It was a long and sleepy winter for the House. Dust collected under the beds. Spider webs embroidered the windows. The indefinable perfume of centuries’ old terra cotta tiles, wood beams and hand made chaux appropriated the air. The only sound on that sunny, end of winter afternoon when I was making my weekly rounds was the occasional squeak of a floor board or perhaps a cornerstone, as if the house was sighing and settling into a deeper position. Our room was warm, heated by sunlight. The bed was always clean and made up, just in case. I opened the […]
“Grapes and Old Stones”
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“Vers la fin de l année 1761, le Regiment de mont marin dans lequel je servais en qualité de Capitaine, était en garrison a Bordeaux…; il recut ordre de se tenir prêt pour s embarquer sur les vaisseaux du Roy a Rochefort pour etre transporté a l Amerique.” Of all the people who used to come to tea at La Tourbeille, Madame V. was my favorite. Sparkling and direct, she prefers cheer to gloom and had the best stories about life in this region during the Time Before the War. I shunned all other conversation to glue myself to her […]
I love it when people talk about la robe of a wine; it’s one of my favorite faux amis. While they mean color, I’m seeing a dressing gown. Which is exactly what we were up to on December 7th. Dressing the wine in pretty robes and hats and setting them in their carriages – the “garnet girls” were shipping out for their Debutante Party in Paris Wednesday night, our first official tasting. We gathered the same team with their machine on wheels. Henri and Sonia catch the bottles as they emerge and lay them in their boxes with a heavy duty […]
All night long I dreamed about tree roots. Specifically the fine little hairs that reach down into the rhizosphere and commune with the surrounding micro organisms in the soil. Since it’s the season to plant trees, perhaps it was subconscious and conscious trying to fashion an equation: desire for luscious boughs of future fruit + fascination with the mysterious symbiosis going on below the surface of the earth. With two harvests behind us, we can lift our eyes to acknowledge the old fruit orchard. It was planted decades ago by some wise person, in the middle of the vineyard. Before […]
I just had a visit from Fabienne, the angel of mercy and bastion of local knowledge who helped us take care of our elders at that time when such qualities were in short supply. But this afternoon the first words out of her mouth were “Trumpets of Death.” Then she couldn’t even finish her excited sentence because she gasped at the sight of my little basket. I had to physically block her from dumping it into the rubbish – “we only collected them because they’re pretty!” Even I am not stupid enough to eat found mushrooms without taking them […]
It was midnight. The man and I sat on the river terrace and stared mutely at the façade. Only one light came through the darkness, our son’s bedroom. The other occupants had retired for the night. The locals call the house “le chateau” as they have for hundreds of years. But although I’ve adopted their nomenclature, to me she is a fragile lady – as in lords and ladies, ladies in lace hats and white gloves, ladies who keep linen in lavender be-ribboned cupboards, ladies who dress for dinner and ring a silver bell between courses, ladies who write up […]
A neighbor asked me for our Pumpkin Soup recipe after I brought a small pot to her son who was home alone with a terrible flu. Our conversation went like this: me: “First you make your soup stock: Put 2 chicken carcasses in a large pot of water, add several cloves of garlic, a whole head if you like, especially in winter. Garlic is great against colds and flu. Salt, pepper and several bay leaves. John adds a couple of onions and a few carrots, but if you’re in a hurry, don’t worry about that. Bring to a boil, then […]
John looked like he’d thrown on a wacky Halloween Costume – a baggy, hooded wet-suit and a pitchfork. With a little imagination, the crushed berries could be taken as blood smears, and he’d get best prize for scary. The huge, ambulatory press machine arrived at sunset. John had just opened the top lids and bottom hatches of the tanks after moving 120 hectolitres (12,000 liters) of juice into the receiving tanks. With the juice gone, the marc falls to the bottom and carbon dioxide fumes emanate powerfully, so at every pressing someone brings a story about a death caused by […]
8 days into fermentation. Once again the chai has taken on that pungent aroma of fermenting grapes, reminding me vaguely of a raisin bread bakery. For the first days we kept the tanks cool to allow the grapes to macerate at a low temperature and for the fermentation to start gently. Our work at this stage is to carefully “move” the juice, morning and evening, to bring out the best of the fruit. The “closed pump-over” maneuver pumps the juice in a closed circuit from the bottom of the tanks up to the top. Here it enters via the “chinese […]
