Virgile's Vineyard Read online

  Such conversation as is managed between mouthfuls lurches around in a confusing mix of languages. Margherita speaks no French, almost no English but excellent German, so Gérard uses his reasonable German to monopolize Margherita in a way that he fondly imagines is highly seductive. Magda – visibly delighted to be free of Gérard’s attentions – speaks little French, no German but passable English. Consequently, to communicate with the Polish girls at all, Virgile has been forced to reveal more competence in my language than he would ever admit to me before – and he seems to be rather enjoying it. Meanwhile, Florent and Arnaud speak only French and they speak it even to those who plainly do not understand.

  The afternoon picking is essentially ‘more of the same’. It finishes around five o’clock, when everyone disperses except Virgile, Arnaud and myself who then try to summon up the energy for what Virgile, with his new-found delight in the English language, describes as ‘zuh rrrreal worrrrk’.

  The equivalent of four trailer-loads of Syrah grapes, all waiting in tall stacks of plastic crates, now have to be heaved into the gaping mouth of the érafloir – the formidable-looking destemming machine, currently occupying most of the usable space in the middle of the cave. A huge hose pipe, about fifteen centimetres in diameter, stretches from this to the top of an empty fibreglass cuve.

  ‘It’s a very clever machine,’ shouts Virgile, reverting more comprehensibly to French above the rattle of machinery. ‘It removes the stalks and lightly breaks the skins, without crushing the pips, which would make the wine bitter.’

  The machine is spewing the stalks into a larger crate at the back, leaving just the juice and skins and pips to shoot up the pipe.

  ‘Remember, the juice itself is white,’ explains Virgile. ‘Very few red grapes have red juice. As I explained for my pink Carthagène, it’s contact with the skins that gives a wine its colour.’

  He leaves the érafloir and dashes up a ladder to pour a carefully measured quantity of colourless liquid into the top of the fast-filling cuve.

  ‘You won’t be able to taste this,’ he promises. ‘It’s sulphur dioxide. The amount I use is way below the permitted maximum, even for organic wines. But it’s absolutely essential for disinfection. It prevents oxidation and kills the bacteria, which would otherwise kill the fermentation.’

  He jumps nimbly down again for a further check on progress.

  ‘Are you two sleeping over there?’ he jokes, as he whisks away a brimming crate of stalks and substitutes an empty one.

  However, far from slumbering, Arnaud has been tirelessly feeding the insatiable mouth of the érafloir with roughly three crates of grapes to every one of mine.

  Lack of space forces us to work with the double doors wide open and our combined activities have quickly been adopted as something of a spectator sport – not only for the early diners on Le Pressoir’s terrace but also for numerous would-be wine-makers in the village. Stéphane, for instance, the son of Serge, the owner of most of Virgile’s Saint Saturnin vines, is familiar enough with grape growing. He grows them on other family land but he delivers them all to the co-operative, which is where he says goodbye to them.

  ‘I’m thinking of breaking away myself,’ he keeps telling anyone who will listen. ‘Maybe next year …’

  But as Virgile’s whisper cynically explains, the co-operative has a vested interest in ensuring that its growers learn as little as possible about wine-making.

  ‘Dad says your Grenache is already fermenting,’ says Stéphane in amazement.

  ‘Well, yes,’ says Virgile, confirming the most natural thing in the world.

  ‘But what did you do to start it?’ asks the only man in Saint Saturnin who seems to know less about wine-making than I do.

  ‘Nothing,’ laughs Virgile. ‘No magic, no spells and no prayers. The only strange thing would be if it didn’t start. Have a look at the Syrah in those crates. You see a slight bloom on the skin? Well, those are the yeasts. They’re alive, and as they come into contact with the juice, they feed on the sugar content, which enables them to multiply, whilst converting the sugar into alcohol.’

  Stéphane scratches his head incredulously. ‘Maybe the year after next,’ he seems to be thinking.

  When eventually the last of the crates has been emptied into the érafloir, Virgile puts Arnaud on clearing-up duties and asks me to clamber up the ladder to join him on the ‘roof’ of the pair of newly refurbished concrete tanks. He unclamps one of the wide circular trapdoors and shows me the fermenting Grenache down below.

