The Harvest. Monday 14th Septtember, 2009.

As I sit on the terrace with my morning coffee I wonder why on some blue sky mornings there are so many sparrows in the sky and on others there are hardly any at all. Today the sky is filled with their little wings as they dart and dash all over. They tweet and twitter and I am sure if they could they would let out loud whoops of joy.

I cannot stay for long on my terrace this morning, surrounded by next door’s terracotta roof, the olive trees after that, and beyond, the rolling hills. Today is harvest day at Domaine Rocheville, the last family run, independent winery in Nyons, our neighbouring town. We arrived at 9am as arranged and there was not a soul in sight. We drove the steep slopes of the property, lucky we had walked the tracks a few days ago so the lay of the land was like an old friend and we knew where to look for the plots of laden vines. Even so, there was nothing but vines, olive trees and orchards. An hour had passed and by this time the shop at the Domain was open so we returned to ask where the pickers were. A quick call to the bosses mobile and all was sorted, they were just in the next field, the landscape is so undulating and complicated they were hard to see even with their two tractors, one in orangey red and the other in a sky blue but much darker.

There were nine pickers today, industriously working, snipping heavy bunches of swollen grapes from the vines, putting them into big black buckets, and when full, heaving them into the back of the trailers attached to the tractors. One of the tractors was manned by Grandad who is 80 and still takes part in the excitement of the grape harvest. Today there were three generations working the vines. They are a lovely family, the son, now at the helm, eats lunch with his Grandparents every day at the Domain. Today he begins with a carrot salad and diced, purple beetroot. Grandma opens the oven and fusses over her Grandson, serving him a dish of fennel and onion, and a hot tomato relish with golden quenelles which brings back fond memories from Lyon where quenelles are a speciality. We enjoy a quick aperitif, a red wine bottled from the family vat, just for their own use, Grandad offers around a jar of sweet almonds before dolling out his medication at the table, pouring his glass full of the red wine to wash it all down. We leave them to eat in peace.

We return home to eat too and all go back to the Domain at 5pm to catch the end of harvest for the day, it will finish in about fourteen days if there are no problems and no rain. On our return the sun was low and the workers were not as fast as they had been with the freshness of a new work day. It must be hard on their bodies, stooping, lifting all day, they are all happy though.
The tractors pull out of the field at 6.20 pm, filled with purple syrah grapes. The day is far from over, now the wine will be made. Back at the winery, each tractor is backed up to the ‘reception’ with a turning blade in the bottom. The fruit slides from the back of the truck and in swept into the shining blade; AJ finds this part most interesting and keeps wanting to be closer and in between the happenings. We are each given a glass of pure grape juice, “The 2009 vintage!” we are told. It is so pure and sweet you could taste the day’s sunshine within it, its pinky-purple colour was cloudy with just juiced character. From here the juice, skins and all are pumped into a huge vat, the juice is drained from the bottom of this and immediately pumped into another vat. It is blushed with a little red but is separated from the grape skins quickly as tonight we are making rose wine. This wine will be sold in spring 2010.

We thank father and son, Grandad has retired hours ago, his bones will be tired tonight. It’s about 7.30 and they will not be finished until about 9pm or so. It is a long day considering they began at 7am this morning. Such is life on the land. It is not just harvest time that is busy, because this farm produces all sorts of yummies, olives, grapes, cherries, apricots; it is always the season for harvesting, planting, pruning, maintenance, etc, so the work day is always 7am to 7pm.

JR is so happy he has been able to catch the grape harvest in Provence, AJ didn’t think much of the harvest process but enjoyed seeing the start of the wine production, he was allowed to climb the long ladder leading to the tops of the vats so he got to see it all and was right in the thick of things up there.

We sipped red wine from the Domain with our dinner tonight, two varieties of red which JR chose. AJ had a sip or two of both, comparing their nuances and discovering the force of red wine on his young palate. After dinner we sliced some aged Comte fromage for him to discover how it changed the taste of the wine. I think he will grow to appreciate good red wines just like his Dad.

Bad News. Monday 31st August 2009.

