Saturday, 17 February 2024

HARVEST REPORT 2023

How to say something new about the same thing every year?

Normally I tend to focus on the things I fucked up. It’s funnier for you, easier for me, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that news must be bad to make it into the papers or on tv.

But I'm a new me! And for this report I won’t. Not that things didn’t go wrong (like the barrel I blew up), just that all the really important things went right.

I’m not talking about the wine. I can’t if I’m not allowed to talk about how I tried to ‘clean’ 1000L of mouse through fermentation by adding a bit into oh you know just about every tank and multiplying my problem by oh I dunno around 9***.

For the same reason I’m not allowed to talk about how I turned all my red wines pink, or how on the first night of using my new-old press I turned a (thankfully) not essential part of it into scrap iron. And I already fucked it up by telling you about the barrel. It’s fine, I have a table now.

Obviously my life would be a lot more chill if I wasn’t sitting on 90hl of maybe or mini-mouse. And I quite like red wines that are red so it’s a shame that mine aren’t. But it’s just wine! No matter what I do they will always do their own thing, which is a) better for them and b) I prefer drinking others’ anyway! The juice behind is clear and good. The maybe-mouse might not manifest and the mini mouse will go away.

— stops to pray —

More important to me than what wines I made is how harvest 23 consolidated something I was already suspecting: that my wines most most important purpose is making me friends for life.

People come and go often from all over and that’s great, but there are also those who, even though they’re gone, are there to stay. In touch, in spirit, in the little things left in my life, the totems in my chai. Already in 22 I couldn’t believe my luck for the people who came to help, but this year I realised that while I’m lucky, maybe two years in a row is not luck. Maybe it’s just how it CAN be. Anyway, it’s how I believe making wine should be. Collective, with many captains, ideally with me not doing any work.

But maybe you aren’t interested in all that and would like the stats. Here are some things that come to mind:

I welcomed people for work into an actual chai. I had my two press running at the same time at least once. I have a pump. This year I rented the truck for a whole month. We were a team of 8 on rotation and we made NINE THOUSAND LITRES (yes yes, of mouse). We slept in the van. We slept in vines. I slept in the chai. Meg is the BEST cook, Mattis wasn’t bad. You too Aimé. We swam, we painted, we bottled, we packed. We had German pils, fancy coffee, Italian snacks. We had an SB 16/20 and a resident deejay. I don’t really remember what we did to each wine but I remember how much I laughed.

For pictures, see here.

1. Viognier (and 500kg of Muscat. Re-passed over Gamay = mine is now red!)

Mattia Carfagna. We had a chauffeur and a transpalette that weighs shit and 11T refrigerated truck = chillest harvest ever plus delivery with Americanos on the beach after. I swear it took until my second reading for me to see the pun.

2. Sauvignon Blanc

Sylvain Saux. Swam in the sea. Police gave me a warning for nudity. Craziness huh nudity on a beach. Three of us slept in the van in the cold. Picked in the rain! Ate a lot of figs! Meg packed us rice balls! Picking 1.2T took until 16h bc of all the mildew = verrrryy slow. Future name: SB 7/7?

3. Syrah

Rita-Rita leaves so it’s just me and j-dog and the best tuna-tomato casse-croute in the shade outside of MADA’s gate, ever. Seb, we met you at Orfenor for your briefing beers later! Speeding ticket number one. Whole grapes, 10 days.

4. Viognier

From the same producer, same 400km away, same highway two days later. Another killer road-side sun-set snack-dinner. Limp Bizkit! The Offspring! Le Cousin’s Le Franc! Press direct bc off-ripe. First (last?) time I had three men in my press.

5. Cinsault

Left for the south at 18h and slept in the vines under a full moon which sounds romantic but (not)sleeping with a lamp over your head is not. Speeding ticket 2. Carried out 1.7 tonne. Rows v v long. Mattis there when we get home.

6. Pinot Noir

The home-grow was down to 7 caisse this year, picked in a million degree heat. Pressed by candlelight with four caisse of Gamay.

