The first week started off rather tense in anticipation although we had already decided on October 1st for “V-Day” (or should this be “Combebelle Day”?).

The first week started off rather tense in anticipation although we had already decided on October 1st for “V-Day” (or should this be “Combebelle Day”?). I was checking the weather forecast daily to make sure that there were no “surprises” coming our way because any hint of rain now will cause a lot of panic! The grapes are hanging heavy and ripe on the vine and rain can cause some of them to fall but more importantly can cause rot to form on the bunches which is a disaster. However, this is the risk you take when you are at 300m altitude and you have to wait a couple of weeks longer than the rest of the growers down below! However, the forecast was looking good and although I kept my fingers, toes and anything else that would cross/bend, I was hopeful that at least in this department I would not be let down.

Monday started off inauspiciously as Patrick’s flight was delayed in London due to fog in Paris! I could hardly believe this as it was a glorious sunny day at Combebelle. This meant that he would miss the first connecting flight down to Montpellier and would have to wait in Charles de Gaulle airport until 18h45 flight. CDG airport is like most other international airports and to have to wait around for 6 hours or more is really boring & tedious. Anyway, Patrick finally arrived at 10pm by which time I was fast asleep!

Another setback was that the caviste we thought we had hired to help out called Bruno Sunday evening to announce that he had found more permanent employment elsewhere. We could not really blame him for this but it did leave us in yet another “pickle” and without any help in the winery. We contacted the other candidate but he was not that interested mainly because he lived quite a distance from us and the salary would not cover his costs basically. On Tuesday, the first candidate called me whilst I was doing the maturity testing in the vineyard with a long & convoluted story about how he did not like his job / employer – this after only one day working there! Although it would be better to have someone to help me out in the winery, I decided against hiring him again on the basis that he could not be trusted to stay and could therefore not be relied upon. We are determined not to have to go through these “staff traumas” again next year and I am all for hiring a French person so long as they do the work and are willing to stay for the 3 months required.

However, I am lucky to have Frédéric who is a diamond! He has been harvesting by machine since the end of August non-stop but is coming towards the end and was able to lend me a hand on Monday to put the pipes etc together in preparation for the processing of the grapes. These pipes are huge and very heavy and very difficult to manoeuvre on my own and without another person it would be impossible to do. There was a lot more cleaning to do and the wooden vats needed to be soaked and cleaned again which is a daily task until we fill them with lovely ripe grapes!

Naturally, Patrick wanted to get stuck in so I gave him the task of cleaning the destalker again and putting together the “fagots” or “filters” made from vine cuttings bound together and held down by a large stone in front of the main valve to avoid it being clogged up with grape skins which would make it difficult to extract the juice to pump over the “chapeau”. Patrick was not entirely convinced about this “archaic” method but took to the task with “gusto”!

My friends from Luxemburg arrived the day before V-Day, which was great. Having expected them a week earlier I was a little concerned something had happened to them. They come each year bearing gifts (delicious Belgium chocolates and some delicious sausage made from lamb/beef). Their son and his girlfriend had visited in July with Granny which was fun as I have never met them before but had obviously heard about them. They also have two lovely Jack Russells which reminded me of Rosie (our Jack Russell who used to terrorise the neighbours & chase fighter planes in Suffolk!).

V-Day dawned early (4am) and relatively cool for the first day of picking. As this was the rosé, we would be using the machine to harvest the grapes. We would also harvest some of the reds by machine mainly because a lot of the plots had ripened at the same time and bringing a team of pickers to do the same work in the time required would not be feasible. We did another maturity testing on the Tuesday to get a final benchmark of where the acidity/sugar content was in each plot. We did not start picking until 6am in the end, but it was worth the wait! The juice was literally flowing when the grapes arrived and we managed to get most of the rosé as "free run juice", the rest being made up of juice extracted by the press. We do not fully press out the juice for the rosé and as soon as the colour really starts to get dark, we stop adding this to the rosé tank and divert it into on of the red tanks.

Picking early morning reduces the risk of oxidation in the juice as the grapes are quite cool. Patrick had never seen a machine harvester before in action so it was great fun for him. He climbed on top so that he could see how the machine “picked” the grapes. Of course, this being the first picking of the year and it was rosé, I was extremely anxious about things breaking down. However, the press behaved itself, the cooling worked and there was enough water – all the things which did not work last year, worked! However, the machine broke down halfway through picking the second lot of rosé so we effectively lost half a day. But this allowed me to have my “first night” panic in relative calm – calling Bruno and Jean Paul probably every hour to check that I was doing things correctly! In the end, Jean Paul popped up several times during the day and Bruno came in the afternoon, which calmed my nerves!

Patrick again got stuck in with the processing – there was a moment of panic when the juice from the press started to overflow onto the ground and I got a “grape shower” standing on the press as I fed the grapes into it!! This was meant to be Patrick's job but his fear of heights put paid to that one!! It was a busy day as we also had several meetings which could not be postponed and I had a couple of customers wanting to buy wine, but we got through the day and finished around 9-10pm.

Thursday dawned with another lovely red sky (slightly auspicious). We decided to pick most of the grapes in the next couple of days as we are into October now with cooler temperatures which will not increase the maturity of the grapes – in fact, there will be little or no ripening now. I was concerned about the acidity – if it is too high we can lose a lot of it through the malo-lactic fermentation which can result in a flabby wine. If we decided to wait there would/could be risk of rain ruining the grapes and therefore reducing our already small yields which is something we could not do.

We managed to pick a lot on Thursday leaving only the La Rivière plot to be picked on Friday. All the grapes came in healthy which is good news and the fermentations had already started in 2 of the tanks already (the wooden vats) which meant that I could transfer some of the juice from one into two other tanks as a “natural” inoculator to encourage the natural yeasts present to start working. There is always a lot of cleaning to do at the end of each day and particularly after the harvest has finished when all the machinery / equipment is giving a thorough cleaning so that they are ready for next year’s harvest.

All in all, I am pleased with this year’s crop but the “proof will be in the pudding” when the wines are finished! Unfortunately, for some of the wines we will have to wait several months, whilst others will reveal all before the year end. The rosé has turned out really well this year and I have a full tank which is a blessing – nothing went wrong in the processing and I think that it will be a better wine than last year!