We heaved a sigh of relief last month when the really cold, miserable weather settled in – but it was short-lived. By mid-January the temperate Marin wind was blowing from the Mediterranean, the sun was shining, and Spring seemed just around the corner. All that could change, however, and we rather hope it does. The pruning is finished, excepting for the youngest vines we planted last spring, which we consider and look at with undisguised dismay. We all suffered from the conditions that 2019 gave us, but the vines suffered multi-fold. For sure we have lost a full year’s growth here, maybe even more. Time will tell.
Time tells all, in this business. That’s the terrible beauty of it.
Tuesday 5 February
Kung Hei Fat Choy! We herald the year of the Brown (wet) Pig, the first full moon of the Chinese lunar calendar which falls today, with this video and best wishes from all the wild pigs at Rives-Blanques. The soothsayers say it’s a good year for Agriculture (hurrah) – but a wet one….
Sunday 9 February
Last Call at Toulouse airport for Paris … Wine Paris, to be exact. The big so-called Mediterranean bi-annual wine trade get-together Vinisud starts tomorrow … but not in its traditional home. This year, and probably for ever more, it will be in Paris – under a new, more cosmopolitan name, « WineParis ».
I’m early because I’m pushed to be: either by the resident pushers at home, or simply by the pure fear of missing a flight and then really being pushed into a corner by the home crowd. But the advantages show themselves, not necessarily in the time for a cup of coffee, but more in the time for idle reflection.
All these wine trade fairs! Vinisud which used to be in Montpellier, now WineParis and henceforth every year from today and for
as long as it continues to profit the organisers; ProWein, the world’s biggest, the unmissable, the incontournable, yearly fest in Dusseldorf next month; Vinexpo, up until now the place to be and to be seen in Bordeaux, heartland of Big Business and after-school partying but fading rapidly as la grande dame, and now planning a final fling and a new in life on the stage in Paris next year; VinItaly; the London Wine Fair; and all attendant spin-offs: Vinisud Asia, Vinexpo USA … the list just goes on. If we’re meant to be wine growers, why on earth are we spending so much time in planes, at airports, or on our feet in the close, closed and confined halls of international convention and trade fair centres?
Tuesday 12 February
Daughter has joined mother at Wine Paris. We are on the stand put together by The Vinifilles, the female winegrowers of the Languedoc Roussillon, and a very nice one it is too.
It’s very busy. To be h0nest, I’m amazed how many foreign buyers have come, and how noticeable the Parisiens are by their absence. Or at least, that’s our experience. Last night we headed off to Willi’s Wine Bar for dinner , well deserved after a hard day’s work, and were royally received by the charming Mark Williamson, and a wonderfully designed dinner. Tonight we’re off to that other iconic watering hole run by another one of that talented vintage of 70’s Englishmen who migrated to France, Tim Johnson’s Juveniles.
There have to be compensations for paying an arm and a leg to be imprisoned in a place like Wine Paris for three days on a trot. And actually there are: not only a couple of memorable dinners, but also great meetings, exciting people, interesting prospects, endless potential. And that’s what we live on. The endless potential.
Thursday 14 February
This Valentine’s Day
… say you’ll be wine!
Wednesday 20 February
Just love these illustrations by David Hawson (must remember not to over-use).
Today Spring come at the nearest (to paraphrase Cerces in The Tempest): it came in the form of our un-oaked chardonnay, the first of the 2018 wines to hit the bottle, so to speak.
Some people call it The Basic Beauty (wine writer Janna Rijpma)
Some people call it Simple But Not Stupid (anon)
Others call is Wellness in a Glass (Dutch newspaper)
Some call it our Aristocratic Country Wine (cellar door customer)
And there are those who just call it Scrumptious (The Spectator).
We’re calling it Spring. Very floral and fresh, typical chardonnay, an everyday wine that doesn’t become boring when enjoyed every day. Like Spring. And we bottled it today without mishap, other than early morning humidity which rendered the self-adhesive labels un-adhesive for a brief and heart-stopping moment.
Saturday 23 February
Far too much Spring all around, in fact. Not very happy with this demented, clement, temperate weather. The vines will get the wrong idea in their heads if this goes on.
Amazing that Shakespeare quote. Here’s how it goes:
Earth’s increase, foison plenty
Barns and garners never empty,
Vines and clustering bunches growing,
Plants with goodly burden bowing –
Spring come to you at the farthest
In the very end of harvest.
Scarcity and want shall shun you
Ceres’ blessing so is on you.
Love it!: « Scarcity and want shall shun you », thank you, Ceres! But I really don’t get the « Spring come to you at the farthest » bit, who would ever want Spring after the harvest? We want Spring at Springtime, please! Not before, not after. But on time, and in place. Please.
Ceres, while we’re about it, is, or rather was, a Roman god of agriculture (also actually the smallest midget planet in the universe, if you’re thinking celestial bodies). It is she whose name was taken for our dry, clean wind that blows from the Atlantic, the Cers. The one that usually prevails. The one we like. The one we wish we had right now. The one we didn’t have last year, just when we really needed it.
She’s fickle, is Ceres.
Sunday 24 February
Jan-Ailbe is all alone with the chardonnay in the Tres Pechs field. He has reduced his enormous height to the eye-eye level of vines that are hardly one foot tall. The sun is shining down on him / them, and on the horizon, the mountains are singing. It’s called Guyot Poussard, the type of pruning he’s forcing on to these young vines, laboriously, vine by vine.
« Why don’t you ask Ahmed to help you? » I ask, seeing that he’s progressed less than a row in what seems like all afternoon.
« Or I could help you? » I offer.
He shakes his head slightly at the first, and then violently at the second.
« It’s too complicated to explain, » he says. « Better if I do it. You have to cut the eyes in a certain direction so that the juices run along the outside part of the inside of the trunk and branches. It’s called ‘soft pruning’ – or at least in French that’s what it’s called. No way I could explain it to Ahmed, who’s so set in his ways anyway. As for you …. » his voice trails off. Then picks up again. « Besides, Ahmed has to do the broyage. »
That is, ploughing all the cuttings that have been trimmed off the pruned vines and left in the middle of the rows between the vines, back into the soil.
We do it because it seems natural to return to the earth what came from it – but the jury’s still out, even on that. Every time you go through a row of vines with a tractor, you’re compacting the soil. Every time you plough, you’re messing up the soil’s top thin layer and its covering of vegetal ‘litter’. You’re also spreading your carbon footprint all over the place. As with everything in wine and vines, there are no absolute truths.
Maybe, come to think of it, as with everything in Life.
…/to be continued next month.