Ten Years On – An Epilogue

I love epilogues.    The story ends  but the fates of the characters haven’t been revealed.  Then a bit like cheating, you flick the page and know the future.

“Grapes and Old Stones.”       Ten Years On.

It’s Autumn again.    Hot summer mornings replaced by cold, misty dawns.   Harvest pressing upon us.    The incessant thrum of machines echoing across the valley.

This harvest marks ten years under our belt.   In November Julien will officially join us as vineyard manager.   A new story will begin. 

As befits endings, I went back to the beginning:  15 August 2011  “Be careful what you wish for.” 

 

It’s true, “there is  magic in a beginning.”   So much promise, faith, energy.   Reading my chronicle entries from our humble (and sometimes humiliating) beginnings, I am astonished at our naiveté.  Ignorance is one thing; it can be gracefully rectified.  The rectification of naiveté is different.  Coming of Age stories inevitably involve something cracking, breaking, wounding.   Our then-naiveté embarrasses me a little.   I wince to read some lines written in innocence, too inexperienced to foresee an unhappy ending to a particular plot line. 

But who doesn’t love an 18-year-old?   One foot in childhood, the other in adulthood; the wrestle between ferocious idealism and the pragmatic stop sign of an elder.  We didn’t know it then, but that buoyant energy was part of the secret sauce.  It picked us up after each tumble, pocketbook scare and wayside ambush.

 

Of course it wasn’t just naiveté; there was always something hard and metallic there.    Something wilful and stubborn, with tough sinew to meet the failures, mistakes, disappointments and obstacles:  the sale of the ancestral home, a personal betrayal, a professional relationship gone sour or perhaps revealed for what it was, a bad vintage, bad corks, forklifts stuck in the mud, sales plans that didn’t work, a contraction in the Bordeaux market, a vintage gone rogue, finances slipping through the cracks, climate change, global political instability rattling even us small guys.  A pandemic.

 

 

But here we are, still on our feet.   Somehow, we gained in wisdom and experience.   The wine improved.   People asked for more.   Finances stabilised.  And a miracle occurred, a 3rd ingredient for the sauce:  Reinforcements.   Our children declared they wanted to be part of the folly.   They came back to France to help. 

 

Ten years on, we’ve clawed out a territory so the next story can get born. 

*       *       *

Back in the beginning, John and I made wishes.

He said,  “All I want are some grapes and old stones.”

We got that in spades.

I wished for “a place for dreaming.”

Not so easy to quantify.

A very long time ago, my mother sighed and shook her head after reading my first set of poems.

“How will you ever earn a living doing this?”

She set down the book and I set down my pen. 

As this chapter comes to a close, I declare my gratitude.   An adventure fraught with pain also brought elation, concrete anecdotes, a small space for dreaming and the impetus to pick up my pen again.  It gave me the chance to make friends with the seasons, with the earth, with the spirits in our forests.   To work with authentic paysans and learn from their wisdom and generosity.

Soon Julien’s journey within this family journey will begin.  We shall experience vineyard tending, winemaking and the evolution of a business together, but I look forward to being surprised.   To the emergence of original and idiosyncratic notes through the lens of his fresh eyes, mind, hands, muscles.   This time around we’re a bit savvier; we expect fear, struggles and setbacks.   Julien’s innate caution will serve well.   So will his optimism as we cast the net large to nab some joys and the wonder of the first time.  

Julien said, “All I want is a good harvest.”   His wish:  “Good advisors, good weather, good luck.”

Heart on his sleeve, rescuing drowning spiders and wasps one by one,  how will he ever earn a living doing this?

 

Let the decade begin.

 

 

*the rescued spider

 

August 15, 2011   “Be careful what you wish for”

They say be careful what you wish for, but I guess we weren’t.  For years my husband’s wish was, “Just some grapes and old stones.”  Mine: “A place for dreaming.”  And then one day, there we were.  Bound and shackled to the endless mending of centuries’ old stone buildings and risking our savings to revive a vineyard.  One result is this almanac of what life has become; not exactly what we wished for, and not exactly what we would have wrought if we’d had the prescience to know what was coming.