealed and carefully marked for analysis and let us know when they think the picking should begin as, you remember, we hope to sell half of our production in grapes to them as we cannot cope this year with double the wine production to sell.

In between all this activity today, Fernand helps us seal a cuve, or vat, ready for the 2006 wine that will be left unbottled for the moment. This involves pressing a special red coloured putty around the edges of the lid. We must then thoroughly clean the inside of the cuve, with the high pressure hose. Cleanliness is of paramount importance and this will continue right the way through the production of the next lot of wine which very soon will commence.

It could be the 3rd of September but we now await the second opinion tomorrow.

By the way there is a saying that the time of flowering of the ivy plant will give the date of the next years harvest. We have ivy outside our front door in full flower at the moment so 2008 may be an even earlier vendanges!

You would be surprised but it is true that plastic containers for the grapes are, this year, like gold dust! Again we answered adverts and put up adverts everywhere but those found had already been quickly sold, and we had to be extra quick to respond. One early morning we set off for the pretty little village of Charnay, south of Villefranche where we met M. Barrot, who sadly was having to give up producing wine this year. After a degustation of last years production, a cool dry Rose and a red Beaujolais Village, we inspected the famous bennes, all fifty of them, they will fit nicely in our green trailor, and they were half the price of new ones. Twenty six buckets were also avalable, and a set of well cared for greased secateurs, which we also bought. It is important that the pickers use special secateurs so that the whole bunch of grapes can be cut and drop neatly into the hand with the minimum of trauma to the delicate fruit. It seems that loading the grapes into relatively small containers, the bennes, instead of into an enormous container on the back of a tractor, called a ‘bac’ is the traditional way of the vendange, and local people here are returning to this methd. Again there is less squashing of the grapes, it is crucial that the they arrive in the cuvage as un spoiled as possible. The method we will use also enables the grapes to be sorted more easily in the vineyard, as the smaller bennes containing their bounty can be checked on site for any unwanted vegetation or damaged fruit, instead of in the cuvage.

We were warmly received by the Barrot family and it was interesting yet sad to hear their story, how they had met each other while tending their separate herds of cows, how as the collection of milk from the more isolated regions became uneconomical as the industry became more centralised and mechanised, how they turned to wine production, when times were good, managed to build a house high up with a beautiful view over the rolling Beaujolais hills. They rented vines, an arrangement known as a ‘fermage’ and sold their wine.

We have had some very hot weather over the last few days, people are beginning to say that the grapes will be ready around the 25th of August. We have spent some idyllic evenings eating outside with friends. My hand painted notice at our gate inviting passers by to taste our wine, seems to be working, more visitors from Belgium today and the charming young English couple will call in again on their way back tomorrow for some more of the delicious 2006 with its smart new labels!

One of our bigest problems this year was to manage the vendanges, in previous years totally organised by the Grandjean family. We dont have outbuildings set up to receive the 20 to 30 people who we need to help pick our grapes. We had to find local people who would come for ‘ la grande journee’, that is they do not need feeding or lodgings. Through a vigneron friend we managed to find Monsieur Uaysal! He lives locally and during the harvest time he gathers his extended family around and together they pick grapes from several vineyards in the region. We are confident that with his experience and the reputation the Turkish people have for working hard and conscientiously, all will go well.
We will need to oversee and manage the whole operation and make sure that things go smoothly in the cuvage as the grapes get delivered for the first stage of the wine making process. M.Uaysal is at the moment in Turkey on holiday at a health spar! Hope he comes back……