Wednesday August 1
Suffering from dépaysement. We know we’re in Ireland, but this Ireland glitters, gleams, glows … is gorgeous in most un-Emerald Isle way. It is not emerald: it is blue – and brown in patches. Lots of brown patches. Poor farmers, we think. They haven’t had enough rain. We’ve had too much.
Meanwhile, back home, horribly hot weather continues to alternate with mindless downpours. The grapes are suffering and so is our son. But we are not: only suffering from dépaysement in this completely foreign place that would be more properly at home somewhere along the coast in the south of France.
Our worries seem far away, and a bit unreal.
Trouble is, they may be far away but they are real.
Thursday 9 August
Talk to Jan-Ailbe on Skype today. “It’s raining” he states, making no attempt to keep the disgust out of his voice. “It started just before I finished the mildew treatment”.
Which means he will have to go out and do it all over again.
Meanwhile, we luxuriate in this Irish excess of blinding blueness and unbroken sunshine.
Monday 13 August
La Trilogie hits the hot spot today. Richard Hemming, Jancis Robinson’s ace taster and a Master of Wine to boot, gives our Master Blend, La Trilogie 2015, 17 points. And a very nice review too.
All hugely encouraging on the eve of the most discouraging harvest ever.
Thursday August 16
Happy is the helmsman who discovers that h
is dinghy of the Ette class, called Blanquette, has won the Captain’s Cup, into which he can pour precisely one full bottle of Blanquette de Limoux. There’s still plenty of fizz in the world’s oldest sparkling wine, ….and all who sail in her.
Sunday August 19
Time to pull in the sails, go home and face the fire.
Thursday August 23
Our Master Blender, as we like to call him, comes around for a quick pre-harvest meeting. We go around the vineyard again with him: it is not a pretty sight. Vines bereft of grapes, with straggling dry leaves. For us, this year is disastrous with a capital D, and for the first time in nearly two decades, we survey our property with undiminished dismay and distress. There is nothing to be done about it, short of dropping our organic accreditation – but it’ s way too late for that now. If we get thirty percent of our yield, we’ll be lucky. That means: no fizz this year, no Le Limoux, and possibly no Occitania. We could cry.
Jan-Ailbe surveys his kingdom with undisguised disgust. He did everything humanly possibly to save the crop, but what can you do against constant rain, mildew, and hail?
And who’s to say if the weather will behave from now onwards?
Wednesday August 29
Guess who’s coming to lunch today?
None other than the legendary Steven Spurrier, or better said, Steven Spurrier of the legendary Judgment of Paris tasting in which California roundly demolished France. A man of a million parts, endless energy and a walking repository of everything to do with wine and the wine trade over the last fifty years or so.
Just wish I hadn’t read his fascinating book, Wine, A Way of Life, because I’m feeling quite intimidated by the visit.