Wednesday 5 March
It’s literally “heaven-sent” Jan says, looking at the curtain of rain firmly closed around us. Just made to order for our newly planted Mauzac vines. They’re happy, and we’re happy. The empty tanks in the cellar have filled up to the brim with rainwater syphoned down from the roof gutters, and now we have a good stock for watering the young vines later, if need be.
He puts on his boots and tramps up to the top field with Benson (the Springer Spaniel, not his namesake, someone’s butler some 40-odd years ago, in the days and the place where some people had butlers) to inspect the newly planted oak tree in the middle of the vines. It is still standing, despite winds of up to 45 km per hour. It is also enjoying the rain.
Sandra’s caravan is still standing too, swaying dangerously on the hilltop.
We light our fire and hunker down.
Thursday 6 March
So Covid-19 hits the wine world, it’s official. Someone said that the Black Plague found its beginnings in trade along the silk route, and this looks pretty similar in that respect. Today we hear that ProWein has been cancelled: the most important, most unassailably potent and powerful trade fair in the world, which brings some 70,000 people together from over 60 countries under one roof in Düsseldorf. This cancellation is not earth-moving news, but it certainly is earth-shaking. And in the wine world, almost inconceivable that ProWein could be brought to its knees.
Maybe now we’ll learn that we can live without ProWein.
Or maybe not.
But one thing’s for sure: we’ll learn something – – if not about Prowein, then about life.
Sunday 8 March
It has stopped raining! Oh joy! The mountains are covered in bright new layers of fresh snow, the sun is shining, it is a glorious day … Spring has come!
It really has come. Pear trees are blossoming, the hedge along the Mauzac field is blossoming, the vines are blossoming. Bacchus is smiling, Benson is bounding, and we all feel uplifted.
Even the old, old vines seem to be dancing in the sunshine. Waking up. Getting going again. And thinking about harvest 2020. They couldn’t say it more plainly: fragile tiny little buds are bursting through the old wood, sunbent.
Tuesday 10 March
We spend the morning behind closed doors checking the wines that are going to be bottled at the end of the month (if). Then we taste through all the chardonnay barrels to see what else the 2019 vintage has in store for us. As always, it’s hungry work, so we head off the butcher’s canteen in the village for a lunch large and robust enough to stand up to a tasting of even hundreds of wines… and it is almost completely empty. A first. And the first sign of Life in the Time of Corona.
Thursday 19 March
It’s only when you see the wooden stakes we’ve been planting this week to support the infant wines we’ve just planted, that you realise how many old vines we had to take out, how many holes we had to dig, how much earth we had to move around, how many new vines we had to plant, and how many stakes we had to hammer in. And now they’re in place, like a well-drilled army, standing in the evening sunshine. A battalion of wooden soldiers. And you can hardly see the vines for the wood.
Ready to face God knows what.
But are we ready to face God knows what?
Sunday 15 March
How fast things are moving. Our daughter Xaxa and her husband Ian make a quick decision to fly back to France before all the borders are closed and all flights are grounded. So they take the red-eye express from Stansted and arrive in time for breakfast.
The diary reminds, as it is meant to, that we have a meeting at 10h00 with our importer from the Antilles, at 11h00 with one from the USA, and so on … but no, we are not at ProWein. Even the thought or the mere possibility of a ProWein is absolutely unthinkable. How could anyone ever have imagined it could even take place? We are firmly here at Rives-Blanques, and look destined here to stay.
Though we do slip out down to the village to vote our Mayor back into office. He gives us his unopposed ballot slip with gloved hands. We’ve been asked to bring our own pens for the signature. Arrows on the floor of the empty building push us to the Exit as fast as they can.
Monday 16 March
All restaurants are closed. The bottler says he can’t come to do our bottling. The filterer says he can’t come to do our filtering. Everyone says the French borders will be closed tomorrow. Offices around us are closing as firmly and as fast as clams. Airlines are grounding their flights. Borders are going up and closing down all over Europe. Limoux is in lockdown. And this is just the beginning.
