So we'll go no more a-roving....

Image by Steve Parker via Flickr

I little thought, last year, that it would be the last time I would ride the tractor out to the vines...clinging on to the wheelarch for dear life and reassuring myself that the jolts were good for the liver...if not for the living.
But Guy has sold his last parcel of vines and the old gang has broken up. (here)

I have picked grapes with one friend or another nearly every year since coming to France (here) and I will miss the fun, the gossip, the drinks breaks and the satisfaction of going off with the freshly pressed juice to make pineau the same night - before attacking my hands with bleach and my joints with Radox.

But time passes, we and our friends are getting older and it is now a question of whether we outlast our cellar or our cellar outlasts us..so not only am I not picking grapes, I am not even 'doing' the wine fairs...the autumn promotions mounted by the supermarkets where you can buy wine to lay down...mainly Bordeaux...as well as everyday drinking stuff.

It used to be quite an operation.
First, thanks to the compartmentalism of France, you had to have friends on the other side of the departmental border with whom to exchange the publicity brochures in order to check prices and offers...there could be a difference of as much as 5 euros in the price of the same bottle...followed by a swift reconnoitre to check that the wine offered was not already on the shelves at a lower price.

The first time I went to a supermarket wine fair I found the wine I wanted and tried to attract the attention of the 'sommelier' in the black apron supposedly running the show, which took some doing as he was busy opening bottles for what appeared to be a group of his cronies.
I showed him the wine I was interested in.

Ah yes.
Could I taste it?
No, I could not.
But if it is O.K. I want to buy four cases.
You still can't taste it. It's expensive.
But I can taste the cheap stuff that's been oxidising in the open bottles?
Certainly!
What about those bottles you've just been opening? Aren't they expensive?
Yes, but these are well known clients.......yes, to judge by the purple noses and broken veins, I just bet they were.....

Well, in those days my French wasn't up to being more combative so I backed my hunch, based on the reviews, and ordered my four cases.

The chap in the black apron solemnly took my details and said he would be in touch.
He wasn't.

I got in touch with him and he revealed that for the whole of the chain of supermarkets of which his was but one franchise the total allotment of that particular wine was three cases.

So why had they advertised it?

It brings in customers.

What about my order?

Well, I couldn't have what they hadn't got even if they had sold it me.

French logic.
It would never pass an exam.

Consumer protection has improved since that time....they now have to state how much they have for sale in the publicity leaflet...but you still have to watch them on  prices.
I liked one particular Bordeaux, which had been stocked on the shelves before the wine fair and was then transferred to the fair for the duration.
It must cost an awful lot in man hours to move four dozen bottles from one shelf to another as the price had gone up by over 70 centimes by the time it arrived at its' destination.

It doesn't do either to go to a number of wine fairs in quick succession and then forget at which one you bought the bottle you like when you finally get round to tasting it.
This has led to a tour of supermarkets carefully bearing the empty bottle, to try to find its' colleagues.
If you are thick skinned, or dedicated, you can ignore the looks you are getting from other clients, but you need some facility in French to explain to security why you are to be found in the wine aisles with an empty bottle in your possession.
Most of them finally twig that if their supermarket doesn't stock it you couldn't have pulled it from the shelf and drunk the contents, but there are some so dense that only the intervention of management has saved me from being frogmarched through the checkouts to the applause of the multitudes to await the attentions of the gendarmerie.

The dear departed days of the wine lake used to turn up bargains for everyday drinking.....those bottles with five stars and a plastic cap could harbour some very nice stuff indeed, usually produce of Italy, but you never knew what sort of consignment had been delivered.
One sure sign was that the shelf was nearly empty, but that was a bit late to find out, so, if the shelf was relatively full the best idea was to buy a bottle, sample it in the car park and, should it prove to be the real Italian Job, rush back in and buy everything with corresponding serial numbers on the label.
If it wasn't, then you had something with which to strip paint.

I think the European Union are paying winemakers to turn their surplus into vinegar these days...I know winemakers who could turn anything they touched to vinegar...and proved it regularly in the stuff they sold to the public....so it's nice to know they have achieved EU recognition at last.

Growing up in the U.K. before climate change, grapes were something that grew on the vine in Hampton Court, and wine was made from flowers, fruit and vegetables.
Before the French get all sniffy about calling these wine they should try some....I fondly remember wine made from oranges, from gorse flowers, from mangelworzels and from elderflower, though I could never master elderberry wine...it always turned out to have a metallic taste.

