Virgile's Vineyard Page 17

  ‘Well, even if you’re right,’ said the foreman after twenty minutes of dogged argument, ‘the alternative is, you keep your little wooden post on this little triangle and we put up two more of the big ones over there in front of your house, on land that you certainly don’t own. It’s the only other way that we can get our cables across the valley.’

  ‘But that would be twice as bad!’

  ‘I knew you’d understand.’

  ‘But it’s so big. And so white.’

  ‘It turns a sort of grey eventually.’

  ‘Such a contrast to the trees.’

  ‘We could paint it brown,’ the foreman finally offered and despairingly I gave in. I couldn’t see a better solution. But ever since Manu first saw the finished result this morning, he has hardly stopped laughing.

  ‘Is that supposed to look like a tree?’ he manages to articulate between guffaws.

  He’s right, of course. The bright shade of russet that constitutes the electricity company’s notion of brown is never going to blend into this or any other treescape – not even in the autumn, when the leaves are at their reddest. And the gloss paint has a dependable knack of catching the sunlight at all sorts of different times of day.

  It is another reminder of the extreme fragility of paradise.

  August

  ‘I think I must be the only Frenchman not on holiday,’ said Virgile, slumping wearily into his solitary armchair with a homemade after-dinner tisane. ‘Have you noticed? Even the vines are deserted at this time of year.’

  ‘I thought August holidays were compulsory for the French,’ I answered from the sofabed. ‘Won’t they cancel your citizenship?’

  ‘Others may be ready for the vendange but I’m not,’ he sighed. ‘There’s so much weeding I should be doing, plus another round of spraying. And as for the cave … I need so much more equipment to handle the extra volume this year and I haven’t even bought most of it yet!’

  ‘And the legal problem with the co-op?’ I asked, wondering whether much of his effort might still be in vain.

  ‘I think we might be all right. There’s certainly been nothing in response to our notice.’

  ‘What does Serge say about it all?’

  ‘Luckily, he sees the funny side,’ yawned Virgile, rubbing sleep from his eyes. ‘He says, if one of us has to go to prison, it ought to be him because I’m productive and he’s completely useless. I could certainly have worse landlords.’

  I was feeling almost as exhausted as Virgile myself. Whatever the percentage of the English population currently on holiday, much of it seemed to have arrived to share the sunshine at my house. Blithely ignoring the capacity of a three-bedroomed property, improbable numbers of visitors had been determined to demonstrate how much they were missing me and their sense of loss had conveniently climaxed in August.

  It was not so much the shopping and cooking that had worn me out. Indeed, many of my visitors were proving keen enough to indulge their favourite Mediterranean fantasies in my kitchen. It was the sheer logistics of juggling bodies between beds, sofas, futons and poolside recliners, borrowed from Krystina – which is why I had asked to spend the night on Virgile’s sofabed.

  ‘I saw a friend of yours last night,’ he said with a grin.

  ‘Krystina?’ I asked, my hopes of rejection suddenly reviving.

  ‘No,’ he blushed, ‘your neighbour. Monsieur Gros, isn’t it? He was down here playing boules in the square outside the cave but I think he’d had a few too many in Le Pressoir, so his boules kept rolling in amongst my cuves. You hadn’t told him about me, it seems.’

  ‘He’s very possessive. I didn’t think he’d understand.’

  ‘I don’t think he does … Understand about my sort of wine-making, I mean. We got talking, you see. He was telling me how I didn’t need half my equipment. “A lot of silliness” were his precise words,’ Virgile chuckled. ‘He said I was nearly as bad as this English neighbour of his, the one that he’d been dragging round the Languedoc all year, trying to teach him a thing or two about wine. That’s when I guessed there could only be one of you. But don’t worry, he said he’d get your ideas straightened out when you helped him with the vendange.’

  ‘He said what?’

  ‘I didn’t think you knew about that bit!’ Virgile laughed at my look of blank dismay. ‘But I’m sure the vendange is going to be early this year,’ he sighed again. ‘The grapes are ripening so fast.’

  Then a brighter thought struck him.

