La Legue Vineyard


Diary August to October March to July February Join List Vineyard Winery Daily Life	April 2004 Author: Both In the Vineyard [Iain] The main activity in the vineyard this month - and early May - centred on working the soil between the rows (well every other row actually to prevent the possibility of cutting all of a vine’s roots). The soil hasn’t been worked for years and is now very compacted. The first activity is to use the shredder on the rows to make sure all the old clippings are finely chopped – I am beginning to get comfortable with the tractor and the various bits of kit, but am slightly worried that complete boredom is just around the corner. I don’t have any equipment for working the soil and am really not inclined to buy anything else this year. Fortunately Jose has a good contact that has a couple of bits of kit that will do the job. So off I trundle in the tractor – first time on the road, orange flashing-light blazing – to pick up the first one, a small plough thing. The owner, who turns out to be Jose’s neighbour, is a really nice old chap but he insisted in shouting at me in slow French to try to make me understand (which, rather remarkably, I did without this extra assistance). Bit hair-raising to start with (hard to remember which side of the road to drive on when there is only a ‘middle’ seat) but I successfully make it back to the vineyard. I manage to plough every other row without much drama and leave the ploughed soil to dry out before replacing the plough with Jose’s neighbour’s rotavator – which, I am assured, will produce a really nice finish if I drive it slowly enough. While I’m coming back home with the new piece of equipment the degree of change to our lives hits me for probably the first time – four months ago I walked over London Bridge to get to work in the City every day and here I was in the middle of rural France confidently driving a tractor down the road having borrowed a rotavator from a farmer, swapping the daily commute for a pressure washing session with whatever I’ve been using in the field that day. Hmmm. Anyway, back to the rotavator… again this works ok although even after two (slow) runs down each alley the promised ‘just like a garden lawn’ finish isn’t bad but leaves something to be desired. Having lost the will to sit in the tractor any longer I defer a third pass with the machine until later in May. The next piece of tractor equipment arrived on April 27th –a sprayer – it arrives in the nick of time because the arrival of mildew is widely predicted. On the surface it seems similar, but more complicated than, the machine for spraying against weeds. Fortunately, calibrating the device is pretty much an identical exercise to that we undertook last month – and this done I venture into the field. Great news, although this is a pretty unpleasant activity (using the carbon filter to prevent the spray getting into the cabin of the tractor is absolutely essential), it is very simple to operate (good job because it generally needs to be repeated every two weeks). Dad is here for another visit – hopefully to complete on the sale of his new house in St Sernin in early May – and is keen to attack the vineyard. He and Jack decide to do some spot weeding to defer the date that I need to go and treat the whole vineyard. The technique involves dad driving the quad bike with Jack as a passenger wearing a spraying backpack, getting on and off the bike to spray the offending weeds. It seems to be pretty effective but at the end of the day Jack is pretty exhausted (not surprising really since the back pack contained 16 litres!). Dad complains of quad bike thumb (the throttle is operated by your thumb). We decide to change the trellising system a little – the ‘leveurs’ (the leaf wires which are held on hooks on each post along the rows of vines and are lifted when the vines have grown tall to stop them flopping down, thus holding the leaves upright) have been the source of many problems to us – mostly through getting caught in various bits of machinery while they’re on the floor. We aim to use a system we’ve seen elsewhere that involves chains on the ends of the wires with nails holding them onto the end posts. This, and other everyday requirements, results in Jack going to Terres du Sud with the following shopping-list; • Tractor oil • Grease x 3 • 100 metres of strong chain • Largest nails available • Bolt cutter …..bit different to toothpaste and toilet rolls from Tesco’s we thought. [Jack]Adding the chains to the leaf wires actually took some considerable time. The 100 metres of chain we initially bought had to be supplemented with another 250 metres as well as more nails (we ended up using around 800 nails!)