7. Grenache

Same as in A toi nous from across their road except theirs is good and mine is f*****. The part that isn’t was pressed direct and is the bod of Hot Girls 3. Fried chicken for lunch.

8. Gamay d’Auvergne

Manuel Duveau and Nicholas Lebleu-grown plus thanks to Felix, Yanis, Victor and Zach for the extra hands. Got drunk!

9. More cinsault

From Gerald Oustric who says it’s “pour le proche” samedifference as me calling it ploussard from the south. We kill a lot of time on the tractor, then a lot of time at lunch. Good thing Ardéche is close! Truck over-loaded. Cokes on the road.

***dear my distributors: please still distribute me?

My <3 to: Rita, Meg, J-dog, Seb, Holly, Nicoline, Mattis for all of you. Orfenor for being the halfway house for my krew. Lisa and Paul for their contact, Aimé for his when two of mine cancelled, and to all the growers for doing what I couldn't do. Thank you.

Harvest report 2021

Harvest report 2022

And we ate the zoo

To name some epic dinners I haven’t been to: Jesus’s last supper, the banquet where Cleopatra drank her pearl, when they ate the zoo and the last vendredi soir at le Saint Eutrope — which technically I have been to, but not to the one in the wilds of my imagination where it’s me who gets to choose the menu.

Luckily I couldn’t. Luckily no one could. Luckily the impossible task of limiting an unlimited number of best of-s was left to the only people I would trust blind to be able to. What follows is therefore a fantasy menu cherry-picked from reality, my memory and my phone’s memory, no small amount of GB has been taken up preserving what is now history! The ancient Egyptians had their marble-carved hieroglyphics, we have chalk-scrawled blackboards that go:

Vendredi soir

To start, after the gen-to for apéro:

Dipping radishes because otherwise it would be dipping fingers in the anchovy butter.

Also with:

Vitello tonato i.e. sandwich filler q: who invented veal via a spoon?

Followed by:

A citrus mosh-pit, or Punterella, agrumes, stracciatella on a plate to match.

(Keep the spoon.)

Followed by:

Bao, Chinese for goose-down pillows stuffed with crisp-fried belly fat and slivers of face mask cucumber and always one bao too small, better would be at least two.

Followed by:

Pizza fritta. M O R E and A L W A Y S and WHY NOT ALWAYS and one to go to ease in to the hangover the morning after.

Accompanied by:

Any of the non-fried variations that go by the name of fougasse. Yes we’re accompanying fried dough with non fried dough, add extra pied mutton if it makes you feel better.

Followed by:

A boubaisse-y base of fish pierced by lemon in which swims hand rolled black pasta.

Followed by:

Tripes. The Sichuan ones. You are our source of coriander in Auvergne.

For mains:

Anything cooked 7+ hours for 2+ to share in a pot with a knife stuck in it — but with chips beef fat-fried, please.

Cheese?

Dessert! I’ll have two. The baby fist mushroom bun soaked in as many measures as you like of your choice of rum, and the bavarois which, as a suspected dyslexic, was for YEARS a mystery to me until this January when someone ordered it and I realised I've lived 34 years never having been intimate with an upside down puddle of barely solid cream.

Le Saint Eutrope was the local for everyone, from near, from far, from Paris. As much for those of us who live ‘close’ in Auvergne for whom everything is far as for those passing through from the other side of the world. Good things come to an end, so I've heard! Tomato season, the last luggage-squished slice of leftover birthday cake, my tolerance for early mornings which re-sets to zero with the end of the vendange. But still, there aren’t many places for which I’d drive 200km round trip for lunch and not infrequently stay for dinner when I do. Time for me, I suppose, to drive less and put my eggs in different baskets. Time for you to open something new — soon! But change nothing. Or maybe serve more bao. Maybe fry it? Serve chips and ice cream with it? Ok ok, time to move. Cheque please. And my pizza fritta to go.

Thank you!!