My first acquaintance with it was when of primary school age, when visiting my mother's mother.
She had elderly neighbours who were famed for their tomatoes - green house grown in those far off days - and their elderberry wine - supposedly of such strength that it would remove your socks at ten paces.
Every morning, nattily clad in striped pyjamas and slippers the husband would stroll from their kitchen door to the green house with an uncovered chamber pot in his hand, which was said to account for the vitality of the tomatoes and, according to my grandmother, the chamberpot played a role in making his elderberry wine too, though I never believed this as they did not have the air of a two chamberpot family.

At that time, insurance companies did not lurk in town centre offices, but sent out agents on bicycles to drum up business and to maintain it, once duly drummed, by weekly visits to their customers.
The man from the Pru called next door on his weekly rounds and I was in the front garden while my grandmother gossiped to a passing friend over the gate.

'I give him ten minutes before he comes out.....so he'll have had a glass of her wine!'

True enough, after some ten minutes the agent emerged and headed for his bicycle. I think if he had not attempted to put on his bicycle clips he might have been all right, but as it was he fell heavily into the privet hedge, heaved himself out again and rode away like a clown on a unicycle, his trilby hat neatly adorned with twigs.

The two ladies eyed each other meaningfully. Clearly the Pru would not be getting their insurance business.

From teenage years, I was allowed a glass of wine with Sunday lunch, although my father's preferred sweetish Penedes from Spain was perhaps not the best choice to accompany the roast, and as a student, having decided that I couldn't drink beer and stand up at the same time, I followed the hallowed route of Mateus Rose that we all brought to each others' parties.

Departmental wine and cheese parties were catered by Sainsbury, featuring hock and moselle, so it wasn't until I decided to learn to cook as an alternative to a diet consisting of boiled eggs or a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie when the dibs were in tune that I started to take more of an interest in wine,  inspired by Elizabeth David and Patience Grey who seemed to think it abnormal not to be swilling something while at the trough.

A super manager at a Peter Dominic branch helped me along...a real enthusiast who loved what he sold and showed me what to look for in terms of quality regardless of the price of the bottle.

He also put me wise to the then widespread adulteration of French wine.....Rhones bolstered up with a shot of Algerian...the Red Infuriator as he used to call it....Bordeaux given a boost by something hefty from the Languedoc...and although all this is supposed to have been put a stop to, Andre who worked in the wine business for years, tells me that it still goes on, just the sources change.

Later, having made contact with the world of the function waiter, I was to discover what wine could really be like.
These chaps worked as freelances, through some sort of agency, at banquets of the classier sort, including the Mansion House and Buckingham Palace, serving wine.
There was some sort of percentage allowance for breakages on these occasions, and this percentage, carefully unbroken, would leave the premises with the function waiter, to be sold.
These bottles were not cheap.....but I have never since been able to afford wine of that quality.
Most bottles were labelled, first and second growth Bordeaux, premier Cru Burgundies, but the best, the stuff that had been imported in cask and bottled in situ bore no labels, just a mark of white paint on the bottle to indicate on which side the lees were to be found.

I certainly found nothing this good when I moved to France, nor could I have expected to do so, but in view of the technology in use locally they did not do so badly.

No specialised wine yeast was used...the wild yeasts on the grape were what did the job and they would vary from year to year...while a temperature controlled vat was something unheard of.
When wine yeasts did come in I had the privilege of witnessing their first appearance at a local chap's vineyard.
His wife had produced a baby's bath, and he was testing the water with his elbow to judge the right degree of warmth to encourage the yeast to develop.

Mark you, with all the financial backing and hi tech equipment at their disposal, the stuff the top rated winemakers make these days certainly can't beat what they used to produce when the idea was to make something to drink rather than something to trade.
At least the local guys have kept both the baby and the bathwater.

So no more trips on the tractor, no more battling round the wine fairs.........whatever am I going to do with myself?