  ‘Have a smell,’ he says, as I wriggle forwards in the metre-high gap between cuve-top and ceiling. But then I recoil so fast from the sharp prick of gas that I bang my head on a beam. ‘Carbon dioxide,’ he says, ‘the other by-product of the fermentation process, replacing all the oxygen. Fall in and you’re dead!’ he adds encouragingly.

  A crab-like shuffle back towards the ladder strikes me as the most health-enhancing strategy at this point but Virgile quickly dispels any such thoughts.

  ‘You’re going to do a remontage,’ he announces. ‘Pumping the juice from the bottom back up to the top. How do you say? Teck zees owe-zuh.’

  He looks very pleased with himself as he thrusts a hose into my hand and disappears down the ladder.

  ‘Verrrry carrrre-fool … I sweetch on zuh pomp.’

  As the pump whirrs into action, the juice from the tap down below starts gushing out at my end to water the surface of the mixture that is brewing in the darkness of the vat beneath me. After Virgile’s words of warning, I dare not lean in too far to see what effect I am having. However, he explains that the object of the exercise is to introduce more oxygen and mix the contents thoroughly, otherwise all the fermentation activity will be concentrated in the semi-solid ‘cap’ at the top.

  I have to crouch there waggling the heavy hose for half an hour to ensure an even distribution. The continuing procession of spectators acknowledges me tentatively, as if anyone passing his evening wedged between a concrete tank and a ceiling must be a little mad.

  ‘C’est qui là-haut?’ asks one of them.

  ‘C’est Patrick,’ explains Virgile.

  ‘C’est qui ça?’

  ‘Un ami anglais.’

  ‘Ah bon,’ says the questioner, having all the explanation he needs.

  To relieve the monotony, Virgile passes me up a tasting sample of the slightly effervescent half-juice, half-wine that we are pumping and follows it with some of the Syrah that we picked today.

  ‘Look how red it is already!’ he exclaims with delight.

  ‘I’ll have to take your word for it,’ I answer from my shadowy niche, but the taste is so intensely, deliciously fruity, it seems almost a shame to let the yeasts do their work.

  Virgile meanwhile has filled a large, flat-based, test-tube-like vessel with more of the Syrah and is closely examining what appears to be a thermometer, floating vertically in the juice. He is measuring the sugar density, not the temperature, he explains. It tells him the potential alcohol, which at 13.5 per cent shows that his decision not to thin the bunches has not resulted in any loss of concentration.

  ‘Do you want eeeat wizz us?’ Virgile asks me, as he checks on Arnaud’s purification of the crates with the high-pressure water jet.

  It is almost nine o’clock and the prospect of simply rolling over to Le Pressoir is considerably more appealing than driving home and cooking. So I say ‘yes’ with alacrity, only to discover that we shall in fact be ‘self-catering’ again, chez Virgile. We stagger up to the flat to find that Florent, the chef, seems to have devoted all of the intervening three or four hours to washing his hair, with disappointing results on the food preparation front.

  ‘We’ll help,’ offers Magda cheerfully as she and Margherita squeeze into the overcrowded galley kitchen. They are full of energy after their rest but their inexpert assistance keeps slowing Florent down as he deserts his post to consult me on the English for things like ‘turn down the gas, you’ll ruin the m
eat’.

  ‘Have a beer,’ suggests Virgile, as he waves aside my own offer to assist. ‘Make yourself comfortable. You’re the guest.’

  I help myself to a bottle from the fridge but would prefer to do anything which might improve our chances of eating before midnight. Once again, I am reminded how much Virgile needs a wife.

  *

  ‘Not much of a crop,’ says Krystina, reluctantly helping me gather up the almonds that have fallen to the ground, their smooth exterior husks already curling back to expose the roughness of the inner shells.

  I excused myself from today’s vendange on grounds of urgent almond husbandry, but the truth is, I was just too exhausted. When Krystina dropped by in the middle of the morning to ask me to translate the instructions for her latest electrical beauty aid, she found me still asleep.