! All the chain had to be cut into approximately 45 cm lengths which Granddad and I struggled to do even with the bolt cutters. And banging the nails into the end posts was not as easy as it sounds especially since once they were in we then had to cut the heads off! Occasionally we had a hand from Iain or Luis with this as both Granddad and I found that to be a bit too difficult. But with some determination we eventually managed to finish all 195 rows, having cut the chain into almost 800 pieces. The leaf wires are now resting at the bottom of the rows waiting to be lifted (a job for mid June probably). We had a meeting with the guy we are going to use as an oenologist. Very fortunately for us, although he is French, his English is very good, mainly because he has spent time working in Australia. This is a real bonus as when it comes to the technicalities of wine making as obviously it is much easier for us to talk in English. Equally it is encouraging for us to have found someone who has knowledge of non-French wines. We are keen to make a wine that is more than just typically French; we want our wine to have some of the characteristics of new world wines as well. Our meeting proves very useful not least because we decide that as well as making white and two different styles of red wine we should also make a rosé. back to top The Winery [Iain] BIG NEWS: The work on the winery has actually started. The first phase consists of levelling off the site and putting down huge amounts of white rock. Suitably impressive machines arrive, diggers, rollers and lots of lorries. All good for making us think the action has finally begun but not quite so good for the driveway (which belongs to our neighbour), which is completely, and utterly torn apart. Worrying a little about this Jack calls the neighbours, who live in Belgium, to tell them what is going on and that we’ll make sure everything is put right afterwards. She asks the architect to do the same, which turns out to be fortunate as our neighbour confessed to him that he didn’t understand a word the Jack was trying to say! So the first cost overrun hits us in the first week as we have to pay for hundreds more tons of white rock to sort out our neighbours driveway. We are not happy, surely the builders could have foreseen this when they visited, but at least the work has begun. By the middle of the month the groundwork has been completed, denuding a huge amount of space, and we eagerly await the laying of the foundations. By the end of the month we still have a delightfully white open space but no foundations – our worries resurface and Jack practises getting angry in French at anyone who is remotely involved with building the winery. I guess the good news is that this practice stands her in good stead for next month where even more heated debate becomes necessary. The guy who has helped plan the water treatment plant for the cuverie called us to discuss the possibility of a grant that we may be able to claim. He very kindly came round to discuss this and offered to help us put together the requisite dossier. Dossiers are big over here – no matter what you want to do you have to complete a dossier which usually involves obtaining umpteen copies of every document we have (think we need to buy a photocopier as I am spending more and more time and money at the printers in Duras getting copies!). He even went away and composed the letters for us that needed to accompany our dossiers. Two heavy A4 envelopes have now been sent off and we wait. back to top Daily Life [Iain] I start the month absolutely determined to sort out the awful smell from our septic tank – if it’s this bad when its cool then summertime is not even worth thinking about. However, I have a plan. Having followed my nose, up a ladder!, to determine the origin of the offensive odour I can categorically state that it comes from the guttering! I’m not entirely sure if this is scientific but I conclude that this is due to (i) the rainwater flowing into the same pipes as the septic tank outlet and (ii) the height of the gutters creating a pressure differential that ‘pulls’ the smell up and out. Even though it smacks of prevention rather than cure I decide to insert a ‘u’ bend into the rainwater waste pipe. Cunning I thought. I leave the hole open exposed for a day to check that the smell does not return. Hey presto – no smell. I begin to fill the hole and immediately put the celebrations on hold – the bloody smell again. Nose to the fore I track it down to a slab that I eventually conclude covers the grease-trap – completely separate to the septic tank (which actually, it appears, is completely odourless). All the products that we had previously thrown into the septic tank system to stop the smell had, of course, completely bypassed the grease-trap. So I clean out the grease-trap with an old sieve strapped to a bit of bamboo – most unpleasant job of the month – and ask Jack to bung some product down the sink to help prevent a build-up. Although conscious not to declare victory too soon, as I write (end of May), the smell seems to be vanquished. [Iain]Relatively speaking there