  He crossed to his little galley kitchen for a large empty gherkin jar. Well, not in fact empty it transpired on closer inspection – the gherkins and their brine had been replaced with water. Or so I thought, until Virgile removed the lid and I smelt the vivid perfume of an eau de vie.

  ‘This is my own,’ he said, as he poured us each a little. ‘We call it marc. It’s distilled from something that we also call marc, just to confuse you – the pips and grape skins left over after the pressing. I’ll show you in October.’

  I took a sip. It was intensely fruity but uncompromisingly fiery.

  ‘You remember Matthieu?’ he asked. ‘The part-time guitarist who came along to help, that first day we planned to do the bottling? Well, distilling’s Matthieu’s main work. He made this for me. He does it for practically everyone round here. You ought to go and see him.’

  So I did.

  ‘There’s not a lot I can show you in August,’ says Matthieu, when my car has finished inching its way down one of Montpeyroux’s narrowest back alleys to find the borrowed, barn-like garage, where he says he has been ‘squatting’ for the last year. ‘You were lucky to catch me. I’m off on holiday tomorrow. You’ll need to come in a couple of months to see the action. But as you’re here …’

  He beckons me out into a chaotically cluttered back garden, where several ancient, rusty-looking distilling contraptions are lurking in the shrubs. If only Manu were here, I think to myself, as he pauses to gather up a crate of oddly assorted lemonade and beer bottles and some tasting glasses.

  But then I hear the hoot of a carhorn from the alleyway.

  ‘You forgot your notebook,’ calls a familiar voice from a little red van that has somehow managed to follow me. ‘I persuaded the wife you’d be distraught.’

  I am surprised that the prospect of my distraction cut any ice with Mme Gros. She has been making it abundantly clear that she finds the arrival of the pylon far less amusing than her husband does. Our relationship was never one of easy banter, but on at least three occasions in the last few days her refusal to speak to me has been unambiguous. It was hardly surprising. The shiny red eyesore completely dominated the view from her own garden and she held me responsible. I was no longer to be tolerated beneath her roof for so much as a Coca-Cola. At least, not until the advent of her grandchildren.

  The day before they arrived, her pursed lips started to soften. Her gimlet gaze became eerily benign. How charming, I thought, the restorative power of infant society. But the real explanation dawned early this morning, when I and all but my heaviest sleeping guests were woken by shrieks and splashes from the garden. It was perfectly simple: I have a pool and Mme Gros does not. Her grandchildren like to swim (they always swam in Uncle Milo’s day, it seems) and clearly a cessation of hostilities was considered diplomatic before an assertion of bathing rights.

  ‘Can’t get the youngsters out of your pool,’ chuckles Manu, confirming my analysis. ‘It’s the only thing they wanted to do for the whole fortnight last year! Oh, yes, delighted,’ he adds, accepting a glass of eau de vie.

  Matthieu explains that it was made with marc from Sylvain Fadat, the Montpeyroux grower whom I met in January.

  ‘That’s really how it started,’ he says. ‘Most of my work used to be in Burgundy but last year Sylvain was organizing Montpeyroux’s Fête des Vins. I was booked to play some ‘gypsy jazz’. In the end I never played, but Sylvain heard about my Burgundian eaux de vie de marc and he got quite excited by the idea of having his
own. So did a lot of the local growers. Not necessarily as a commercial product, maybe just for private enjoyment, or for giving to regular customers.

  ‘By the way, you don’t have to finish that,’ he adds, extracting a particularly grimy-looking bottle from his crate and pouring us each a second glass. ‘I know you’re both driving.’

  Seeing me about to empty my Domaine d’Aupilhac into a flowerbed, Manu deftly plucks the glass from my hand to juggle three in his two: something which, it has to be said, he is managing commendably well, until a loud snapping of branches startles both of us. Rather as trees are flattened by elephants intent on reaching their waterholes, so, it seems, the surrounding shrubbery is being trampled by someone determined to reach the scene of our tasting. Before Manu can assess the volume of alcohol spilt in this moment of alarm, a well-established pair of oleanders is parted by the emergence of a formidable stomach belonging, we soon learn, to Monsieur Bascou, the owner of the garage and the garden.