  ‘Very disappointing,’ I grant her. ‘I’ll be lucky to fill a second basket, even with what’s left on the trees. And for once, I can’t blame Manu. He says they give him indigestion.’

  The embarrassments of our disastrous encounter on the starlit château terrace have never since been mentioned. Her dealings with me have, however, changed. While not exactly cool, they are now straightforwardly, schoolteacherly brisk, which is an enormous relief.

  ‘Your olives are even more of a failure!’ she says with her usual brutal honesty, as she arms herself with a trug and transfers her efforts to lavender-picking – an activity more in harmony with her romantic notions of rural life.

  ‘It’s the same throughout the département,’ I answer defensively. ‘For some reason, the olive trees – especially the famous Lucques – didn’t flower properly this year. And then the August drought put paid to most of what few olives there might have been. It’s a real disaster, a “crise”, according to the Vargases. Well, Madame Vargas, anyway. Monsieur has twisted his ankle and can’t even get down the stairs. She says there’s going to be a massive shortage. But at least the trees are healthy. It’s not another 1956.’

  ‘I don’t know why these people get so excited about 1956,’ says Krystina dismissively. (For some reason she has never had a great deal of time for the Vargases, nor much sympathy for their ever-disintegrating health.) ‘1956 was nothing compared to 1709.’

  How effortlessly she steers the conversation back to her own territory, as she starts assembling some artfully casual-looking lavender bunches to scent my house for the winter.

  ‘The frosts of 1709 wiped out most of France’s vineyards, as well as its olive trees – except, as luck would have it, in the Languedoc. The snooty Parisians were reduced to buying Saint Chinian and Corbières, so demand simply soared – especially with a broader range of society beginning to drink the stuff. You see, until this period, wine had only been produced in relatively limited quantities. Food shortages had been an almost constant problem and vines had been seen as a threat to vital cereal production. But suddenly the eighteenth century saw a fever of opportunistic plantings sweeping down to even the most unsuitably fertile land in the plains. Every little landowner had his patch of vines – especially after the Revolution, when the vast estates of the Church and the nobility were broken up.’

  ‘But quality?’ I ask, as I stretch to reach the last recalcitrant almonds from the top of my ladder.

  ‘Mainly dire,’ she summarizes crisply. ‘Traditional methods with traditionally poor results. Not much advance in two thousand years!’

  *

  I am late but I hope Virgile will understand. I had a crisis to cope with at home. The Vargases’ cousin’s horses had escaped.

  It was very unfortunate. They had been making such an encouraging impact on the grass, with never a hint of delinquency in their good-natured munchings. But just as I was carrying my early breakfast into the courtyard this morning, a wave of unexpectedly robust expletives broke over me from Mme Gros’s side of the stream. The horses, it appeared, had extended their flattening of the hay to a flattening of the fence that divides my land from her husband’s vines.

  I tore across the bridge, expecting to witness an implacable defence of her boundaries, but found instead a figure racked with paralysing doubt. The incursion had, I realized, presented Mme Gros with a serious dilemma. An unchecked equine rampage offered the tempting prospect of a catastrophic reduction in her husband’s hectolitres for possibly years to come. Yet that would place her too profoundly in my debt. And anyway, there were sovereign rights of territoriality to be upheld here . . . But before she could agonize further, Manu’s panic-stricken arrival ensured a decisive vote in favour of expulsion.

  ‘Oh, putain de merde, quel bordel!’ he observed hysterically. ‘Mais quelle espèce d’imbécile …?’ he shot an accusing glance in my direction and then turned his attention to the animals. ‘Eh, foutez-moi le camp, alors!’ he bellowed, as he flapped his arms breathlessly to reinforce the message.

  The damage to the vines was, in fact, negligible but it still took considerably longer than Virgile is likely to believe for the three of us to drive the horses back to where they belonged – and for me to draw on deeper reserves of diplomacy than I knew I possessed.