wasn’t actually a huge amount to do in the vineyard this month so I decide that I have to sort out the swimming pool terrace. It was originally wooden decking which was falling apart a little – the real problem though was number of splinters that made their way into the feet of any child that used the pool – so, it had to go. We set off to Point.P (sort of chain of builders merchants) and bought sand, cement and tiles (of course it turns out that we’ve bought nowhere near enough of any of these three items). Before attacking the work the sheer size of the job gives me second thoughts and we ask for a quote from a local artisan. We’re acutely aware that until we have wine to sell we have no income and the quote was high enough for me to believe that I should fall back to my original plan and do it myself. Mistake. Jose was kind enough to help us throughout the project – actually, it was a bit more like I was giving him an occasional hand but even so it was incredibly gruelling work. First of all Jack, Steve (my brother who was visiting) and I lifted all the old wood, took it to the tip and started clearing the foundation area to find the wood was set into great blocks of concrete – we debated long and hard about whether we could use the concrete that was already in place as the foundation. Eventually Jose bought round another artisan friend who categorically confirmed that we could not. The next day Jose and I troll off to the hire shop in Marmande for a compressor and a pneumatic hammer (another new experience for me) and spend the rest of the day breaking up concrete. That was hard enough but worse was to come, over the course of the next two days Jack and I lift all the broken concrete (I estimate that there was around 6 tons of it) into the quad trailer and add it to the pile of hard-core that is going to be used for the winery. After the first 5 hours we fervently believed we should have paid for the work to be done by someone else. After 6 hours we were certain that it would have been better tending to the feet of children who had splinters. After 7 hours we had the timely idea that we should simply have sanded down the existing wood and treated it with something…… However by the end of the month we had not only excavated the area for the foundation but also toned up our muscles a little. French phrase of the month: Coup (pronounced ‘coo’) de xxx – where xxx can be just about anything. It’s meaning changes a bit depending on the xxx but it’s really useful. Some examples; • Coup de main – helping hand (as in can I give you a hand) • Coup de vin? – want a top up? • Coup de fromage? – want the cheese? • Coup de bonheur – be in luck • Coup de fil – phone call • Coup de voiture – quick visit by car • Coup de fusil – shoot something In fact you can probably say coup de anything-at-all and it will mean something. [Jack] We (well generally me!) view the delivery of post with trepidation. It is rare that the daily post arrives without either a bill or a form that we have to complete and return asap! For example on April 8th the post contained the bill for our health care insurance and a number of forms from the Chambre D’Agriculture (each a different colour to make it easier (really?)) which must be completed and returned before the end of the month. So we now have the PAC form (new type of land registry), the Chambre D’Agriculture form and the DDAF form (more land registry info!) to complete. And of course there is the quarterly VAT (TVA here) return! In between all this we occasionally manage some social life. Beck continues with her horse riding, which she is enjoying more and more as the weeks go by. She and Fleur seem to have made up thankfully and she was invited over one Sunday for the afternoon. School continues to be something Beck looks forward to and she now wants to leave as early as possible to get to the garderie before school and to be collected as late as possible after school, we usually get there around six, so that she can play football. The weather has been mixed this month but when warm enough we make sure that we are outside enjoying the barbeque and I have spent some time out in the garden and have created a new bed at the front as well as having cleared some of the other beds (with the help of Viv my sister-in-law). And finally, our latest acquisition – Henny Penny. She just appeared one day. We saw her under one of the bushes in the front garden and finding our new arrival entertaining we gradually persuaded her that we were friendly by means of feeding her corn. She now calls by from time to time to be fed corn, which she takes from our hands and take a mud bath in one of our garden pots! Bad news is – we can’t find any eggs and she also seems to think that our patio is a public convenience! What was initially quite fun has now become a bit of a liability. back to top	Get our diary every month Completely free Updates by email Click to join list

