Some friends of mine, Marine and Eric, are winemakers. They began producing over 5 years ago having bought five hectares of vines just up the road on the hillsides of Andillac where her label, La Vignereuse, was born.
The brand produces around 19,000 bottles every year and Marine produces “Vin Nature” – wine which is free from chemicals and pesticides. Only organic copper or sulphur is used to protect the vines from mildew and the grapes are vinified without any additives at all, even going without sulphur before bottling the last two years!
She produces various grape varieties, including Duras, Loin de l’oeil, Mauzac, Gamay, Braucol and Syrah. And it’s really amazing wine – their stock is snapped up by wine lovers across France, but also over in the UK and the United States. At a recent tasting, we tried a sparkling red – Gaia Quoi! – which was so wonderfully different, delicious and dangerously easy to drink. Stocks of this were unsurprisingly bought out in no time.
Wanting to learn more about the production process from the ground up and preferring to learn how to do things by actually giving it a go, I asked them if I could come along one day to help with the harvest and see for myself how it all works. So yesterday at 8 o’clock in the morning, I headed off to the village of Andillac to meet up with them and the rest of their team of grape pickers.
At this time of the year in the Tarn, the roads are buzzing with activity from the crack of dawn as winemakers get started on harvesting their fruit. Mini-tractors pulling trailers piled high whizz from vineyard to winepress throughout the morning when most of the day’s work actually needs to be done before it becomes too hot. The September sun here in the south-west of France is still pretty strong and in order to maintain the stability of the sugar levels of the fruit, picking needs to be stopped once temperatures get too high, from around midday.
We were each given a bucket and a pair of secateurs. Sébastien gave me a demonstration of what to do. I asked Marine why she had chosen to handpick the grapes rather than going for the machine-harvesting method. She explained that you have much more control over the quality of the grape when you do it by hand. Of course, it takes much longer to harvest, but you can check for proper ripeness and quality of the fruit when it’s done manually – a process which requires skill and a good eye. Natural winemakers like Marine also prefer to operate, as their name would suggest, as naturally as possible, hence harvesting by hand.
The cutting itself isn’t too complicated, it’s, well…cutting. While the length of the stem when you cut the bunch from the vine isn’t of huge concern at this point, as a machine which removes the stalks called the égrappoir does all that later on, there are various things which are important to look out for.
For example, the colour of the grape is a key thing to check. These particular grapes were of the Duras variety, a grape which is almost uniquely grown around this area of the Tarn département. We had to make sure that the grapes were not “rosé”, which is when they have pinkish and slightly transparent skins, but that they were a deep, dark purple colour. This “rosé” colour means that the grapes aren’t ripe enough yet. The easiest way to see this is by holding the bunch up to the sunlight which is actually not so easy when you are bending down and have a face full of vine leaves! If the grapes are “rosé”, they get left at the base of the vine, or the souche, so that that particular plant can be easily found again later on and checked to see if it has any growth problems. It seemed a shame to leave such beautiful bunches of fruit abandoned on the ground rather than being used to make wine! But if they aren’t ripe enough, they will make the wine too acidic, so banished they have to be.
Another simple test is to just taste the grapes: ripe and unripe are quickly and easily discernible by how acidic they taste. Another test is to peel the skin back and wipe the flesh onto your hand – if it leaves a small trace of colour, it is usually ripe. And you can also check the pips – if they are a nice brown colour – that’s a good sign too.
You also have to quickly inspect each bunch for any signs of mould or damage, which can appear but can be easily removed so as not to waste the other healthy grapes in that bunch.
By this very early stage, I felt I’d already doubled my winemaking knowledge and couldn’t wait to get going. We worked in loose pairs, one on either side of each vine to make sure that no bunches, or grappes in French, were missed. The rhythm was steady and unhurried, with a natural synchronicity between those working opposite each other. When we had filled our buckets, we then had to take them to the trailer and empty them out. And it’s very much a team effort: if you see someone else has a full bucket as you walk past, you pick that up too and empty it for them.
It was about 10 o’clock when we filled the trailer for the first time, after about two hours of cutting. To give you an idea of the quantity, a trailer holds about 8 hectolitres-worth of grapes (A hecto is 100 litres). While Marine drove the trailer back to her cave to empty it, we sat on the ground and had a coffee and a slice of bread with salami. The weather was beautiful, the scenery was beautiful….it was so peaceful and real and earthy.
We got picking again after our break and really noticed that the temperature was rising. By the time we stopped just before midday, it was heading towards thirty degrees. We had picked 6 rows of vines during our morning’s work, and my back was definitely noticing it, but I’d loved every minute of it.
Once we’d finished picking, we cleaned and washed the equipment, and I had a chance to see the égrappoir in operation. Grapes were fed in at one end and then crushed by rotating blades, which also strip off the stems. It’s a surprisingly quick procedure. The juice is then pumped straight into the tanks for the fermentation process, and this is where the actual winemaking begins.
Marine and Eric always provide lunch for their team, so we headed back for an apéritif – wine, of course! – and a delicious lunch. It’s a lovely moment for everyone to properly chat as a group and share that oh-so-important-French-mealtime together. I happened to make a comment about not having any blisters on my hands after my morning’s work. One of the others laughed – I’d only done half a day! The rest of them would be doing three weeks-worth of picking!
I had a little moment of reflection while I was sipping my wine during lunch, thinking about the person who might have picked the grapes which had made that particular bottle. Experiencing the process first-hand makes you really think about the different steps and the details which go into winemaking. And also how winemakers work so closely with nature to ensure they get the best result. There is something very therapeutic about the whole process – working outdoors, a partnership with and a real understanding of nature and the elements, and then to have a highly-prized product at the end. Can there be a better job?
My experience was rewarding enough already, but as I left, I was handed several bottles from a selection of La Vignereuse wines to take home. A couple of them are made with the Duras grape so as I drink a glass of it, I’ll be really thinking about that particular section of vineyard where I picked, and wondering if the grapes came from those, now familiar, rows of vines.