After much deliberation – will the weather hold? will the grapes be ready? – we pushed our luck hoping for higher maturity, and pushed Harvest Day back to October 6th. The team gathered in the winery before dawn, and at first light Denis set out on his harvester. Wilfred, our good friend from Chateau Carbonneau followed with his tractor, and in a half hour returned with two tons of luscious grapes. The first load is always the most frenzied as we figure how to coordinate our tasks. While John and Wilfred attended the arrival, Genevieve managed […]
Sunrise on the hilltop to take samples. Walking one row from each candidate parcel, we pick grapes according to procedure – half blind – so we aren’t biased to choose only the pretty ones and skew the results. Back in the kitchen we squeeze the juice into small bottles and rush off to the lab; we’re eager to see the probable alcohol level as well as acidity so we can choose harvest day. It has been a complicated year, but a warm, dry August and September are bringing a richer, more concentrated fruit than we had dared hope for. And […]
There is nothing like a bike ride up and down the hills of Juillac. I wave to my neighbors in their fields, the poignant September light reminding us that summer has ended and harvest is near. I always finish my tour with a roll through the vineyard for a quick, reassuring check; pluck a few warm, fat, juicy grapes to quench my thirst.
When we poured that bright pink juice from the spigot on Harvest Day a year and 11 days ago, next year seemed a wonderfully long time away. There was everything ahead of us to experience for the first time. End of a long summer, we were just letting down our guard, the “garnet girls” nicely tucked in for their beauty sleep so they may refine their aromas for sale this winter. And suddenly we’re pregnant again. Sunrise after a cool night, vapors rising from the river. It’s a few weeks before harvest and we’re up on the hilltop again, walking […]
In that time on the edge, we asked one of our sons to watch over his grandparents during our absence. Here is what he wrote. Queen Lear by Julien Sandifer I asked Grandmere why she threw my copy of King Lear in the washing machine. “Because it was dirty of course!” Then she went tottering off to chop some rose heads in her garden. Well, that’s her, my Grandmere. Eighty six years old, losing her eyesight and her memory and various other brain cells, plus she can hardly walk. But she still lives in this chateau on the vineyard she […]
It’s a peculiar thing to live in an old chateau. The walls that envelop us are far older than the generations we can still picture in our memories. Everything – paintings, sculptures, furniture, clocks, tapestries… are impregnated with the dust and fingerprints, tastes and whims of people whose names we have lost. Some of their portraits dress the halls – the lady coiffed in a high oblong gossamer bonnet with the face of a fish wife, whose eyes followed the children so she was banished to the bibliotheque, (we recently discovered she had been guillotined) the gregarious fellow in diaphanous […]
With great optimism, and of course after the pleasing results of Vintage 2011, we’ve decided to expand. From the day the grapes poured into our first (set of) tanks, we were conscious of the risk. With no back up, should something go wrong during vinification, an entire vintage could be lost. We’ve chosen custom made stainless steel tanks again from a family owned company in Monbazillac. The owner came with his young apprentice to install the vats himself and John added some elbow grease. I was the amazed beneficiary of their acrobatics show as they settled these enormous vessels into […]
For most folk bottling day is a lot of heavy lifting and sore shoulders. But when it’s your very first, celebration trumps. The amazing little bottling machine on wheels spun into place at 7am. While Sonia and Olivier set up shop, Julien and Henri helped move the thousands of stranded bottles into place. From the pallets into the wine dispensing machine, a delightful contraption right out of Willy Wonka’s Factory. Thank heavens for our wonderful friend Norbert, maitre de chai of a large vineyard down the road, who took a day off […]
Murphy’s Law. Whatever might go wrong, will. The ground was soggy this morning so the truck with the bottles got stuck in the mud. The driver had to unload 12,000 bottle hither and yon as best one could. This afternoon the man did a last minute deal to buy a rusty forklift without a guarantee to get them inside before nightfall. Bottling Day starts at 7 am tomorrow!
