Wednesday April 1
Is this an April Fool’s joke, or what? Not a single bottle sold in a month, and now suddenly there are two huge trucks in our courtyard, one to collect a pallet of wine for Germany, and another half a pallet for Switzerland. And they both arrive at the same time, both cautiously wending their way along our narrow, windy road, one behind the other. Which, on reflection, is not such a bad idea in itself. It would have been a great pity if the only orders in a month had met each other face-on, unable to proceed in either direction. And now the place almost looks like a properly-working vineyard again, for one brief, glorious moment.
In the backroom, of course, it is a properly working vineyard, because the vines are oblivious to anything beyond themselves and keep on at it: growing, living, burgeoning.
Saturday April 4
The news demands all our attention. It is incredible. More than 3 billion people housebound, all over the globe. Share prices continue to plummet. Deaths continue to break records. More nurses and doctors dying on the front line. Countries and companies grinding to a halt. Still no sign of masks, vaccines, tests or salvation. America being brought to its knees. Much of the British parliament including its PM ill and quarantined. Oh how lucky we are in our splendid isolation, and how aware of that we are too.
Sunday April 5
Planting again, this weekend. but planting stakes, not vines. These are to hold the wires along which we will trellis the vines. From a field as blank as an unwritten page, we suddenly have a proper vineyard full of potential before our eyes. And it is a wonderful sight to be behold!
Wednesday 8 April
Our attention keeps wandering beyond our horizon. The United States has surpassed 1,800 deaths from Coronavirus in a single day, the highest ever anywhere over a 24 hour period. France went over the 10,000 mark for recorded cases in a single day. Of course, statistics are just the headlines, it’s the footnotes that really matter, but then, here’s another: Boris Johnson in intensive care, with statistically perhaps just as much likelihood of dying as of surviving.
Monday April 13
President Macron makes a historic speech to the country today. “Our country was not ready for this crisis,” he said, “and we will all draw the consequences”.
So confinement will continue until 11 May (at best). Restaurants and bars and public gatherings will not be allowed until July (at best). And when will the situation normalise, we wonder?
“I have to humbly tell you we don’t have definitive answers,” he replies.
The address ran with the irrefutable logic of a well thought-out in-depth Economist article, as Xaxa pointed out. The President began at the beginning with a sensible introduction, ended at the end on a moving motivational note reminiscent of the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury rolled up in one (the only two Easter messages I happened to have heard), and the middle … well, the middle was quite incredible, we thought (but then that’s us). Macron itemised the problems, set deadlines to which he can be held accountable, mentioned the particular plight of every sector of the community, said what he knew and disclosed what he didn’t know, and then warned that we will all have to change .. and we will all have to work together, cross community, cross border and cross continent.
In the meantime, we cannot leave the house without a form declaring our intent and intentions, and if they’re not acceptable, there’s a big fine to be paid. What world we are going in to? How glad we are to be in France, and not on the other side of the water. And how guilty to be living in such splendid isolation, which could not possibly be called distressing or stressful, were it not for the fact that hardly any wine has been sold, and none looks likely to be sold in the near or even possibly distant future.
Friday April 17
Mother and daughter settle down on the terrace to talk to Madison WI, a very cold place full of very warm people. We discuss the pleasures, pitfalls and perils of living the so-called dream with someone who once came by to taste our wines, and now runs a sort of armchair travel Ap called AMUZ.
The bottom line is: there’s no room for complacency, and boy don’t we know it.
You can hear a really frank account of his podcast if you click on the links. And the good thing is, if we are too long-winded or too boring, we can easily be switched off…
Saturday April 18
Today we should have been taking the flight to Dublin, but that, like everything else in life, is out of the window. Instead we’re taking cancellations for wines ordered for weddings. Oh dear. Of course we haven’t the heart to charge them for the cancellation of their Big Day, these three poor couples.
And that puts us back, in terms of monthly sales, to a great big fat zero.
Oh well, at least we have plenty of pink fizz in house now, and enough to drink to the eternity of Love and its promise of a better tomorrow…
Tuesday 21 April
Now there’s optimism for you!
