Vendanges! - Grape Expectations - page 73

Garrigue. Though we didn't know them personally, after hearing the news I stood on the
balcony looking at their farm with tears pouring down my cheeks. It was gut-wrenchingly
sad.
We had filled one of our semi-underground vats with the merlot. The thought of it made
me nauseous. That night I had nightmares about Ellie falling into it. The tank lid was in the
middle of the floor of the pressoir and when filled with fermenting wine, the chapeau , the
thick cap of grapes that forms over the juice, was about 40 centimetres from it.
I kept picturing Ellie leaning over to pick a grape out of the chapeau and falling in. This
spells instant death as the carbon dioxide suffocates and the liquid drowns. I woke up in a
cold sweat. It happened over and over again. I took a double dose of my sleeping remedy.
ThefollowingdayIstruggledtokeepmyeyesopenbutthefermentingwhitejuiceneeded
to be kept cool to hold the fresh fruit aromas, while the red juice needed to be kept warm, to
extract the colour and the flavour from the grapes. Our Kreyer temperature control system
helped us do this, but it was far from automated. Nothing was as simple as a flick of the
switch. Constant pump work was required, manoeuvring heavy pipes and equipment in an
endless dance. There was more work than we could handle, even with no weekend. I didn't
know then that there would be no weekends for more than two months.
Lucille arrived for her Friday visit.
'More bad weather is forecast. You should harvest the cabernet sauvignon early, perhaps
next week,' she said, reaching for our winery file.
I tried to snatch it back: the densities were adjusted, but the graphs were still missing.
'I haven't done the graphs,' I mumbled, expecting to be severely reprimanded.
'C'est pas grave,' said Lucille. 'You are in full harvest.' At least I knew our 'serious oeno-
logue ' would cut us some slack in 'full harvest'.
After Lucille left I prepared the yeast for the merlot. Part way through, two buckets of
yeast didn't puff up in the normal way. Convinced we hadn't fully rinsed the disinfectant
off the buckets I made ready to dash for more of the expensive stuff but Sean convinced me
to wait. By the time the yeast was ready it had risen the same as the rest. It was a different
strain, the one for our premium wine from Hillside and Cimitière vineyards, clearly a yeast
of a more restrained and refined character. We knew next to nothing then about the benefits
of the natural yeasts we could extract from our own organic vineyard that could offer us the
unique flavour of our terroir; that first year we followed Lucille's instructions to the letter.
We stole a few moments every morning and evening to review the wines' progress, taking
the temperatures and densities and tasting them. The constant tasting of the red wines left
my tongue ravaged by tannins, making it difficult to drink my early morning cup of tea
brewed so strong you could walk on it - but it didn't stop me.
The wines were like people, each with their own individual characteristics. Garrigue and
Hillside were merlot grapes that were picked the same morning, had similar care through
the year and were barely 500 metres from one another in the vineyard but they behaved and