An Indian Summer continued thoughout the month of September with gorgeous warm sunny days. The grapes were happily ripening and taking their time about it, too!

The month began with a vengeance starting with the maturity testing to ascertain at what level of ripeness the grapes were. You expect from the first sample to get an idea of sugar and acid levels in particular and each week you should see the sugar increasing and the acidity decreasing. A couple of weeks into this you start sampling the grapes in the vineyard itself (rather than take the 200 berries that are analysed) and look around to see how well or not the vines are doing, whether there is too much foliage that needs to be thinned to allow the grapes to gain maximum exposure to the sun during the day, and, of course, checking for any signs of disease or rot.

Combebelle usually has naturally high acid which gives our wines their "minerality" in part. And, because we tend to pick 2-3 weeks later than the majority of producers in the region, our level of ripeness tends to be higher and more concentrated (a sense of bias here I think!!). Because of our different soil types we get different flavours from each parcelle as well as grape variety which allows us to create different blends and styles of wine.

The vineyard was still in need of some more water as some of the vines at the top and close to the edge of each row were starting to show signs of water stress. However, the majority of the vineyard was looking good and showed no signs of water stress probably because there is sufficient water around the property to supply the roots. We usually get rain at this time of year and we did with a vengeance on the 18th September when we had at least 30mm in the space of a couple of hours. It continued to rain softly for the next couple of days on and off but it was enough to make me concerned about rot setting in and more importantly, not to be able to pick the grapes if they were ready. With rainfall like this, no vehicle can pass through the vineyard for at least 3-4 days as it would be too dangerous, so even if we were to go in with a group of handpickers we would lterally have to carry the grapes to the winery by hand! It is at times like these that I wish we had a team of donkeys who could carry the grapes in baskets to the winery - a romantic and totally impractical notion, I know, but can you imagine the PR that could be created behind this idea?!

There was no need really to worry as the grapes were still a couple of weeks off being ready, but this is also when I start to seriously stress about the harvest and wonder if I shall make a mistake as to when to start picking. There is a short period when the grapes are really their optimum and the "art" of the vigneronne is to get this right. As the maturity tests are only an indicator you have to go by gut feel and what you see/taste in the vineyard as this is only how you can make your decision. Ben was always confident about waiting, but as we got closer to the end of the month and we were still "several weeks" off picking I was beginning to wonder! Our oenologue, Jean Paul, was also concerned that we had not started picking when most of the others around us had already started, finished or were more than half way through their picking. However, I know that waiting does pay off and we would benefit from this in the end.

The gite was fully occupied in September which was nice. We had some lovely guests staying from different parts of the UK. One family were keen "adventurers" and often went out. On one such occasion they went to the Parc National du Haut Languedoc about one hour's drive from here. They had been gone all day and around 6pm when there was no sign of them, I started getting a little worried wondering if there had been a problem. Then, at 6.30pm I had a phone call from a relative in London saying that the family were in fact "lost" and could I possibly try and help them get back to their car! Please bear in mind that night was fast approaching and I had never had to deal with such a situation before in France! I called the local gendarmerie (police station) who explained that it was their colleagues in St Pons that would deal with this. Anyway, after several phone calls between the gendarmerie / pompiers, the family "lost" and the relative in London, they were finally "rescued" around 11pm at night and arrived back here around 1am. They were quite sure that they would have to settle for the night out on this ledge in the middle of no-where, but I was having none of that! After a glass or two of red wine (Combebelle's finest, of course), their nerves finally settled down for the night. Later that week, the relative arrived here in France for a couple of days and the whole family went off again to "lay some ghosts to rest" in the Parc National du Haut Languedoc. Needless to say, they are coming back again next year for some more adventures!

As if all this was not enough, I was also organising the bottling of the 2007 red this month which is really insanity when the harvest is just around the corner. Thankfully we no longer do this at the domaine as it is really too chaotic and not practical anymore. However, organising labels and then getting them validated is a nightmare and no matter how prepared I am each time, there is always a nail-biting delay for the labels to be validated by Ecocert. Anyway, the bottling went fine with no real hiccups. We have changed the label only slightly, naming the wine "Les Fleurs Sauvages" to reflect the wild flowers that grow around the vineyard.

The end of the month finally heralded the start of our harvest and we began picking on Tuesday 29th September. Finally the waiting was over .............