Behold the tiny leaves on a minute little beginning of a chenin blanc vine, bravely reaching for the sky and truly thinking big! And this exactly one month to the day after it was planted …
Wednesday April 22
So very chuffed with this sample construction invented by Jan-Ailbe. He managed to pipe rainwater down from the roof gutters into the empty wine tanks idling below.
We filled two of them up this week. 80 mm of rain fell like mannas from heaven… on our heads, and in to our tanks. And they continue falling.
We already have enough to water all the new young vines and the young oaks too.
“Why don’t we open up some more tanks?” I urge, urgently.
“Nah,” said with nonchalance, “we’ve got more than enough”
Thursday 23 April
Today we do our last tasting of the wines we’re going to bottle next week. This is always a big moment, vacillating between disappointment, elation, and acceptance. The same wines take you through the same circuit every time, until they come up trumps. Or not, as the case may be. They like to remind you that they are living things too, with personality and mood swings all of their own.
Last time we were a bit disappointed, just a tiny bit. But today, wow! what happened? The grating acidity of the chenin has mellowed into something remarkably aromatic and round. The Limoux has lost all trace of the oxidative notes we detected last time. It all looks pretty ready-steady-go for the bottling.
Then we taste the wines still lingering and loitering in the barrels. They’re moving along as well. And so interesting to see how some particular barrels, and particularly some ten or twelve year-old ones, can turn grape juice into sheer magic.
It was a great morning, when all is said and done.
Saturday April 25
We continue our weekly night-out-at-home. Never eaten so well at home on such a regular basis before.
This time it’s stuffed quails from the butcher down in the village. Deboned and all. Filled with foie gras too.
It’s important to support these guys as much as possible. We know how much they need the income, and will continue to, until the restaurants open again sometime towards the summer. Who knows if anyone will want to eat together again then, though. Or even drink together, for that matter? Or kiss cheeks and slap backs, and make merry under a single roof?
Sunday April 26
Lazy Sunday for us, hovering at the edge of rain and inertia. We play Mölkki on the overgrown lawn peppered with weeds, clover, and clouds of different wild orchids, and eat lots of cakes and pastries.
The iPhone pings through the langour.
(Getting sick of these pings. Suddenly everything in life is taking place on the Internet. We’re constantly being invited to podcast workshops and zoom meetings we’d rather not attend, getting endless jokes that aren’t particularly funny, being offered pastries from Alsace we can live without, and invited to buy new gimmicks that will launch a thousand sales just as soon as we’re unlocked.)
“Hey guys, anyone know what we can do about the rats that are infesting our cellars?” a friend of ours writes to a group of his. “We’re all desperate for visitors, but not these ones.” (Picture of devastation and demolition caused by rats attached).
“There’s an electronic ping-thing that emits sonic notes the rats hate”, we answer.
“Try bromadiolone.” another suggests, shortly.
“A killer cat might be a friendly way” another adds.
“And there’s always a thing called a rat-trap” someone says helpfully.
And then the biodynamic Manu steps forward, who is himself bio and dynamic in equal parts:
“Catch two or three of your visitors
“Burn their bodies on a bar-b-q or in a fire
“Gather up the ashes. Mix them with fine sand: 2/3 sand, 1/3 rat ash.
“Spread them around the area where the rats are.”
Brigitte answers laconically: does that also work for the virus?
Stepped outside with the dogs late tonight, under a black sky positively dripping with liquid ice-white stars. Pause. Reminder to self: what a wonderful world we live in (rats and all). The stars’ zen-like meditative stillness is abruptly cut by a completely straight string of pure light, moving at great speed in a morse-code like formation (dot-dot-dash-dash-dot) very very high up, maybe even in touching distance of the stars … and then it simply melted away. Into nothing.
There’s always something fundamentally elemental about things that move around in the sky so silently and purposefully. Friend or foe? Natural, supernatural, accidental, or man-made?
In this case commercial. They were part of 60 Starlink broadband satellites blasted spacewards last week on a SpaceX Falcon rocket to join the other 360 already up there …. and paving the way for another 29, 700 yet to come, if entrepreneur Elon Musk has his way.
Starlink will beam 6G Internet directly down into the homes of millions of North Americans by 2021. But we here, marvelling at their magnificence in the night, will be lucky if we are able to get 3G on a good day.
Monday April 27
Bottling day today, yay! Finally some action worth talking about.
…./to be continued