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and juice. Getting dinner ready, the stress was almost insupportable. As the sun set over the
ancient stone barn I heard the hum of a healthy Kreyer rebound across the courtyard and
ran outside, overjoyed.
'Ça marche,'
said Benoit, giving me a relieved smile. Even the machine artisans working
in the wine industry felt the pressure of the harvest. They went to extraordinary lengths to
make sure equipment was fixed. I dressed the girls in their pyjamas, packed their overnight
bag and walked them up to Sonia. It was their first night away from home.
'You must listen to Sonia and make sure you eat all your breakfast.' Ellie cried and Sophia
comforted her with a big hug. They bravely said goodnight. I tried to control the tears
welling up and gave them each a
bisou
.
Sean and Ad were finishing up. We were ready and it wasn't ten o'clock. How different it
felt to the chaos of the previous year.
I slept well and woke at four the next morning to a clear sky filled with stars. After wolf-
ing down some muesli and a cup of strong tea I stepped out into the night. Minutes later the
harvest machine arrived with a fine-looking chauffeur named Jean-Louis. He was tall with
dark curly hair and should have been on the cover of
Men's Health
, not driving a machine
in the depths of the Dordogne at four in the morning. I got up onto the harvest machine
with renewed vigour.
A short ride and we were in the first vineyard of sauvignon blanc. I indicated our markers
to him and headed back up. The first load was perfect and pressing went smoothly. In an
hour all the sauvignon blanc was safely up at the winery. The juice was exceptional and
super-concentrated but the yields were extremely low. As long as this was unique to the
sauvignon blanc, we'd be OK. We had done a yield estimate and were expecting a reduc-
tion of a third, not more than half.
That afternoon Ad disappeared over the horizon on his bike while I did a second pass
through the vineyard. It was looking good. The sémillon would be our most intense harvest
day. I took the girls over to Sonia again. Ellie cried even harder and Sophia tried to comfort
her. She was still adjusting to school and now she was being shipped out for another night.
I hugged her tight and promised it would be the last night away. We would have to find
another solution for the harvest nights of the reds. I couldn't do this to Ellie again at two
and a half.
A few hours later the winery was buzzing with activity and light in the cold night air.
Jean-Louis hummed into the courtyard and I showed him our carefully marked sémillon.
Soon the harvesting was complete and we had two trailers waiting to go into the second
pressing.
Weemptied thepressinhasteaiming thepressedgrapeskinscarefully intooursmall trail-
er so we could carry them away to the property entrance where the government distillery
would collect them. We wanted the waiting grapes to be in the press before sun filled the