We had been recommended a guy who was trustworthy to have a look at my computer which was still showing no signs of life; he runs a shop on the Nyons – Montelimar road which we drove along en route to our home in Venterol. “No problems, come back tomorrow”, he said, giving me a feint feeling of hope that all would be alright. On the way home, we called in at a local winery in hope to organise an interview and photo shoot documenting a day in the life of wine harvest. The owners of this particular winery are known for their friendliness and passion and they produce all kinds of yummy stuff, the local variety of olive, confitures, syrups etc. We got talking in their rather large and impressive showroom and before long we had been told the start of harvest would be 14th September. We were so excited that we would finally catch the harvest and at such a lovely winery too. They are the last independent winery in Nyons and they harvest completely by hand. Guilluame took us through a wine tasting of all of his drops, JR walked out with three of them he liked them so much, the Rose was my favourite, very easy to drink, even easier on the terrace at Venterol.

Back at home, JR and AJ pumped up the tyres of the mountain bike in the cellar and AJ took it for a test run around the village square. I took him for a run in the car to show him the boundaries around the village where he could ride to and off he went, he loved it, it is nice for him to have a bit of freedom. The village dog, who we later learn is called Sydney, adopted AJ and ran alongside him for the entire way. We gave him a bowl of water and a serve of fried rice for his effort; he is a lovely black lab and is so friendly. The local plumber arrived as arranged to look at the backed up drain in the shower, it has been so disguisting I find it even hard to write about. We ended up building up the base of the shower with wooden slats and a large terracotta brick we found in the underground workshop, to enable us to shower without standing in a sess-pool of water, after about an hour it would drain away. You couldn’t run enough water to clean the base of the shower without it backing up. JR stepped up to the occasion and dealt with it all, I don’t have the gumption for anything to do with drains, especially ones belonging to someone else. The problem is behind us now and we can look forward to trouble free showers from here on.

AJ and I settled in for a movie, we laughed until our sides almost split; it was a little naughty so was right up his alley. As the movie ran, the chicken basted in mustard and honey cooked in the oven until fork tender, the potatoes had been tossed in olive oil, cumin, seasonings, and wild rosemary we had cut from the side of the village hill earlier in the day - they were pretty spectacular.

My mobile rang and on the line was the guy from the computer shop, it was terrible news, I had not felt my heart sink like that in years. The hard drive was dead with no signs of life at all and the worst news was that he could not retrieve any data at all, it had all been lost. One of the problems with being a living in the moment kind of girl is that details of backing up and stuff like that tend to be put on the back burner, to be honest I never get around to doing it. JR on the other hand is great and looks after these kinds of detail. He was actually backing up all of my photos from this year when the computer died. He had plugged the external hard drive into his computer to check my photos were backed up ok but that was dead also. On realisation that I had lost every precious memory (16,000 photos) from our year of living life less ordinary was too much for me to bear, I wept and wept. AJ sat beside me with his arm around me telling me that everything was alright and we had our memories.

JR tried one more time to check the external hard drive, he plugged it into a different port to the one he had tried before, it made a familiar noise and voila, there were my images safe and sound. We were all so happy, JR was relieved. The only thing missing are my key words for every photo, these are the words I have assigned to each image, the details of where, when why, to replace these will take forever. The important thing is that I have my wonderful photos, so precious to me as AJ is not the little boy he was when we left home, he has grown so much.

The streets of Venterol were alive with pre-bedtime sounds of children playing; AJ met a group of boys, younger than he, as we walked around the village. They were too young to hold his interest for long.

We arranged slices of bocconcini and ripe tomato on a plate and drizzled it with local olive oil and JR took it out onto the table on the terrace, AJ set the table with all we would need, a bottle of red wine was opened and we sat under the vast expanse of sky, overlooking the terracotta rooftops enjoying a delicious meal as the sun set and the moon, almost full now, arrived giving the universe a silvery sheen. The soft notes of a woman’s voice travelled up to our terrace, accompanied by old fashioned and simple music, whether it was her partner playing it I don’t really know, but in between her sweet songs I could hear her laughing with someone. Her voice came from the garden behind us, obscured from my view high up on my terrace by an apple tree laden with yet to ripen fruit. It was quite a moment. The moment ended with the arrival of 3 bees, they could have been wasps I’m not really sure, but they were intent on making friends with us and were getting a little too close for comfort thus forcing us back inside. See, not everything is perfect in Provence. One thing I have noticed everywhere we have lived in France, is that the bees are prolific and always take the opportunity of arriving to investigate something sweet, be it perfume, food, drink - anything really.