  ‘It’s marcs de cépage that interest me most,’ Matthieu continues, having placed a well-filled glass of the second product in the landlord’s expectant hand. ‘Spirits made from one or maybe two distinctive grape varieties. Like this one – just smell it,’ he urges. ‘It’s Muscat, so grapey …’

  To spare Manu the challenge of additional glassware, Matthieu leads the party to a rickety garden table, barely visible beneath an assortment of bottles, tools and potted plants competing for space. A guitar in a half-open case occupies one of the rusty chairs. ‘You should have seen this place before I tidied up,’ he whispers, while the slower-moving M. Bascou catches up.

  ‘This is from Virgile’s friend, Olivier at Mas Jullien,’ Matthieu explains, as Manu squeezes a broad pair of buttocks between the narrow arms of one of the vacant chairs.

  M. Bascou, whose girth makes Manu’s waistline look almost wasp-like, seems to know from experience that he would be safer finishing his samples at home. He will, after all, have other opportunities to work his way through the range. So with a farewell assault on a group of mahonias, he sets off to wherever he lives at the other end of the undergrowth.

  Matthieu meanwhile rummages for a half-hidden flagon beneath an adjacent arbutus, before pouring us something Cognac-coloured, as a contrast to the clear, colourless products that we have sampled up until now.

  ‘It’s only the effect of oak,’ he explains. ‘The tradition began when barrels were the only means of storage and transport. I think stainless steel preserves more individuality but occasionally growers ask for some time in wood.’

  ‘Why don’t they simply make their own?’ I ask.

  ‘Not allowed to. Not without special licences, which don’t make sense for a few hundred litres. Anyone with a vine or a fruit tree used to have the right to distil his own …’

  ‘Me included?’

  ‘Absolutely. But the Ricard establishment – you know, the pastis manufacturer down near Agde – got the law changed in 1953, wiping out small-scale eau de vie production for decades.’

  ‘So how come people like Manu …?’

  Before I can reconcile the idea of half a century of prohibition with my New Year introduction to my neighbour’s home distillation, an immoderate imitation of a man being stung by a passing insect reminds me that this was not supposed to be widely publicized. Better perhaps, in any event, to be on our way while Manu can still rejoin his vehicle unsupported.

  ‘But what if this really catches on?’ I ask in parting. ‘What if every grower wanted his personal marc production?’

  ‘I’d make sure there were lots more distilleries!’ he answers emphatically. ‘I can’t spend all day on this business. Après tout, je suis musicien!’

  *

  Fortunately for Virgile, one of the few individuals not observing his patriotic duty to be on holiday this month is a man called Monsieur Ferré. I can tell that he is not on holiday because his head is sticking out of a kind of porthole at the far end of Virgile’s cave and he is singing snatches of Carmen at a volume that tends to draw attention to itself.

  There are two of these portholes, in fact, but I had scarcely noticed them before, with so much other equipment squeezed into the usable space in front of them. The initial phase of the boiler-suited baritone’s endeavours has, however, revealed a pair of concrete fermentation tanks, built behind what I had simply assumed to be the back wall, and M. Ferré is now busy replastering inside the first of them. Each of these cuves is about twice the size of Virgile’s existing fibreglass alternatives. Together they will give him vital extra space for this year’s much increased production and, apparently, all they need is a week of the singing restorer’s labours to bring them back into commission.

  Meanwhile, in front of the concrete tanks, I can now see a rectangular pit, about a metre deep in the floor. It is equally invaluable for the vendange, says Virgile (without exactly explaining how) and equally in line for M. Ferré’s reconditioning, it seems, just as soon as he has finished a reprise of the ‘Toreador Aria’.

  Leaving M. Ferré aside, however, I do find myself wondering where everyone can have gone. Every second person I try to contact is away on holiday – so much so that you might expect the region to be deserted – but, as if in an effort to compensate, an astonishing proportion of the rest of the world’s population appears to be vacationing here.