In 2019 I wrote about le Saint Eutrope and it started like this and if you're feeling nostalgic the rest you can read yourself:

"Some kids get the itch to become astronauts but when I’m grown up I want to be Harry Lester."

HARVEST REPORT 2022

In three words: SO. MUCH. BETTER.

— than last year, the hell year, the what didn’t kill you bloody well tried to and probably would have managed but for the sensor on the truck that goes ‘buhbuhbuh’ when you cross the white line so you’re still here!-year.

And what a year it’s been! 2022 I mean. No space to make wine until July, no space to live until October. It seems winemaking has more in common with childbirth than you might think in the way evolution has trained us to remember the highs. Imagine if not! There would be very little wine. Meanwhile, this year I’ve made a fuck load. 60HL = 6 thousand litres = 8 thousand bottles if all goes to plan, which requires me to find the place to stock the bottles like, now.

Another logistical problem you say? Gee whizz what’s new! Well this year I moved cellar 1 month ahead of harvest (instead of 3 days before) plus I had to build a wall! Nothing like finishing a building project the night before the morning you leave for your first grapes to make you appreciate the next month on the road.

Some other big differences:

— I ate!

— I only made two trips alone.

— I made friends!

— I now know it takes me 1h12m to unload 1.6T of Colombard on my own.

— People cooked for me!!!!

— I did maybe only one decuvage as opposed to all.

— My press was outside and my tanks are stacked 7 pallets high and my new siphon is very thick and 5m long*.

— I did my first not-failed débourbage!

— Thanks to all those pallets I have been able to harness the powers of gravity which for the first few hundred litres means there was time for dancing while the siphon did the soutirage.

— I am a better driver.

— I am a better ratchet-er.

— I cried only twice.

— I did zero long macerations and think my future lies in the ease of the direct-press.

— I did my first co-ferment of red and white.

— I tried doing three press in one day but stopped before I almost died.

— I am talking in the ‘I’ but I was practically never alone.

— Harvest happened to the soundtrack of Flemming Dalum.

— I bought 9 tonne.

In ish chronological order: it hailed icebergs the night before I went to pick up the same Carignan on 19 August I had just pressed in July after a 10 month maceration. This, plus the fact harvest was three weeks in advance (and that Carignan is normally a late bloomer?) = time travel! So I picked it 1/2 1/2 with some just-underripe Bourbulenc and macerated the red in the juice of the other, thank you to Anna and Nick and Jude for help with the direct and first press! Neringa and friends for the second. I did this trip alone and I felt free as a bird waking up from the zombie slumber of a winter sleep, which is a mixed-metaphor or evolution on speed, but you get the picture = RELIEF TO START, RELIEF TO LEAVE.

Round 2, 3 days later: Xarel·lo y Macabeo, picked at 11% 23 August with good friend Aaron and new friend Kara, who we picked up in Spain. Harvest was done hungover! Too much drinking the night before at the pool! Yes, pool. Cool! I was in a stress because we lost the car key, and by 'we' I mean me. Kara counted out 1.5T of grapes counted in cash because my brain is a sieve through which numbers slip. We took 11 hours driving back, hesitated to stop for lunch at Ville Mas, instead sat in gridlock traffic burning gas. Aaron drove practically the whole way, you are amazing Aaron even if you disagree with de-stemming (Xarel-lo for no principle other than I'd already borrowed Aurelien's thing). Landed late, unloaded, left the grapes to chill in the night air while we ate gas station canned olives (Spain!) and drank holiday-prolonging beers.

26 August Kara and I do a same-day aller-retour of 562 km to pick up the same Cinsault as last year which sucked, but is what it is, and what the negociant is is a chauffeur. There was man-splaining and machoism and much apologising to the harvest team who started at 7 and were still picking under a 15:00 sun. I had a hornet-swollen hand and we forgot the watermelon. Vinification went the same as last year because I liked last year’s: half direst press, half infusion.

