Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
As a consumer my purchasing power was a significant lever in the quest for a healthy
earth so I made more effort to buy only organic products, preferring to buy less in order to
meet our ever-tightening budget.
Farming organically that spring was challenging. Many farmers who were experimenting
with organics threw their hands up in disgust and returned to their chemical dependence.
We had rain, rain and more rain. In the small square in Saussignac where the war memorial
stood opposite the castle, I bumped into Pierre Sadoux, the rake of a vigneron who smoked
rolled cigarettes and flew a microlight. He was looking well.
'
Salut
Pierre!'
'
C'est au feu
. Harvest last year followed by this spring. A nightmare, and the pressure isn't
letting up. How are things going for you?'
Pierre was echoing what other local winegrowers had told me: our first harvest had been
one of the toughest and this growing season was continuing the trend.
'Sean's working all hours but the vines are looking good.'
'How are you finding organic? I hear some organic vineyards have lost everything to mil-
dew.'
'Sean's vigilant - so far no problems. We know nothing different so we're lucky. We don't
know how easy life would be if we were conventional farmers.'
Pierre laughed. 'We're trying out mechanical weeding this year but we can't go organic.
It's too complicated for us to do with the number of acres we have.'
'Why?'
'We can plan the work more easily, we're not so dependent on the weather. With systemic
fungicides we are protected for fifteen days. For you, if you spray on Wednesday then you
get a downpour and a storm is forecast for Sunday night you need to treat again. Our em-
ployees don't work on Sunday. If I got on the tractor I wouldn't get round the whole vine-
yard in time. We need three people out there to get around all our vineyards in a day. It's
too risky for us.'
Perhaps in time Pierre and his father would go organic. When we bought our property we
did not realise we had fallen into an enclave of organic producers. Already almost half of
Saussignac wine producers were organic or in conversion to organic, compared to a nation-
al average in France of around 3 per cent. When we arrived another wave were starting
conversion and since then more farms had converted. It was a virtuous circle.
'You must come round to taste the wines again sometime soon,' I said. 'It would be good
to hear your opinion on the reds.'
Pierre had visited us once the previous summer to taste the old Garrigue vintages. I was
eager forhimtotaste ourownwinestoseehisreaction. Perhapshecouldgiveussomeuse-
ful advice on our problem children, the reds that steadfastly refused to do their malolactic
fermentation.
