We welcome the Win(e)-Win(e) Year! 2020 transliterates into Vin-Vin in French, but we hear it more as Vingt Vins: twenty wines, because this year will witness our 20th harvest. How time flies!
And the year breaks over us full of sunshine, birdsong and snow-covered peaks smiling on the horizon.
The stars are well-aligned!
Friday January 3
We bring the year in with a painting commissioned from a local English artist called Matthew Rees, of our beloved, ever-changing skyline. This one is full of soft, opiate sun-downing shades of midnight blue and deep purple, that fold and recede into each other. The sunflowers aren’t there in real life, but then, we’d like them to be … so there they are! How wonderful to paint life as it could be!
Monday January 6
We’re trying out a new tractoriste. Tractor-iste is the operative word, this one’s a young woman. We really want her to work out, but she doesn’t exactly burst with muscle and manpower. Our tractoriste needs to be able to drive a tractor, but (s)he also needs to be able to drive poles into the ground, lug stuff around, mend engines, prune vines, spray and care for them – and Cécile hasn’t any experience at all, let alone a licence to drive a car…. or even a six pack of muscles.
And her only way of getting here is by bus and then by foot. I drive her back to Limoux after work, and ask her how long she had to walk this morning to get up to us. “About 50 minutes” she says, with a diffident smile. “Gosh!” I say, “and it’s uphill all the way!”.
“Yes” she replies, “but in life not everything can be flat all the time”.
Tuesday January 7
Got a very nice letter from the world’s most published wine writer, who has written more books on wine than anyone – Hugh Johnson, Jancis Robinson, Robert Parker, the lot. He’s a Dutchman called Hubrecht Duijker, doyen of the trade in that country, who has turned his writerly hand to putting all those words into paint. And his first painting of the year is of Château Rives-Blanques and its spectacular autumnal view.
He was brilliant at pinning down in print the thought and philosophy, if it can be called that, behind our wines and what we hope to make of them, but now he shows a huge understanding of the nature of the place as well. The painting is like a breath of fresh air, so fully of oxygen and all that pristine perfection lying so casually all around us. Well, they say a picture speaks a thousand words, and I guess when that applies to someone who had written millions of them, that is volumes indeed.
Friday January 10
Are we to be Trumped? The President of the USA slapped a 25% tax on imported French still wines under 14% Alc., for which read most French wines. Now the threat of throwing another 100% tax on all European wines no matter what alcohol content looms large, and is being discussed as we speak. This would be the kiss of death if it happens, not only for innocent European winemakers standing in the firing line of Airbus versus Boeing, or having missiles whizzing overhead between taxes on Google and Amazon and so on, and their hapless, undigital vines, but also for the American wine industry as a whole. Importers will go out of business, jobs will be lost – especially the specialist niche people we all love so much.
And then are we to be Brexited as well? Who knows where this is all taking the wine industry.
It had never occurred to us in a million years that these two important markets could become jeopardised. So there you go, nothing in life, as in wine, is certain until it’s in the bag … er, bottle, that is.
Tuesday 21 January
And nothing less certain than the weather.
And the rains came – but not uncertainly.
The first indication that something was amiss came through a series of urgent and persistent Pings! on WhatsAp. Friends in Collioure were getting it full-on, pumping out cellars as fast as they filled.
But we were high and dry, and devoting our long-distance attention to Xaxa and Ian, manning an Occitanie Trade Day tasting in London. That was going very well, thank you.
But the pings became more persistent. The rain was moving around the region with a vengeance.
Wednesday 22 January
I sent out my own message to the group of female winemakers, called the Vinifilles, telling them things were OK here.
An hour later, another one followed:
I spoke too soon. The Aude has broken its banks in the village.
We were still high and dry-ish. But in Limoux was low and wet. Flooded. Friends had to empty out their wine cellars. Houses were flooded. Never, ever, has anyone ever seen anything like it. Never, said Georges Antech, now pretty much the doyen of old-time wine growers in Limoux, never in his life had he seen anything like this.
The vines of another friend whose fields surround our village, were standing up to their necks in water. Lakes formed spontaneously on both side of the road running alongside the Aude, transforming vineyards into what looked more like mussel farms.
And as for us, we got off lightly. Very wet, but not damaged and no flooding. That’s the advantage of being up on the top of this hill.
Sunday 26 January
Today is my birthday! But then there are birthdays and Birthdays, and this one’s a birthday. In fact, I’m being worked off my socks at a trade wine tasting in Montpellier, which the Vinifilles are holding the night before the world’s biggest organic wine trade fair, Millésime Bio.
Jan-Ailbe is manning the fort at a similar event with the Outsiders, in the restaurant of the town’s Fabre Museum. It’s not his birthday, though.
The Vinifilles with their usual verve and panache, have gone for a circus theme, and have hired
some acrobats to entertain our visitors. We put glittery bow-ties in the tasting glasses for all these wine trade professionals around the world, and are ready: bring on the clowns!
The wines are great, the visitors are complimentary, the acrobats are mediocre, but what steals the show and gets photographed more than 
either the wines or the acrobats, is my circus-themed T-shirt: Elect a clown, expect a circus.
It seems to say so much about so much for so many people with their own particular brand of clown in mind.
Friday January 31
Yes! Today we bottle our long lamentably out-of-stock chardonnay-chenin Pays d’Oc. It goes off smoothly, quietly, harmoniously, and painlessly – like the wine itself. And if this speaks for the rest of the 2019 vintage, then we’re really on to a good thing!
While the bottles chink happily round and round on the bottling line, our internet, which has been down almost all
the time since the rain, suddenly jumps to life again, and we get a nice message from a trade publication in Britain called The Buyer. They’ve placed two of our wines among the Top Ten at the Occitanie Tasting in London last week. Obviously, Jan and Xaxa did a great job! Or could it have been the wines doing all the talking??
And then another surprise surges in through the temporarily-working though constantly malfunctioning live box: the Vegan certificate for the very same wine that’s going round and round with a lovely little green V on its label. That is truly what I call in the nick of time.
…./to be continued next month.