The forbidden fruit

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Picking grapes is still fun after all these years, even though the plots are smaller and the company less. As of last time I am now regarded as a senior citizen thus qualifying for a place on the wheelarch of the tractor, hanging on for dear life as we lurch and trundle down the tracks from the house to the plot of vines far off beyond the lake. It was safer to plod behind, or be bundled into the van with the colleys and the buckets, but age has its' privileges and the wheelarch it is.
The routine never varies...the housework done, the ladies arrive at the house, the vehicles and equipment are already waiting and off we go....three rows and a glass of wine. The year before last, Ziya kicked up at the poor quality of the refreshments, causing a row which spread to the exact nature of the relationship between Guy - long term widower - and the lady who comes to 'do' for him, her alleged hopes for the future, the price and quality of the sheep which Ziya and friends buy from her....and for some time I wondered if the picking team would break up, so violent was the dispute, but all was settled in time for the next vendange. Ziya now supervises the provision of wine, which involves him in several tasting sessions at Guy's before the whole ritual starts up for the year.
Guy sold off most of his holdings years ago, as age crept up on him, so what is left is his last plot of vines giving ample wine for himself, friends and family but the first time I picked there he was rather watchful. I had been brought along by Ziya, who usually has a few foreign waifs and strays at his disposal and it appeared that I was the replacement for the previous year's abject disaster...a gentleman who was very good at raising the elbow, but not so sharp on picking the grapes, so I was an unknown quantity. However, I was experienced, thanks to the years with Papy, and after a bit Guy relaxed and we started to chat at the next break.
I had noticed that not all the vines were the same...the bunches had different shapes, the size of the grapes differed too, and there were some leaf differences...so I asked him what he was growing.
'Oh, there's a bit of everything these days...a bit of Merlot, some 154, those rows down there are Castel and up at the end is Oberlin. We'll pick that separately.'
Well, I'd been in the area some time and the only one of those that I had heard of was Merlot....round here the main white is Chenin, with Chardonnay and Sauvignon getting more frequent thanks to fashion, and the Cabernet Franc and Grolleau Gris providing the other reds...though with global warming the Cabernet Sauvignon is now worth planting as well.
There was no time to ask any more questions, as Guy was off with the next trailer load of grapes, but when we finished for the day and were bouncing back in the van, I asked Ziya, self appointed expert on anything and Lord High Everything Else, what he knew about these types of vine.
'They're forbidden.'
'Why are they forbidden?'
'They make you go potty.'
Apparently it was forbidden to plant them and forbidden to sell the wine...it was only for personal consumption, as not only was there the question of alcoholic strength - these could weigh in at 18 degrees as opposed to 12 degrees for a Cabernet Franc - but they were also reputed to have a hallucinatory effect. Well, I might have missed out on the Swinging Sixties in London, but I was well placed to make up for it on the liquid LSD of rural France.
Guy was starting up the press when we arrived at the house to clean up and it was apparent that things were not going well as there was a lot of muttering then cries of
'Merde, merde, putain de merde'
as he lifted the cover off the pit into which the grape juice should flow. It was not flowing, even though the press was operating correctly. Grabbing a stick, he inserted it into the exit pipe from the press and withdrew it with a large dead rat balanced on the end. The juice began to flow and he announced that those who wanted it to make pineau should take it at once as it was so warm that fermentation would start very soon. I departed with my share in a large plastic jerrycan which had, years ago, served to contain engine oil. Guy threw nothing away. Rural folk were always well ahead of environmentalists when it came to recycling.
I made my pineau, the other great aperitif of the area, by mixing the grape juice with eau de vie and put it away for a few months. I prefer epine, but 'the ladies' are reputed to prefer the softer pineau, so it is as well to have plenty in the cellar.

Later in the year, still curious about these vines, I dropped in on Guy, who now had time for explanations.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the French vineyards were all but wiped out by phyolloxera...a grub which attacked the roots, only vines on a few offshore islands surviving untouched. The problem was not just that the vines died, any vines planted to replace them died as well. What to do? The american vine, which was not the vitis vinifera but, if my memory serves me better than usual, vitis labrusca, was immune to attack by the grub, but the wine was said to have an unpleasant taste - 'foxy' is the word used.
Two solutions were tried, the first, grafting French varieties onto American rootstock, is the one which has won out, but the other method, hybridisation, was what had resulted in the vines Guy was using. He gave me several names....Bacot, Noah, Othello....Roi des Negres, though whether that was the same as a Tete du Negre that Didier later served up, which was the best wine I ever found to go with that notoriously difficult food to match, the globe artichoke, I don't know.
'So why are they forbiden? Is it true they can drive you potty as Ziya says?'
'Anything would drive Ziya potty. No, they're just strong, that's all...you have to watch it.'
'Then why can't you sell them?'
'Because they're easy to propagate...they just touch the ground and root...no need to buy those expensive grafted vines. No one makes a profit.'
Madeleine once told me that the answer to every question as to why something is done as it is in France is money...and once again, she was proved right. There's nothing wrong with these wines, no reason why they can't be bought and sold...except that it would wreck the trade in certified rootstocks.
Guy had been pouring a twelve year old Oberlin for me to try, and it was super.....but at 18 degrees I was glad that I had arrived on foot.

We're out of wine.

When I was a timid newcomer to the French rural scene, the cry of

'We're out of wine!'

would mean a trip to the supermarket. That was where I was accustomed to buying wine when I was a tourist, so that was where I went. It also meant that I could just grab the bottles and pay without having to stretch my French beyond "Bonjour' - and why is it never 'Bonjour, Madame" when you greet the cashier and always 'Bonjour, Madame" when she greets you? It's not just me, it's French too, just listen next time you shop.