April 2004

Author: Both

In the Vineyard

[Iain] The main activity in the vineyard this month - and early May - centred on working the soil between the rows (well every other row actually to prevent the possibility of cutting all of a vine’s roots). The soil hasn’t been worked for years and is now very compacted. The first activity is to use the shredder on the rows to make sure all the old clippings are finely chopped – I am beginning to get comfortable with the tractor and the various bits of kit, but am slightly worried that complete boredom is just around the corner. I don’t have any equipment for working the soil and am really not inclined to buy anything else this year. Fortunately Jose has a good contact that has a couple of bits of kit that will do the job. So off I trundle in the tractor – first time on the road, orange flashing-light blazing – to pick up the first one, a small plough thing. The owner, who turns out to be Jose’s neighbour, is a really nice old chap but he insisted in shouting at me in slow French to try to make me understand (which, rather remarkably, I did without this extra assistance). Bit hair-raising to start with (hard to remember which side of the road to drive on when there is only a ‘middle’ seat) but I
successfully make it back to the vineyard. I manage to plough every other row without much drama and leave the ploughed soil to dry out before replacing the plough with Jose’s neighbour’s rotavator – which, I am assured, will produce a really nice finish if I drive it slowly enough. While I’m coming back home with the new piece of equipment the degree of change to our lives hits me for probably the first time – four months ago I walked over London Bridge to get to work in the City every day and here I was in the middle of rural France confidently driving a tractor down the road having borrowed a rotavator from a farmer, swapping the daily commute for a pressure washing session with whatever I’ve been using in the field that day. Hmmm. Anyway, back to the rotavator… again this works ok although even after two (slow) runs down each alley the promised ‘just like a garden lawn’ finish isn’t bad but leaves something to be desired. Having lost the will to sit in the tractor any longer I defer a third pass with the machine until later in May.

The next piece of tractor equipment arrived on April 27th –a sprayer – it arrives in the nick of time because the arrival of mildew is widely predicted. On the surface it seems similar, but more complicated than, the machine for spraying against weeds. Fortunately, calibrating the device is pretty much an identical exercise to that we undertook last month – and this done I venture into the field. Great news, although this is a pretty unpleasant activity (using the carbon filter to prevent the spray getting into the cabin of the tractor is absolutely essential), it is very simple to operate (good job because it generally needs to be repeated every two weeks).

Dad is here for another visit – hopefully to complete on the sale of his new house in St Sernin in early May – and is keen to attack the vineyard. He and Jack decide to do some spot weeding to defer the date that I need to go and treat the whole vineyard. The technique involves dad driving the quad bike with Jack as a passenger wearing a spraying backpack, getting on and off the bike to spray the offending weeds. It seems to be pretty effective but at the end of the day Jack is pretty exhausted (not surprising really since the back pack contained 16 litres!). Dad complains of quad bike thumb (the throttle is operated by your thumb).

We decide to change the trellising system a little – the ‘leveurs’ (the leaf wires which are held on hooks on each post along the rows of vines and are lifted when the vines have grown tall to stop them flopping down, thus holding the leaves upright) have been the source of many problems to us – mostly through getting caught in various bits of machinery while they’re on the floor. We aim to use a system we’ve seen elsewhere that involves chains on the ends of the wires with nails holding them onto the end posts. This, and other everyday requirements, results in Jack going to Terres du Sud with the following shopping-list;

• Tractor oil
• Grease x 3
• 100 metres of strong chain
• Largest nails available
• Bolt cutter

…..bit different to toothpaste and toilet rolls from Tesco’s we thought.

