Saturday February 1
Yesterday we bottled our IGP Pay d’Oc made from chardonnay and chenin blanc. It was Flower Day, according to the biodynamic calendar. until after tea time that is, but we had finished the job by then. Do we ‘believe’? Well, to give a straight answer, we don’t disbelieve. And it can’t do the wine any harm.
The wine certainly seems to ‘believe’. It’s come up redolent with fruit and flowers on the nose, with a lovely round and harmoniously balanced palate juggling freshness and fruit with great confidence. We had our first bottle tonight, the very first taste of our 2019 harvest, and it portends well. Let’s hope the others follow suit.
And the best news is, we’ve got our entry level wine back on board and in the bag …. er, in the bottle, that is.
Oh happy day!
Sunday February 2
Today is one of those Christian festivals that originates before memory, and is obscurely tied up with pagan festivals of light that went before it. It marks the midpoint of winter, halfway between the shortest day and the spring equinox, and goes under many names in many cultures: some call it Candlemas, and some call it Groundhog Day, and farmers in all parts of the world have noted it as a weather forecaster.
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright
Winter will have another fight.
If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain,
Winter won’t come again.
So goes the old song. If the groundhog leaves his hibernating hole, then that’s winter done and dusted. We all looked for groundhogs, marmots, or any other creature of that ilk today, Benson more enthusiastically than the rest, but to no avail. So we just studied the day instead, which showed itself to be fair and bright as far as the eye can see, and unseasonably warm as well. So … winter will have another fight.
We said it first
Monday 2 February
Opening performance today: our brand-new IGP Pays’Oc chardonnay-chenin 2019 on stage for the first time, at the latest Vinifilles production! Trainee sommelier Joël Banzato takes centre stage, playing to an audience of bright, enthusiastic student sommeliers from around the region. You can feel the excitement in the house, it’s spilling out all over the place.
(The rest of our 2019 wines are still waiting in the wings for their cue, of course. But this is a very good dress rehearsal for them to watch).
This Vinifilles collaboration with the training centre in Béziers is a great initiative. We teach the up-and-coming sommeliers about our terroirs, about the wine-making, about the diversity of the region. They are really bright and motivated and raring to go: what great future Ambassadors of wine. What a day so well spent. (And what a great lunch, cooked by trainee chefs and served by trainee restaurant staff).
Fellow Vinifille Françoise Antech and I drive home together, straight into a huge, lowering, glowering sun that glares hotly at us all the way home. Some almond trees along the road are beginning to blossom. It is really very much too warm.
Tuesday 4 February
Today we hear that our chenin blanc, Dédicace has been chosen as one of the showcase wines from the region for ProWein, the world’s biggest trade wine fair in Dusseldorf next month.
Trouble is, we don’t have any left to sell. In fact, we hardly have enough even to be showcased.
Isn’t it always that way, in life as in wine?
Almost as certain as the groundhog’s predictions. And by the way, yes indeed, today is cold, cold, cold. Winter is back for another fight.
Wednesday 5 February
Letter from Monday’s trainee sommelier:
Bonsoir Madame Panman,
That says it all.
I see a great future lying ahead for Joël.
Tuesday 11 February
Cécile, our aspiring tractoriste, is out in the field with Muktar, who came for the harvest and looks set to stay, we hope. They’re digging holes with an enormously strong mechanical boring machine. The ground is so hard and so thick with stones, that it is impossible to dig by hand. They have 4000 holes to dig before the spring. Already the machine has broken down about ten times in the course of a single month, reduced to a defeated pile of useless scrap metal by a mere barrier of pebbles.
I peer into the holes. Lots of feldspar. Some pretty, pristine quartz. Mica glittering here and there. But not a single remnant of the un-listening ear of a Roman urn. Not even a tooth of a lophiodon. Just determined old stones, difficult to decipher, lying in wait to frustrate man and machine alike.
At the end of the month, the holes will be filled with cuttings from old, original mauzac vines that are kept at the Conservatory in Limoux. This means there will be more original Mauzac at Rives-Blanques than at the Conservatory itself.
All of this on the assumption that Céline doesn’t break down as well, as she fights a losing battle to keep her hands clean.
Friday 14 February
The salesman from Normacork comes to see us today, presenting her range of ‘corks’ made from sugar cane. Guaranteed cork-taint free. They say they are carbon neutral too. So what’s wrong with them? They haven’t really been tried and tested, although it’s true they’ve been on the market for a few years now. And they look a bit plasticky. More family debates are coming our way for sure, and each of us battons down as best we can to fight our corner. Some of us hope that we’ll at least bottle some of our production with them.
Monday 17 September
Sandra waved at us joyfully as we passed her coming up the road, a large caravan rattling down the homestretch to its one-man caravanserai at the top of our vineyard, her favourite spot. She’s a genuine ’60’s-style hippy, excepting the 60’s were before she was born: a free-spirit, earth-loving, and brimming with blossom and birdsong. She’s also a very good worker and very nice to have around. We’re delighted to have her back after the harvest, and hope she’ll stay as long as possible before the call of the wild calls her again.
In the meantime, her bike, which deplaces itself and her as well, as if by magic rather like Mary Poppins’ umbrella, is leaning against a vine. Sandra is addressing the young vines she helped to train last year, and she’s delighted:
“It gives me such pleasure” she says, “to see them so upright and straight. Like a little army. My little army”.
On the other side of the world, President Trump has backed down from his threat to impose up to 100% tax on our wines. A faint breath of relief stirs through the vineyards. Sandra seems to lift her head and inhale it.
Thursday 20 February
Big day for a small vineyard! The clones from the Mauzac Conservatory have arrived, after spending a year being nannied in the Nursery! And now we can start filling in those holes waiting for them, so empty of soil and so full of hope.
4000 vines from the cuttings the Chamber of Agriculture took for us from the 40 different original Mauzac varieties that are safeguarded at the Conservatory now have to be put to bed, one by one to replace the old dead vines. All of them are on American rootstock, in order to avoid phylloxera
.
The whole équipe is in place: Jan-Ailbe, Sandra, Cécile, Muktar, and Michael. The sun is shining. The temperature is Just Right. It really couldn’t be better.
Monday 24 February
We’re still planting. The weather is still prevailing, unremittingly Good. The smiles are still smiling. It is going very very well.
At the end of the day, we tie ribbons drenched in cheap perfume around the vines at about every 3 meters or so, like a yellow ribbon on the proverbial old oak tree. These are to keep the wild boar away. It works too.
And at the very end of the day, there’s a glass of Blanquette and a glass of Occitania to remind us why we love our Mauzac so much. Even if it takes years to get in place and five days of back-breaking work. What you’d call a hard graft.
Trouble is, we won’t know what interesting notes these clones of the original, old authentic clones will bring to our wine, for many years. But we are patient people.
Saturday 29 February
Pretty unique for a husband and wife team to graduate as Doctors of Philosophy at Oxford University on the same day, in the same ceremony, standing side by side.
What a wonderful moment of sheer, undiluted joy to see our very own Xaxa and her very own Ian doing this today.
(Quite an achievement for the Rives-Blanques No 2 tractoriste, and its No 1 sales rep …)
|A real milestone in their lives, in our lives, and in the life of Rives-Blanques
…./to be continued next month.