In the matter of choice, the local supermarkets could not beat the wine stores of the U.K. where the world's wine was displayed for my delectation...in France, at that point, only French wine was available. What else would the French consumer buy? Well, Algerian and Tunisian, but they counted as French thanks to colonial history and all the old boys who did their national service in North Africa wanted pink North African wine to go with their spit roasted lamb - the 'mechoui', while they gathered together to recall the horrors of the colonial wars....

'Do you remember, Georges, courgettes every day for lunch....."


M. Untel changed my wine buying habits. He was an ex gendarme who was ex because he had managed to go too far even for a gendarme in breathalysing the local doctor when he, M. Untel, having drink taken, was having to hold on to the gendarmerie van for support while proffering the balloon. The doctor was not amused...he was out on an emergency. Consequently M. Untel had the choice of a posting to Devil's Island or retirement on full pension. He was the rep for a co operative selling vegetable seeds when I met him...a bit like


Avon calling!


but preceded by a strong smell of drink and accompanied by the clanking of the bottles he had brought with him to while away the time it took to take my seed order. Thinking about it, his technique could revolutionise door to door cosmetic sales or Tupperware parties. I see it now...... M. Untel, brick red in colour from exposure to the sun and the long term effects of alcohol, surrounded by palpitating ladies, producing the company's latest plastic must-have item........a long plastic spike with a round base upon which to impale empty bottles to make sure of gathering the last reluctant drops of wine. They would be so overcome by the fumes that they would buy anything.



On this occasion, while I was dithering between the Triomphe de Farcy and the latest amazing stringless -ready -for -the- freezer green bean, he asked me what I intended to do with the heap of empty bottles at the side of the house. They had been there when I bought it, they were not in my way, so I had left them alone...there were higher priorities than shifting hundreds of old bottles. The snort told me that I had got my priorities wrong. Those bottles were for filling. With wine. With local wine. From local vignerons. He took me to look at the contents of the boot of his car. It was packed to the gills with bottles of wine, all corked, but not one of them with a tax capsule. This was what the heap was intended for. He closed the boot. I asked him if he wasn't worried about being stopped by his former colleagues. He was not.

'It's for them.'



He would introduce me to a suitable vigneron and then, once I knew what the form was, I was on my own. First, however, I had to wash all the bottles and buy plastic containers. He would lend me a hedgehog. This was becoming surreal. Thoughts of Alice in Wonderland and the flamingos were going through my mind.



I started on the bottles, soaking them in the granite trough by the barn, brushing them out, holding them to the light and then repeating the process until what could be cleaned was clean as a whistle. It was a horrible job...those bottles had been there a damn long time and had become home to sundry living creatures, or creatures that had once lived. M. Untel arrived with his hedgehog, which turned out to be a contrivance about three foot high with circular rows of spikes upon which the washed bottles could be upturned and dried.

The next day he turned up with plastic containers...like the ones I used to use for water when camping, with little taps at the bottom, except that these held 20 litres apiece. I could use these,which he called 'cubis'. He also produced a bottling machine...a thing with a hole into which one fed a cork, put the full bottle on the stand underneath and swung down with all one's might on a lever, thus forcing the cork into the bottle. He gave me sage advice.

'Soak the corks in warm water first or you'll do yourself a mischief'.

We were off to see his neighbour to buy wine. He would show me how it was done.
We arrived at a farm, and a small man in cap and overalls greeted M. Untel with pleasure and regarded me dubiously.
Was I a security risk? Goodness only knows how these foreigners gossip giving rise to problems with taxmen. He was reassured by M. Untel that I didn't have enough French to get anyone into trouble, and the ceremony commenced.

We were led into his barn, where huge concrete vats covered the walls, and, in honour of the presence of a lady, the tasting glasses...well, tumblers...were wiped out with a cloth. We started with the dry white chenin , we proceeded to a dry pink then a sweeter pink , we returned to a sweeter white, then switched to a red merlot, then a red cabernet franc and finished on a dessert wine. At no point was a spittoon provided.

What would I like to buy? I had two cubis, so I could have two choices. I took the dessert wine and the dry white, and they were duly filled from the vats. I paid, in cash, of course, and the cubis went into the boot.

At home, I filled the bottles with a funnel, soaked the corks, and M. Untel helped me with the bottling process...I was grateful as I was not at all sure that I had the strength or the technique required for that part of the operation. Satisfied with his day's work of cultural integration he gathered up his cubis, his bottling machine and his hedgehog and headed for home with a final injunction.

'Mind now, no more buying in supermarkets!'