Mauzac came next. Thirty Aug. Underripe. Like, green. Changed parcel twice = I paid practically double hours for the team and almost lost the deposit on the truck after a situation with a rock (not me). Stacked 1.7T, un-stacked 1.7T, and re-stacked 1.7T from same truck. Learned negociants should arrive with their own scale to prevent having ever to do this again! Macerated whole-ish except for not so whole after jumping on them to make them fit. Currently fermenting in Andrea's blanc barrels (with some Grignolino) to take the edge off. Big thanks to Rita for taking all the edges off.

Grignolino, Piedmont, Italy, three September and already at 14% when I get the call to ‘come tomorrow’ even though ‘coming tomorrow’ means that by tonight I need to have found a truck to rent and someone to drive 1,000+ km with, which I haven’t yet, not to mention that when I visited these vines in July I thought I’d broken the tradition and language barrier explaining that I wanted the call at 12%. Here’s hoping there’s a market for big Italian barrel wines made in — Auvergne?? The trip in numbers: 3 x pizza + 1 for the road to be eaten cold at home, 1.69T. Pumped tyres once, tanked three times, tunnel costs 80e return, drove the last two hours alone. Times listened to The Mix: many but exact number unknown. I arrived home at 3 in the morning and a friend came to meet me and drink and unload!

Colombard, de Remi-P. Nine September. Called him asking if he had any red, said no but 8T still of this, said I’d call him back. My second, and my last trip alone! Remi’s the best. You arrive, you eat, you drink, you actually sleep. Next day your pick will guaranteed be done before 10. I was a bit stressed because I found people were pulling grapes and not cutting while I knew I had to leave them en caisse for at least a day before I could liberate the press. But arriving young, a girl, with a rented truck, I was too afraid to say anything (so at home, with things to prove, unloaded the truck myself which is how I know it takes 1h 12 to unload 1.6T alone). In the end I left them in caisse for THREE days because I was busy coaxing the Mauzac not to hurl itself over a bridge (this was where I tried to press three times a day but stopped at two / chose life) which no one tell Remi yet, please. Thank you, thank you Maureen for reading this article and arriving at this particular moment of need!

Boudes! bébé Boudes and her annual 10 caisse of sweat and blood and love, my best, my home-grown, saved for last. Steak — grilled, friends, a bouquet and a bottle of Boudes twenty-one. (Plus a rainbow when we got home).

And so with love to everyone who helps and co-creates and is there for me, and with my sincerest gratitude: thanks.

Anna * Anne * Aimé * Aurélien * Agnès * Aaron * Freddy * Germain * Kara * Maureen * Norbert * Nick * Neringa * Neringa's friends * Jude * Rita * Victor and all my vigneron: Remi * Xavier * Salvador * Genévieve * Edourdo: MERCI GRACIAS GRAZIIIIII

*so yeah, still no pump. 2023 here I come.

Up the apples and pears (stairs): a video guide to making cider

Another video-supported** how-to!

This time on making cider, in IV parts.

Pt. I

Pt. II

Pt. III

Pt. IV

— Combrailles, Auvergne

** For more Essential video-guides see:

— On bottling teen-tiny quantities of wine

— On planting posts in vines

2021 harvest report or: On moving cellar 3 days before harvest

Don’t! Though you don’t need me to tell you that. Something you might not have known however, is that for customs to give you the go-ahead for a last minute move you will need to give customs a serious reason for moving — and the end of a 10 year relationship ain't it. Have an earthquake or something. It’s how you feel anyway so technically you won’t be lying.

2021 was declared a viticultural disaster already in April. Frost, mildew, no grapes for sale anywhere in that order until August when yes there are grapes for sale but I don’t have a cellar. Or tanks! So no pressure but the new place I hadn’t found yet had to have a ceiling high enough for the new tanks I hadn’t found yet and Aimé, so you know: had I not managed to find any I would have blamed you for telling me I could do it.

From henceforth 2021 shall be known as ‘the Year of Thank You Thank You Jerome.’ Without you I wouldn’t have had a second press which would actually turn out to be the only one I own. 2021 is also Year of the Soutirage. Of late night manoeuvres and river (no hot water) showers. Of making double as much wine as I ever have, and by this I mean after combining everything I’ve made the last three times.