[Jack]Adding the chains to the leaf wires actually took some considerable time. The 100 metres of chain we initially bought had to be supplemented with another 250 metres as well as more nails (we ended up using around 800 nails!)! All the chain had to be cut into approximately 45 cm lengths which Granddad and I struggled to do even with the bolt cutters. And banging the nails into the end posts was not as easy as it sounds especially since once they were in we then had to cut the heads off! Occasionally we had a hand from Iain or Luis with this as both Granddad and I found that to be a bit too difficult. But with some determination we eventually managed to finish all 195 rows, having cut the chain into almost 800 pieces. The leaf wires are now resting at the bottom of the rows waiting to be lifted (a job for mid June probably).

We had a meeting with the guy we are going to use as an oenologist. Very fortunately for us, although he is French, his English is very good, mainly because he has spent time working in Australia. This is a real bonus as when it comes to the technicalities of wine making as obviously it is much easier for us to talk in English. Equally it is encouraging for us to have found someone who has knowledge of non-French wines. We are keen to make a wine that is more than just typically French; we want our wine to have some of the characteristics of new world wines as well. Our meeting proves very useful not least because we decide that as well as making white and two different styles of red wine we should also make a rosé.

The Winery

[Iain] BIG NEWS: The work on the winery has actually started. The first phase consists of levelling off the site and putting down huge amounts of white rock. Suitably impressive machines arrive, diggers, rollers and lots of lorries. All good for making us think the action has finally begun but not quite so good for the driveway (which belongs to our neighbour), which is completely, and utterly torn apart. Worrying a little about this Jack calls the neighbours, who live in Belgium, to tell them what is going on and that we’ll make sure everything is put right afterwards. She asks the architect to do the same, which turns out to be fortunate as our neighbour confessed to him that he didn’t understand a word the Jack was trying to say! So the first cost overrun hits us in the first week as we have to pay for hundreds more tons of white rock to sort out our neighbours driveway. We are not happy, surely the builders could have foreseen this when they visited, but at least the work has begun. By the middle of the month the groundwork has been completed, denuding a huge amount of space, and we eagerly await the laying of the foundations. By the end of the month we still have a delightfully white open space but no foundations – our worries resurface and Jack practises getting angry in French at anyone who is remotely involved with building the winery. I guess the good news is that this practice stands her in good stead for next month where even more heated debate becomes necessary.

The guy who has helped plan the water treatment plant for the cuverie called us to discuss the possibility of a grant that we may be able to claim. He very kindly came round to discuss this and offered to help us put together the requisite dossier. Dossiers are big over here – no matter what you want to do you have to complete a dossier which usually involves obtaining umpteen copies of every document we have (think we need to buy a photocopier as I am spending more and more time and money at the printers in Duras getting copies!). He even went away and composed the letters for us that needed to accompany our dossiers. Two heavy A4 envelopes have now been sent off and we wait.

Daily Life

[Iain] I start the month absolutely determined to sort out the awful smell from our septic tank – if it’s this bad when its cool then summertime is not even worth thinking about. However, I have a plan. Having followed my nose, up a ladder!, to determine the origin of the offensive odour I can categorically state that it comes from the guttering! I’m not entirely sure if this is scientific but I conclude that this is due to (i) the rainwater flowing into the same pipes as the septic tank outlet and (ii) the height of the gutters creating a pressure differential that ‘pulls’ the smell up and out. Even though it smacks of prevention rather than cure I decide to insert a ‘u’ bend into the rainwater waste pipe. Cunning I thought. I leave the hole open exposed for a day to check that the smell does not return. Hey presto – no smell. I begin to fill the hole and immediately put the celebrations on hold – the bloody smell again. Nose to the fore I track it down to a slab that I eventually conclude covers the grease-trap – completely separate to the septic tank (which actually, it appears, is completely odourless). All the products that we had previously thrown into the septic tank system to stop the smell had, of course, completely bypassed the grease-trap. So I clean out the grease-trap with an old sieve strapped to a bit of bamboo – most unpleasant job of the month – and ask Jack to bung some product down the sink to help prevent a build-up. Although conscious not to declare victory too soon, as I write (end of May), the smell seems to be vanquished.