  So it is nearly eleven o’clock when I finally arrive in Saint Saturnin to find a big, rectangular machine, which I have not seen before, parked in a pool of shade outside the cave. It looks a bit like a battered air-conditioning plant on wheels. A frowning Virgile is standing beside it, banging an illuminated numerical display with the flat of his hand. The number displayed is apparently not to his liking.

  ‘The Grenache is too hot,’ he announces. ‘Already twenty-seven degrees, and if it gets as high as thirty-two, the fermentation will stop. Even slightly below that, there’s a risk of boiling away the subtlety.’ He gives the machine a vigorous shake. ‘The trouble is, I’ve no idea what temperature it is inside this thing. The thermostat’s all over the place and I’m afraid of overchilling the wine. Because anything below twenty-three will stop the fermentation too. If only I could find the repairman’s number …’

  ‘Second-hand?’ I ask superfluously.

  ‘Part of my bric-à-brac,’ he admits. ‘But don’t forget how little I paid. It would be so much easier if I could put it inside where it’s cooler, but how can I do that with the érafloir in the way all the time?’

  A supervisory check on the morning picking campaign is now well overdue. The Saint Saturnin Cinsault was polished off yesterday and the Jonquières Carignan should be finished by lunchtime, so Virgile decides he will have to entrust the cooling operation to me. He shows me how to take the Grenache’s temperature, using the test-tube-like container and a conventional thermometer.

  ‘But whatever you do, don’t let it go below twenty-three,’ he warns me, as he climbs up into the tractor-cabin. ‘Not that there’s much hope of that!’

  For a few minutes, I just stare at the machine and the pump and the concrete cuve, too nervous to lay a finger on any of them. Then, eventually, I summon up the courage to open the tap. A rapid stream of Grenache gushes down into the pit and, as soon as it is about a quarter full, I switch on the pump. With a greedy gurgle, the wine is sucked up and forced on out through a succession of pipes to the cooling machine in the square, then back inside to the top of the tank again.

  So far so good, but I am supposed to be monitoring the temperature as well. It takes me a few minutes to get myself organized but not long enough to explain an initial reading of 24 degrees. Another, fractionally later, is even less plausibly 23.5. I am obviously misreading the scale. It was supposed to take much longer. But now a third reading looks dangerously close to 23. I quickly turn off the tap and the pump, preferring to wait until Virgile can show me what I’m doing wrong.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ he cries, returning with the trailerful of Carignan.

  His tone says unmistakably, ‘Can’t you be trusted with anything?’ and the vanful of pickers, driven back by Arnaud, gathers round inquisitively to see what disaster has struck in the master’s absence.

  ‘But you�
��re absolutely right!’ he rejoices, when his own rapid test confirms the same 23 degrees. ‘And so quickly! What a relief!’

  He is in fact sufficiently relieved to release the team for the rest of the day. One more full day, he thinks, should finish the Saint Saturnin Carignan, which is all that now remains, and Gérard seizes the opportunity to invite the girls to his mother’s house for the afternoon and evening. His mother has Polish ancestors, he says, and she is crazy about all things Polish – but it is all too clearly Magda who will be seeing the most of Maman, while Gérard’s irresistible Germanic seduction strategies are targeted on Margherita.

  Virgile intends to use the time to concentrate on his cellar work, but unfortunately his relief is such that he fails to see the impossibility of the ‘quick lunch’ that he proposes for the two of us at Jean-Marc’s.

  ‘Just a glass,’ Virgile says abstemiously, as Jean-Marc shows us to a table near the bar at the front of the restaurant. However, for once something other than our wine order is uppermost in our host’s priorities.

  ‘Do you recognize this man?’ he asks as he hands us a copy of the latest edition of a quarterly magazine devoted to the local wines.

  It is open at a photograph of an impeccably dressed, immaculately coiffured, clean-shaven man of about Jean-Marc’s age, smiling from behind a bar. Beside him is a strikingly tall and attractive young woman, looking remarkably like Céline, whose departure from this very restaurant Virgile is still lamenting. In fact, surely, it is Céline? Surely it is Jean-Marc’s bar?