It's Quiet Here

I came back to Chateau Brandeau as my last farm for my last days in France. Elly isn't here. Neither is Phil or Eddie of Ana, my new friends since I've arrived. In fact, it's a little too quiet, and as always there is lots of time in the vines...which means lots of time for contemplation. But contemplation makes it sound serene, meditative even. Sometimes it's that, but the most honest description would be a daily a panic attack.

I came to France for a lot of reasons, but if I were going to psycho-analyze myself, I'd say the main reason was that I still felt par-baked after my return from Hawaii. Like whatever had been forming there was close to done, but not quite there. I tried to come back to California and put it all together again last winter, but nothing was quite forming up inside of me and I had to admit that it just wasn't time yet. So I came to France for another adventure, thinking that this time I'd be ready to go back when it was all over. Only now I feel even less confident than before....I'm returning with an even skimpier game plan.

I wish that I could wrap it all up in a neat and tidy arc, or end with some witty and clever thought, but I can't. All I know is that today I leave for Paris for three days and then I fly to New York. After that I have no schedule, no job, no house and no fucking clue.

Leaving Bordeaux

Last week we left Chateau Brandeau...so sad! In looking through my previous blog posts of the place, I realized that I had mentioned very little about the actual work and learning that happened there. I suppose I was simply too tired to post after a day in fields. Here, I will make up for that omission and tell you a bit about what we were doing during the day. We came to the vineyard during the time when the grapes were just beginning to fruit and set on the vines. This is the time to trim and tie the vines and get rid of the weeds of the excess weeds. At non-organic vineyards weed control is pretty easy--you just spray the base of the vines with Round-Up and call it a day. At organic vineyards, you have to get old-school about it. What this means is a process called décavaillonage: basically this means plowing in between the vines and then hoeing what is missed by the plow. It takes a really long time.

Ana is the hero of this story. God bless her, she just got her drivers' license two months ago, but she manned that tractor for a solid two weeks and took to it like a duck to water. I started calling her the Flash since she would speed through the vineyard in 6th gear. Actually, that's a bit of misnomer...6th gear is still only like 15 miles/hour. I just wanted to give a cool nickname. She was a good sport about it. She did really own that rusting beast of a tractor though.

Eddie and Phil manned the plows, which take a whole lot of caressing and cajoling so that the vines aren't either a) missed by a mile, which means lots of back-breaking hoeing, or b) run over and pulled clean out of the ground. Its intensive, but Eddie, of course, managed to make it chic.

Below is a little video of the plow at work. It gives you an idea of exactly how low tech the operation is.

Elly and I were super enthused, as usual, to be working the plow. Mostly we were just ecstatic to have a break from hoeing and pruning. When we weren't doing the décavaillonage, we were doing épamprage. Here, the French word makes it sound far more glamorous than it actually was. Epamprage is pruning away all of the new shoots from the vine. This allows the vine to give all of its energy to the main, fruit producing branches. Basically, this involves bending over for seven hours a day, while moving very slowly down the row. But, let me tell you, the backs of my thighs are rock solid these days. No pain, no gain.

I also gotta give some serious props to our hosts, Fearn and Andrea. They consistently provided the most wonderful, huge meals for us while we were there. Delicious soups, cheeses, bread (always) wine, fresh fruit and yummy salads every day for lunch and dinner. I didn't think I could eat that much on a daily basis, but I did and was grateful for the abundance. When it wasn't raining buckets, we sat outside and looked at the sheep and pretty fields of vines.

Here is one of the few photos I have of myself (thank you Anna), just because I so rarely include them here.

On a minor foodie side-note, Elly and Ana got totally into cake baking while we were there. It all started with a totally posh cake book from the grocery store and evolved into two masterpieces. I gotta share them here since they were so spectacular. The one above is a lemon cake with candied rose petals and the one below is a ridiculously rich chocolate cake with hand-made truffles. I don't know how either of them had the energy to bake for three hours after spending all that time in the vines, but they did and we were all blown away.

Our last night at Chateau Brandeau was a regular fest, Phil made a traditional English roast with hand-made gravy and yummy roasted vegetables and Fearn broke out some great bottles from his cellar so we could taste the differences that come out in the aging process. And we finished it all with the rose petal cake. A beautiful vineyard, beautiful new friends and a beautiful farewell.