Saturday 3 July
Today deserves to be a free day, it has all the makings of it, plus there’s a birthday to celebrate. So we head to Narbonne plage to dip our feet in the sea. They, in turn, take us to Gerard Bertrand’s brand-new restaurant, 
Hospitalet Plage, which literally opened its doors just a couple of hours before we walked through them. Definitely in the VVG category, in Jancis Robinson shorthand, but then you’d expect that of Languedoc’s Wine Person of the Year, or whatever the latest award is. As we sit there, a friend texts to ask if we’re near the fire. The fire? What fire?
The fire that’s blazing through the countryside just a couple of hundred metres right behind the restaurant, that’s what fire.
Four Canadair’s fly in formation right in front of us, dip down like pelicans, gulp up mouthfuls of sea water, and then fly blindly into the thick of the smoke to dump their load. The skill is extraordinary. It took six of them, all piloted by former fighter pilots, and four Dashes, sleek as pencils, to control the blazing scrubland. Fire engines from all the nearby municipalities rushed in to join the fight. Some 300 ha were lost, even so.
The Canadian amongst us, who also happens to be a qualified fire-fighter, was fully justified in being proud. Only 90 Canadairs were made, in Canada obviously, and we saw six of them in action. They are truly incredible.
But it was a sobering moment. Fire is a real issue in the Languedoc, and an absolute threat to its vineyards. Just two weeks ago, a fellow Vinifilles brought up the hazard of fire, as we were listing the natural events that blight the lives of winegrowers in magnified proportions these days. Others include things like mildew, oidium, black rot, hail, frost, high winds, too-hot sunshine, floods, flavescence dorée and multitudes of disease-carrying insects. You’d have to mad to want to do this job.
(But how much you love life when you are a bit mad.)
Thursday 8 July
Hot, cold, rain, shine, sweltering days, hail-threatening nights…
If we’re confused, what then are the vines to make of it?
This is clearly another vintage in the making unlike any other.
The result is our 20 ha are alive with action: 15 men manually taking out all the weeds that joyfully sprang to life around the vines, drunk on excessive rain followed by excessive sunshine; two tractors flying in formation, the lead tractor trimming the vines and the following tractor treating them organically against mildew; a third tractor going solo and ploughing at the top of the vineyard, and then there’s the fourth tractor on standby …
But watch this spot. 2021 is shaping up to be a challenging vintage.
Monday 19 July
I shall always remember the day we bottled Odyssée 2020 for the iridescent indigo of the flowering artichokes.
Which is a whole lot better than being reminded of the miserable year that went into its making.
Even so, we are so glad to welcome it home. We have been clean out of Odyssée for over a month now, and that hurts. Now we just
have to keep our fingers crossed that our top Chardonnay bounces bountifully and beautifully out of the bottle and fulfils all its promise…
Thursday July 22
Hot, hot, hot.
Too hot to continue our vineyard tour. But even so, people are coming by in a steady flow. You would almost say life was normal again … if only it weren’t so hot.
Monday 26 July
And now it’s cool, cool, cool – just right for Part ll of the last bottling event of the year. Today we’re putting Le Limoux, a blend of the three Limoux grape varieties, Chardonnay, Chenin and Music err, that is, Mauzac, in the bottle. It’s a Flower Day according to the biodynamic lunar calendar, and that portends very well… until we discover half way through that the bottling team has forgotten to put cardboard partitions between the bottles in the cartons. Alarm bells jangle, the foreman scowls, the line slowly jingles to a halt and a heated, not very polite exchange follows between foreman and workers. The foreman wins, and they open all the closed pallets, open all the cartons on them, put in the dividers, tape the cartons closed, and then shroud the pallets in plastic again, and park them back in their slots in the air-conditioned warehouse. But flower power prevails, and Le Limoux comes up roses.