Harvest 2021 was a harvest where I had a harvest team cancel for rain that didn’t fall. I have never driven vans so big nor driven so much alone. It’s the first harvest where I’ve been member of a team as few as 3 (we took six hours but we picked 1.2 tonne). It is the year I made wine in a garage. In a milk tank. In a state of constant logistical panic. Mentally I broke down twice, smashed my car once, got halfway through transferring the same damn tank of Chardonnay thrice. I was in the south so much I half picked up the accent. I’ve developed a thing for ropes and ratchets. It’s amazing what you can do with nothing but a wine starter pack: ladder, buckets, thermometer, a broom, bug-light and a borrowed 10hl tank. I have Claire to thank for that.

My trip to Italy in three words: gas-station pizza; hell. I have four barrels of ex-Blanc for my Ardéche Chardonnay and the Rousanne, picked 23.09, is the only cuvée for which I have a name. Patrick tells me Carignan doesn’t ‘work’ in Auvergne, the team who picked the Gamay was high, I made my first ever full tank (Cinsault) and there’s a small one of Syrah, a very serious tasting wine. Home-grown from Auvergne there’s exactly 100L of Pinot Noir into which I put 2 caisse of Auvergne Chardonnay. I’ve insulated the garage by the train station with hay bales, though in the interests of sounding professional I refer to it as the ‘chai’.

In October I finally had a moment to back-calculate what I made and was pretty surprised to see it was six tonnes of grapes. So now I’m putting off doing my expenses. Numbers like these are the kind of thing you really want to have figured out before you’ve paid.

It was in 2019* that I learned you need a fuck load of people to make wine alone, and so a million trillion thanks to all the people this year who made mine. I shouted a lot this year. Here are some more before the end of the year but t’inquiette, of the more constructive type:

Shouts to Café Clandestin! And in the same vein of staying alive: shouts to the engineer who engineered the rental vans to make that horrible noise when you cross a yellow line
To Manu for our days of triage and décuvage and pressurage and the trip to the plumbing store
To the Directrice of “Domaine Andrea Calek” for making me promise to take density every day, check under every chapeau, for letting me press chez vous and for sharing with me your time, wood and hopefully, yeasts
Anto for all your advice, trading me wine and practically all my grapes
Jerome Saurigny for gifting me your press
Flo, for your determination to clean all the caisse
Magali for your energy! For our night in the van, for always wanting to jump in the press
To Lisa and Paul for gifting me my first 3 glasses! For braving the storm of fibreglass
Aurelien: for your playlists and the box of glasses when my others smashed
Alex, Manu, Nadia and Max for lending me tanks
Thanks to my core team of advisors Patrick, Anto, Ralph and Remi for the 80 / 100 times you texted me back
To Alex and Vaughn for the first bottling of the year (a very reductive Gamay pét nat)
Our team for Boudes
Simon and Steen: EH BEH come get your Cinsault when het is klaar
Aaron: after Stefana, my stagier of the day! To you both: for the laughs! For that night we got drunk in Chass!
A mention for all the dinosaurs I’ve since burned as gas
To the guy in Beaujoalis who gave me money I didn’t have back in exchange for my leaking tanks
Henry for your patience this year doing what I know you didn’t like doing last year
Vincent Marie for lending and selling me tanks in my moment(s) of need
Geoffry for giving me a place to work, a room in which to sleep and for feeding me

— and to Guy, Claire and Aimé: thanks to you guys I moved anywhere. Thank you for everything.

*Or, the Year I Made Wine on Crutches.

Vincent Marie | No Control

Vincent Marie is not Vincent and Marie who are the Tricots and who I wrote about here but a gentle riot.
No compromise ni control, makes snapped guitar-string wines that crawl out of mosh pits bleeding magma and two black eyes in Volvic chai painted millennial conch shell pink.

— Visit 1 April 2019. Volvic, Auvergne