All good! Francoise our oenologue smiled as she examined the color: Ca “brille” maintenant. The wine is now “shiny.” (When there are too many particulates in suspension, the color looks “troubled.”) Upon tasting, we agreed the filtration had been modest and correct: body and soul are intact. Further judgements: “Nez nickel, fruite cassis, boise leger, bonne equilbre, longue en bouche.” (Nose intact after filtration, full fruit, nuanced cassis, light hint of oak, good balance, lasting finish.) We will have one more tasting before the “mise en bouteille” on June 13th. Our nomad children are flying home to pitch in. Picnic lunch at […]
And a million details to confirm. Corks, bottles, “capsules” (the shiny foil wrapped around the top,) back and forths with the tax man under visions of the guillotine, (every seal needs a tax stamp and woe to ye who’s got it wrong) plus frenzied last minute revisions to the label… Just choosing the corks was like a dinner discussion of the French Presidential election – even the sanest go slightly mad in their shameless partisanship. (Don’t get me started about screw caps.) It’s also become obvious why the Bordelais economy is so dependent on winemaking. Jobs. There’s a huge […]
One of the best things about May is stinging nettles. Yes, the famous sting means it takes a bit of courage to make friends with them, but once you do, these “weeds” have a reputation of curing whatever ails. Aches and pains, coughs, colds, fatigue (lots of Vitamin C, iron and magnesium) diarrhea, arthritis… You can make herbal tea, “decoctions” (brews), lotions, soups, vegetable platters (blanched in boiling water just long enough to neutralize the stinging whiskers, trickle olive oil: sweet, and better than spinach!)… Or ferment it in buckets of rain water and make the awful/wonderful “purin d’ortilles” (smells nauseating, […]
The farmer’s daughter is 7 years old, a high frequency impish thing, all pixie in high rubber boots covered with mud. She’s on a first name basis with every creature at the farm, has captured every wild heart, prances between horses, cows, dogs, chickens, taming the wariest with some child deep magic. Every evening she’s at the barn with her father at feeding time, and recently she lured me into her impatient waiting game for the birth of the new baby calf. A few days ago while mama ate, we caressed the full sphere of belly, gaped as the shape […]
Spring is here and time for our first, post winter sous tirage. The farmer warns it must be under a black moon, and not on a stormy day (beware atmospheric pressure.) The deep cold was a boon, taking care of most of this filtration process naturally so we haven’t added chemicals, or fiddled with extra interventions that increase the risk of too much oxygen in the wine (oxidation). In fact, we had a visit recently from an American importer and he was pleased to discover that the young wine already exhibits the unique flavor of our terroir, and could tell […]
Spirit of the Place – Part 2 The man first came to this place when he was thirteen. The chateau and vineyards had been muddling through a period of benign neglect since the death of his great uncle a decade prior, and now the buildings, lawns, flower beds, gardens, woods, even the river’s cliff – all slept around him like characters under a hundred years’ spell. He planted himself on the terrace over the Dordogne, braced by the allée of centurion linden trees and looked down at the water. The neglect was oddly comforting. Like camouflage. Like a tarnished brooch, […]
Up at the tomb this morning, bearing the first daffodils of Spring. The indefatigable maitresse de maison planted the bulbs years ago, but she was rarely here when they popped up. March has always been a month of happy birthdays in our family, but it took on a different tone last year when Maman et Papa came to their final rest here. I like to think they would have been pleased to see their granddaughters standing in the March sunshine, enormous bouquets of yellow in their arms; glorious, indefatigable daffodils to honor their memory.