Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'You sent him unfinished samples? It's suicide! Don't ever do that. We were tempted into
doing it with our reds in the early days. People said "Wine buyers will be able to project
forward what the wine will be like". It's not true. What a disaster. Many of the people we
sent the samples to would not take calls from us after that. The wines were too raw. We
ruined a host of contacts. Wine buyers are not winemakers. They are not used to tasting
unfinished wine.'
I felt the familiar ball of nausea in my stomach.
'So what do we do?'
'You have to make the investment in the bottling and hope it all works out.'
With the lead times required for the dry components it was impossible to put off bottling
and still fulfil demand in time. Investing in bottling was a risk we had to take. We had to
have faith. Our wines were good. The bottling bills would only need to be paid two months
after and we would have to have closed some sales by then.
Bottling needed a minimum of three people alongside Pierre, so my parents were co-opted
into giving a hand. On the auspicious day Pierre quickly set up his bottling unit, sterilised
it and charged the stations with bottling material. My dad was selected to stack the bottles
onto the machine. Mum took the capsuled and labelled bottles off the machine, boxed them
and pushed the box through the taping machine. Sean took the finished boxes off the line
and stacked them onto pallets.
As the first finished wines came off the line I felt a surge of pride. It was like watching
Sophia go to her first day of school. Those wines were part of us and had our hopes and
dreams tied up inside them.
Pierre zoomed around on the forklift making sure each point in the bottling unit was
stocked, stacking pallets into our storeroom and sorting out hitches along the way. I made
regular batches of tea and biscuits while Ellie was a perfect angel, playing for hours in the
corridor of crisis and spreading her play zone throughout the lounge and kitchen. It was a
demanding two days that kept Dad too busy to make any comments about the fast-extend-
ing corridor. The tough physical work involved only served to confirm for him that we had
truly gone off our trolleys.
'We'vegotsparetime,letmegiveyouatourofmychâteau,'saidPierreaswefinished.We
piled into his car. Having never visited the private parts of Saussignac Castle, I was ecstatic
at the opportunity. The commune owned one wing and I had been there for events like the
annual 'Arts au Château' and the Christmas market. The private sections were owned by a
diverse cosmopolitan group: one of the two main towers by two American artists, the other
