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| Having a vine time |
This week we really got stuck in and experienced the full ‘vendange’
experience - vendange being the name given to the annual grape harvest in France.
After six solid days of back breaking physical labour, interspersed with much
wine and laughter, I thought in this week’s blog post I would sum up what a
typical grape-pickers day looks and feels like….
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| Sunrise - when I get up! |
The alarm goes off at 6.30am, when it is still dark, Nina
goes out and has a mooch about with the other dogs on site, of which there are
about ten or so. After coffee on the bus we traipse up to the Chateau which is
about a 10 minute walk, and by the time we reach the courtyard there are many
workers gathering and bustling about
in
various states of hung-over-ness, since they really like to party here, on any night
of the week.
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| The walk to the Chateau |
In the large dining room breakfast is available from 7-8am, it’s
buzzing with noise and I pick a seat at one of the 10 large round tables for
more coffee and a few slices of baguette with marmalade or jam.
When I first arrived I wondered what the
glass bowls were on the table, they are about the size of a cereal bowl (but no
cereal was on offer), I soon discovered it’s what people drink their coffee out
of, I’ve even started to use them myself, since the only alternative is a small
glass. The French are also partial to Nesquik, which I recall was hugely popular
back in the 80s when I went on a school trip to France – its evidently not gone
out of fashion, they guzzle it by the bucket load here! On leaving the dining
room one of the kitchen staff hands out bread with either cheese or meat to
anyone who wants it, to take for a mid morning snack in the field later.
Next stop is the bathroom block, where they are toilets,
showers and changing rooms, for a quick freshen up.
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| Break time |
The bus sounds it’s claxon at 8am in the courtyard, which is
now a hive of activity with tractor drivers, manual labourers, and various
Chateau employees getting ready to go about their business.
Nearly everybody smokes here, and between
every activity people are puffing away. The workers are divided into two teams,
Nick and I are in Team One - the two teams don’t really mingle - apparently, there
was a falling out some years ago, which caused a lasting rift.
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| Pickers heading to work |
Each team is
headed up by a boss, ours is Bernard, a gruff Frenchman who treats us with a
certain amount of disdain, probably deserved, because 1) we are a week late, 2)
we are the only English people and 3) we are inexperienced in comparison to the
other workers in our team, most of whom have worked here before, some for as
many as fifteen harvests, and all of whom have done grape-picking before.
It’s a relief to get the bus, as it means more time sitting
down before starting the gruelling work! In the field we pick our first row in
about 30-40 minutes, then we have a brief five minute break before starting the
next row. We work in pairs and have been matched up with a Kadir, a French Moroccan,
who is hilariously funny and very warm hearted. Kadir talks, sings and jokes incessantly
and because he speaks good English we have some great banter with him, until he
is too far ahead, as he picks so speedily, having worked in vineyards for thirty
years. Kadir’s picking partner is Genevieve, also a good English speaker, an
Auyervedic practitioner from Bordeaux.
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| The wine |
For each six or so pickers there is a
porter, who goes up and down their rows carrying a large bucket on his back in which
we dump our pannier of grapes once full. Our porter is Xavier, a young father
of seven (!) and bit of a wide boy, a truck driver in his everyday life, who
likes Calvin Harris.
The porters deposit
their buckets into a farm machine, on which a team of about eight women sift
through the grapes on a conveyer belt, taking out unwanted bits, and the good
stuff goes into a container on the back of a tractor, which gets whisked up to
the chateau once full.
We estimated that
we each pick 80-100 baskets a day each, one basket of grapes equals one bottle,
there are about 100 pickers in total – that’s a lot of wine!
At 10am we have a break of about 25 minutes, when we have some
bread and cheese or meat and recoup. A few corks get popped and beers opened. The
workers, especially the regular farm workers are partial to a cognac with grape
juice, home made at the vineyard, which certainly packs a punch. I normally wait until lunchtime for my first
glass of wine!