Wednesday 18 March
But the chardonnay still is on the road to Harvest 2020.
And hope springs eternal.
Thursday 19 March
Ian takes us out for dinner. That is, on our very own terrace. The food is delivered with a 
smile by a nice little boutique hotel down the road called Domaine Michaud. Our cellar master goes down to the cellar and hunts up some good bottles. Because the oldies have been accorded a respectful 2m swinging space by the family until this internal self-quarantine period self-imposed by the arrivals from London is over, we shout at each other across the flickering candles on the table. It is extremely cold and we are all dressed in ski jackets and wooly caps. The outing ends early, unsurprisingly, but we thank our lucky stars shining overhead to be in such a fortunate position.
Friday 20 March
And life goes on. In fact, the vineyard is a hive of activity. Mokhtar and Michaël are picking off unwanted buds along the stems of the youngest plants, and in the field we call Tournié (because it was originally planted some forty years ago by someone called Monsieur Tournié) we’re preparing the soil to plant chenin blanc next week. Lots of boys with lots of toys happily engaged.
The vines too are blissfully unaware of anything beyond their own plot. The Chardonnay is moving along nicely, the first leaves beginning to burst skywards. This puts us about two weeks ahead of normal. (Whatever normal is.)
The sun is shining. The air is fresh. It’s difficult to believe there’s a catastrophe going on beyond our boundaries.
Monday 23 March
Nobody comes, nobody goes. Nobody arrives, nobody leaves. The streets are deserted. This new normal makes us look with amazement at the television showing people piling in and out of British pubs, beaching on Bondi or strolling around Times’ Square. Don’t they realise what’s going on?
Well, we didn’t – in fact only three weeks ago we were in Oxford, celebrating, pubbing, kissing and hugging, rubbing shoulders with the world and eating in packed restaurants.
A truck arrives, to collect a carton of wine. We’re his last stop of the day, he says. He opens the door to the truck, and it is completely and absolutely empty inside.
There’s a surreal divide between us, in splendid isolation, surrounded by birdsong and sunshine, and the rest of the world.
But the hard reality is, we haven’t sold a single bottle of wine this month.
Wednesday 25 March
Lao Tzu or someone of that kind, perhaps Confucius? said that bad endings can mark good beginnings – or words to that effect. I was so much against pulling out our beautiful old Chardonnay vines in the Tournié, but the trouble is, Rives-Blanques is a democracy, and the majority rules. Not a good idea. So that was a bad end of a beautiful story, for one of us.
But today marks the new beginning, and it’s called Sshh … Chenin blanc. Nearly two ha. of it.
So the team arrives and measures out the space, lines up the vines, plants them.
Then on cue, a gentle rain starts falling … gently.
Simple as that.
At night a presidential President Macron addresses a sobering message to the nation from Alsace. We’re still stumbling around in the dark, and the situation is getting worse.
Thursday 26 March
Snow falls in parts of the Languedoc today, but surprisingly, not in Limoux.
One of our workers doesn’t show up for work again. There’s a garbled message about having to go to hospital for a Covid-19 test. His phone is switched off.
We worry about him, and we worry for him.
Saturday 28 March
Jan-Ailbe clearly thinking about the brilliance of his appropriate technology. He’s in the Tournié field, watering each and every newly planted Chenin vine. This gives him ample chance for reflection
The plan he came up with was to create a gully that would syphon the rainwater off the roof of the cellars and into the empty tanks below. No sooner had he thought it up than the rains came, and filled up two tanks to the brim. That makes 200 hl of fresh, pure, clean, rainwater given to us for free and gratis.
Tuesday 31 March.
Suddenly our missing worker phones. He wants to see Jan-A. He has no Covid-19, but he is in distress. And that is how the month ends. On a tenterhook, on every front.
……/to be continued.