[Iain]Relatively speaking there wasn’t actually a huge amount to do in the vineyard this month so I decide that I have to sort out the swimming pool terrace. It was originally wooden decking which was falling apart a little – the real problem though was number of splinters that made their way into the feet of any child that used the pool – so, it had to go. We set off to Point.P (sort of chain of builders merchants) and bought sand, cement and tiles (of course it turns out that we’ve bought nowhere near enough of any of these three items). Before attacking the work the sheer size of the job gives me second thoughts and we ask for a quote from a local artisan. We’re acutely aware that until we have wine to sell we have no income and the quote was high enough for me to believe that I should fall back to my original plan and do it myself. Mistake. Jose was kind enough to help us throughout the project – actually, it was a bit more like I was giving him an occasional hand but even so it was incredibly gruelling work. First of all Jack, Steve (my brother who was visiting) and I lifted all the old wood, took it to the tip and started clearing the foundation area to find the wood was set into great blocks of concrete – we debated long and hard about whether we could use the concrete that was already in place as the foundation. Eventually Jose bought round another artisan friend who categorically confirmed that we could not. The next day Jose and I troll off to the hire shop in Marmande for a compressor and a pneumatic hammer (another new experience for me) and spend the rest of the day breaking up concrete. That was hard enough but worse was to come, over the course of the next two days Jack and I lift all the broken concrete (I estimate that there was around 6 tons of it) into the quad trailer and add it to the pile of hard-core that is going to be used for the winery. After the first 5 hours we fervently believed we should have paid for the work to be done by someone else. After 6 hours we were certain that it would have been better tending to the feet of children who had splinters. After 7 hours we had the timely idea that we should simply have sanded down the existing wood and treated it with something…… However by the end of the month we had not only excavated the area for the foundation but also toned up our muscles a little.

French phrase of the month: Coup (pronounced ‘coo’) de xxx – where xxx can be just about anything. It’s meaning changes a bit depending on the xxx but it’s really useful. Some examples;
• Coup de main – helping hand (as in can I give you a hand)
• Coup de vin? – want a top up?
• Coup de fromage? – want the cheese?
• Coup de bonheur – be in luck
• Coup de fil – phone call
• Coup de voiture – quick visit by car
• Coup de fusil – shoot something
In fact you can probably say coup de anything-at-all and it will mean something.

[Jack] We (well generally me!) view the delivery of post with trepidation. It is rare that the daily post arrives without either a bill or a form that we have to complete and return asap! For example on April 8th the post contained the bill for our health care insurance and a number of forms from the Chambre D’Agriculture (each a different colour to make it easier (really?)) which must be completed and returned before the end of the month. So we now have the PAC form (new type of land registry), the Chambre D’Agriculture form and the DDAF form (more land registry info!) to complete. And of course there is the quarterly VAT (TVA here) return! In between all this we occasionally manage some social life. Beck continues with her horse riding, which she is enjoying more and more as the weeks go by. She and Fleur seem to have made up thankfully and she was invited over one Sunday for the afternoon. School continues to be something Beck looks forward to and she now wants to leave as early as possible to get to the garderie before school and to be collected as late as possible after school, we usually get there around six, so that she can play football. The weather has been mixed this month but when warm enough we make sure that we are outside enjoying the barbeque and I have spent some time out in the garden and have created a new bed at the front as well as having cleared some of the other beds (with the help of Viv my sister-in-law).

And finally, our latest acquisition – Henny Penny. She just appeared one day. We saw her under one of the bushes in the front garden and finding our new arrival entertaining we gradually persuaded her that we were friendly by means of feeding her corn. She now calls by from time to time to be fed corn, which she takes from our hands and take a mud bath in one of our garden pots! Bad news is – we can’t find any eggs and she also seems to think that our patio is a public convenience! What was initially quite fun has now become a bit of a liability.

April 2004

In the Vineyard

The Winery

Daily Life

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