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| The Chateau |
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| The other side! |
After the break we
continue picking until 12.30 when we down tools for lunch. The mornings are a
lot cooler than the afternoons and people tend to work faster in the mornings.
Most people head straight to the dining room – me and Nick go back to the bus
first to check on the hound, who, if she hasn’t cleverly escaped (which he has
done twice by pushing the drivers wind open and jumping out!) will be asleep in
her bed, so I take her for a quick walk and a pat. A lot of the dogs are left to
roam free here, but I have been hesitant to leave Nina to her own devices – her
track record for running off is not good, plus there are sheep up the road, guarded
by some vicious dogs, and there is a pet goat (with only one horn) on site, which
is left tethered and I wouldn’t want Nina getting up to mischief and annoying
it!
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| The resident one horned goat |
Lunch is quite frankly marvellous, three or four courses
with three bottles of wine per table of 10 people. The quality is pretty good considering
the large scale on which it is produced, beef or lamb stew, poached salmon,
apple tart, chocolate mousse. We bring some Tupperware to lunch and take
enough for the evening’s meal, which
eliminates the need for cooking later or spending money at the supermarket, which
is a 25 minute cycle ride away.
The afternoon shift starts at 2pm, the sun is a lot hotter
it gets gradually warmers throughout the afternoon. We have a couple of short breaks, but
generally it is pretty full on, and by 3pm I find myself counting down the time.
It’s difficult to know whether to bend or kneel or squat to pick the grapes,
something somewhere aches - be it back, knees, feet, legs. I change into shorts
for the afternoon as it’s hot and by the end of the day I am covered in dust
and grape juice with a growing collection of mosquito bites.
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| Quiet by day, party by night -see video below! |
We stop work at 6pm and head home, tired and weary. In the
evenings, I usually walk Nina while Nick has a sort out and tidy up on the bus –
there are always jobs to do, despite it being a small space. By the time we
have eaten and gotten out of our dirty clothes it is 8.30ish, and we roll into
bed, which I have left set up as a bed for the duration of the harvest as it is
a bit of a mission packing and unpacking it each time. We watch a DVD in bed
(currently working our way through the box set of
‘One Foot in the Grave’) then it’s a deep
sleep until the alarm sounds again at 6.30am!
So that’s a basic day here.
We worked Saturday this week as there is a lot to do, the
harvest has been difficult this year as the Chateau is aiming to be the first
in the region to be 100% organic and the changes in the soil have caused problems
with rot so we have to cut a lot of the bad stuff out, prolonging the process.
People are surprised how we found work here and it seems like we kind of struck
gold, as it is apparently a very good employer, with most people returning to
work here year after year.
To break it
down, we get 80€ a day each, plus breakfast and lunch and daily wine; we can
park our bus in the vineyard and have electric hook up (a big plus). We have
had eleven days work, but had we been on time, could have had 16 days, so we
earned 1,760€ between the two of us, which isn’t bad considering our little
outgoings, and I’ve squeezed in some VA work too.
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| Tired and dirty after a hard day's work |
I will admit that I could absolutely
NOT do this work on a regular full time basis, you watch the clock because it
is physically tough, but there is a lot of fun and laughter and such an
interesting cross section of people and a feeling of camaraderie – on Saturday
we had an aperitif at 12noon in the field, when Bernard opened an ancient
cognac and passed it around - everyone looked at each other and raised their
glass (plastic cup) and shouted ‘salut’ to the Vendange, and it felt like we were
all in it together, it gives me goosebumps now to remember it – I think Bernard
even smiled at me.
We've met many lovely people already, as well as from France,
we’ve met people from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Brazil, Argentina. There was a party on
Friday night at which I was nearly tempted to get my mandolin out - people were
playing guitar, bongos, didgeridoo, the spoons even – maybe before we leave, I’ll
be brave enough..
One final observation… French people really do say ‘Oh La La’
a lot! I hear it all the time in the vines.
Salut :)
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