I realized today that while I’ve given you all a solid image of my newly rugged hands, I haven’t actually explained how any of this works. So before the final installment of ‘Le Journal,’ which is sure to come later this week, I thought I’d paint a more descriptive picture for my loyal readers.

(First a quick aside - for those of you who haven’t noticed, and are interested, you can now subscribe to this blog and receive the posts a email. To do so, just scroll to the bottom of the page and enter your email in the subscription box. Thank you once again to the multi-talented Noah Brier.)

Maison de Trevallon; 7:00 AM:

knock, knock…

‘bonjour Aaron!’

‘bonjour…groan…‘ Here we go again.

Brush up, put my eyes in, run downstairs for a quick breakfast. Toast (with amazing jelly), coffee (thank god), and I’m off.

I meet the rest of the harvest gang for our daily reunion in front of the cellar, and shake everybody’s hand good morning. And a motley crew it is. Here’s who’s hand I’m shaking:

First there’s Côme, who I actually see at the breakfast table everyday. Antoine’s cousin, Floriane and Eloi’s nephew, and my partner in crime here, he is the other house guest and a fellow traveller; fluent in English and just back from a year in Singapore. (If you’ve forgotten who Antoine and Eloi are, or are new to my wineblog, feel free to look back at the Trevallon post. Floriane is the wife, mother, and mistress of the house - and my gracious hostess.)

Pascal, the vineyard manager/ drill sergeant, runs a tight ship but helps make Trevallon what it is. I get the feeling, however, that if it were truly his ship, there wouldn’t be any Americans on it. Not usually the first person to tell me bonjour.

Jean-Luc is the other full-time vineyard employee and the life of the party, as well as my introduction to the Provençal accent. He cracks even me up - and I don’t understand a word out of his mouth.

Aymeric, Antoine’s right hand man in the cellar, is young and passionate about wine, as well as being a hell of a nice guy. His usual job in the fields is as bucket-carrier/ tractor driver - we’ll get to that.

Alain is a retiree who truly knows how to live life. I’m sure he told me what he used to do and I didn’t understand it, but now he spends much of his time in productive pursuits like picking grapes and hunting for truffles. You’ve gotta love a guy like that - plus he’s très gentil.

François loves Trevallon so much that he is working the harvest here for a case of wine as payment. The rest of the year he is an architect in Arles, a friendly and generous man who was even kind enough to buy me shoes last week (albeit too small). For that I am forever in his debt, although he’d be a lot more fun to work with if he stopped talking occasionally, or at least stuck to things he has a clue about.

Jean-Baptiste, the youngest kid on the block, is a lot of fun, and hopefully when all of this is over he’ll actually send me some of the music we’ve been talking about. He’s 20, this is his second harvest at Trevallon, and in the real world he does children’s animation. I haven’t figured out quite yet what that consists of.

Olivier, the perfect ‘vendangeur’, is a joy to behold. Hand-rolled cigarette dangling out of his mouth, shirt off of his small, southern, and very tan frame, one look at him is all I need to remember I’m in France. Of course then again I’d have to be deaf dumb and blind to forget it.

Sebastien is a local boy, straight out of school for nature preservation. He is fast as lightning in the vineyard, but minus the thunder - SBD. Keeps to himself, but if you get him going he’s a sweetheart.

Just so that I’m not the only foreigner, we’ve got Mohammad from Morocco and Omar from Algeria, both of whom now live locally. They would win the speed race everyday (luckily for me, there is no such thing), despite the fact that they are currently observing Ramadan! They don’t even drink water during the day, let alone eat the chocolate croissants that we are occasionally given during our 5-minute break. Unbelievable.

In the afternoons we are often graced with the presence of Christelle, Antoine’s lovely companion for going on 5 years now, and my new friend. She took me shoe-shopping yesterday morning (successfully, believe it or not), and is my confidant here.

Antoine himself joins us in the vineyard when he can escape from the cellar, as does Monsieur Eloi himself for at least part of each day. And then of course there’s Tulipe… the coolest Labrador ever. (I’m sorry Derby - you still have some growing up to do! I love you dearly, though, and you will always be my first ‘niece.’ At least for another day or two now…) Tulipe is worth millions - every day this dog eats enough grapes straight off the vine to make a half a case of Trevallon.

So, now that you’ve been introduced to my teammates and we’ve all said good morning, we hit the fields, each of us with a small hedge-trimmer in hand and a plastic bucket. We take our places, following the sergeant’s orders, and start to snip…

Turns out this whole ‘picking’ thing is a bit of a mis-nomer - when the grapes are ripe they’re almost impossible to get off the vine by hand without a great deal of pain and the loss of many grapes. (sticky)

Snip, snip….

‘SCEAU!’

The cry of a full bucket, which is quickly exchanged by Aymeric, Pascal, Jean-Luc, or even Eloi (whoever’s on bucket duty) for an empty one.

The grapes are thrown into the tractor bin, which has a huge screw on the bottom. When the bin is full it’s brought to the cellar, hooked up to a wide hose which leads into one of the fermentation tanks, and the screw turns… simultaneously pressing the grapes and pushing them into the hose, and therefore the tank.

The bin is then rinsed with that day’s juice (one of the most wonderful nectars I’ve ever tasted), unhooked from the tank, and washed out again with water. Let’s not talk too much about the bees that hover during this whole process - I usually hang out around the edges, epi-pen in pocket.

We do about a tank a day, and at the end of each day every tank goes through what is called a ‘pump-over.’ Quite simply, the juice is drawn from the bottom of the tank and hosed back on top of the ‘chapeau-’ the cap of skins and stems that floats to the top. This is done to extract more color and tannin from the skins. This is far from being the end of the process, but as I haven’t witnessed the punch-down yet and I’ve heard it’s quite a scene, you’ll have to wait for the next installment.

After all this is done, I run to the shower as fast as I can, and wash off that day’s grime. Well, as much of it as possible.

September 25th, 2007 | vita, vino