  The forty-minute drive to the coast can now take most of a weekend and I have to park so far away from the Saturday market that I feel I might as well walk to Lodève from home. And if the postcard queues in the village shop get any worse, Nathalie’s baguettes will be stale before I even get to the counter.

  I have become quite unreasonably resentful at the disruption of my off-season routines.

  Paradoxically, however, the time when so many of the locals are away on holiday seems to be the time when every self-respecting village chooses to have its principal annual festivity. On almost any day, I could choose between half a dozen different fêtes locales – except, of course, that the traffic is much too congested to venture farther afield than our own. But anyway, what distant excitements could possibly cap the Abrivado here at home?

  ‘What’s an abrivado?’ I asked when I saw the poster in the village café.

  ‘It’s Spanish,’ said Babette, without enlarging on its meaning.

  She was too busy making a trayful of ice-cream sundaes for a table of tourists. From September to June she would revert to her no-choice, foil-wrapped choc ices but it needed only a handful of Americans unfamiliar with the exchange rate to ensure that her more elaborate, high-season carte des glaces paid for itself.

  ‘I’m sorry but I think you’ll find it’s Occitan,’ contradicted Monsieur Privat from the corner table that continued to be kept for him, no matter how high the season.

  Babette really ought to have remembered that he might know better than her. It was she herself who had told me that he was a retired schoolteacher – of Spanish, no less.

  ‘It means speed,’ M. Privat explained, as if still at the lycée. ‘At least “abrivada” does. The “a” at the end of an Occitan word is pronounced like an “o”. You’ll see the connection at the weekend …’

  ‘I hate to disagree,’ said Monsieur Puylairol, the beekeeper, as diffident as ever. ‘But I always thought it was Languedoc dialect for “abreuvoir” – a watering place. In this context, a booze-up. He’ll see the connection at the weekend …’

  In a sense, they were both right. But I had to wait until Sunday to understand why.

  On the second Sunday of August, the steep ascent of the main village street is closed to pedestrians. A massive cattle truck is parked just outside the medieval gateway to seal off the bottom end. The entrances to the narrow side alleys are comprehensively blocked with metal crowd barriers and crowds duly gather behind them for a close-up view of the afternoon’s sport.

  The balcony of La Maison Vargas, being just inside the gateway, must offer an even better aerial vantage point but, happily for me on
this occasion, they prefer the excitement at street level and I can look to them for explanations.

  The object of the proceedings, they tell me, is to give the more fearless local youth an opportunity to race a succession of bulls through the village. They start from a kind of corral erected up near the café and they chase the beasts down to the truck waiting open-doored at the gate, all the time avoiding the opposing possibility of the bulls chasing them. The principal aim, which secures the maximum crowd hysteria, is to grab the bulls by the horns and stop them in their tracks but, as the typical bull is considerably larger than even the heartiest village contestant, this is best attempted in teams. So six or seven heroes, eager to prove their testosterone counts, hurl themselves at the animal in a concerted struggle to get a grip on any part of its anatomy, including the tail, that might slow it down. It will not be the most dignified afternoon of the creature’s life but, as I know from my visit to Nîmes, there are incontestably worse fates.

  This then is the ‘speed’ element on which M. Privat insisted. M. Puylairol’s ‘watering’, it seems, is largely centred on the village café, where the Vargases tell me Babette is enjoying exceptional trading conditions. In fact, the throng is reported to be dense enough for Manu to have ventured up there, in the hope of infiltrating the bar without being spotted by Mme Gros. Indeed, as soon as the first bull has thundered past us – his pursuers several humiliating metres behind – we see Manu, taking his life in his hands as he hurries down the middle of the street towards us, balancing a tray of beers.

  Manu’s progress is slowed by the overriding need for periodic checks that his illicit purchases remain undetected but he reaches us just in time to squeeze round the barrier before a second bull gallops heavily past – again unimpeded by the quartet in pursuit.

  ‘No stamina, these boys today,’ he scoffs as he hands round the beers.

  Exceptionally, he appears to have dug deep into his own dungarees for this round. The unaccustomed entrée to Babette’s must have gone to his head – or so I imagine, until the Vargases whisper that he can keep the change.