Friday 1 November
A eureka day today ! Pierre Roque, our tasting consultant comes by today to taste our entry level wine with us, and the base for our Blanquette de Limoux. This is the first time we’ve seriously tasted the finished product. We were over and done with in two ticks: it was all so obvious. There is absolutely no blending to do! The Blanquette is beautiful as a 100% mauzac, and we can send it off on its second fermentation in the bottle as is. The Chardonnay du Domaine also has everything it could possibly hope to have. So it was a great morning’s work, though it felt more like a holiday. Now we wait for the rest of our 2019 wines to declare themselves.
Tuesday 5 November
Here we go again! No sooner is the harvest over, than it begins again! And what a beautiful beginning!
(And what a great ending!)
After rather too much rain over the past week, and rather too much rain forecast for the coming week, we decide to cut
our losses and go for it. Half a hectare of chenin blanc has been hanging out there, as exposed to the elements as a line of freshly washed laundry, patiently waiting its time to sweeten into a magical wine we call Lagremas d’Aur.
The fields are glowing the same gold as you’ll find in a bottle of this wine. The team is in good spirits: this time, they’re all Eritrean refugees, many of whom have worked the harvest with us, and some even more. Their 
stories are unbearably sad testimonials of the times we live in. Never has Lagremas d’Aur seemed so aptly named.
In just over half day the job is done. They’re propelled onward by a cool bracing breeze, easy-to-pick vines with their meagre harvest and thin layer of leaves, and perhaps also by the scent of the end. The weather is absolutely glorious, this can’t go wrong!
We will see. A small press has been borrowed for the job, and we set to work in the cellars. Time will tell what kind of wine this glorious golden day has given us.
Saturday November 9
In the South of Holland now for our main importer’s “Open-Door” tasting. This is fun, and it always is. The turn-out is huge, and most of them seem to be people we’ve met here before. Many remind us that they’ve been to visit us at Rives-Blanques. This is what wine is all about: cooperation, collaboration, consideration, and happy customers …
Though happiest of all today are the producers. Particularly when we sit down to a delicious dinner in the boardroom, with a roaring fire blazing at one end, and producers from all over the world brought together around the long table. The wines are delicious, ranging from a Dutch producer called Apostelhoeve, to a ten-year old white port from the cellars of Christie.
It gives us strength to continue on for more of the same tomorrow.
And then on Monday, Jan and I go to Amsterdam to meet the new sommelier of the Rijks, the Michelin-star restaurant in its world-famous Rijksmuseum which has been featuring our Blanquette and Odyssee for several years now.
And then we arrive home well after midnight, tired but happy, to find ourselves locked out of the house …
Friday 15 November
There’s no place like home, truly! And today it’s the real deal: our rives are well and truly blanques with a thick layer of snow. The sky is blue. The air is fresh and bracing. Life’s a holiday
Wednesday 20 November
Five good reasons to love this time of year at Rives-Blanques
(1) the vines are all picked
(2) the grape juice has all miraculously finished fermenting into wine
(3) our fields are pure gold
(4) our mountains are being served up à la mode with lashings of creamy, freshly whipped snow
(5) la vie est belle!
Wednesday 27 November
Well, that’s a good day’s work done! We planted our 431st oak tree this year, but this one’s 20 years old and already 4 m tall, giving it a real head start on the 430 others.
“A la Sainte-Catherine, tout bois prend racines” the old people around here say. Saint Catherine’s day was actually two days ago, on the 25th, but Pierre Benet is convinced that the 27th is close enough to count.
Monsieur Salomon, a well-known local grower-vendor of fresh fruit and vegetables on the Cépie roundabout, came to help Monsieur Benet, our local landscape gardener, or paysagiste, as he likes to call himself. Another Cépinois, equipped with his own digger, came along too, to dig holes and move earth. None of them had ever seen such a view. They have lived in Cépie for most of if not all their lives and they didn’t know how magnificent is our now ex-chenin but future pinot field, with its inspiring views, inspired vines, and now brand-new single oak right plumb in the middle of it, on the crown of the hill. With its utterly splendiferous view, never seen before by even the most initiated. So we celebrate a job well done, with a glass of Blanquette each, and one for the tree.
Monsieur Benet happily explains that this is the fertilizer, to give the tree a head start. And then this, this is minerals, and this is microbiological bacteria, good bacteria he adds hastily (which are presently being spread by Monsieur Salomon). And then this, this cover will keep the weeds away and the moisture in. And so on and so forth, while the hole is made, the tree put in, various sprinklings with potent powers are sprinkled over, the hole is covered, the tree is straightened and finally, supported against the wind.
Amazing, says the one – actually Monsieur Salomon, well-versed in the art of fruit trees, but not. necessarily so in oaks – amazing how nature does this all by itself whereas we … we huff and puff and try to get to get the tree to stand straight …. His eyes trail off to the forest of multi-coloured oaks glowing goldly all around us, and you can read the clearly written question lying therein: why on earth are they planting another oak?
We look at our standing oak with pleasure. Our family discussion (call it row if you will) about whether we should put a tree there, or plant another hedge for the safe passage of animals and insects, remained unresolved until the Chamber of Agriculture representative stepped in. She suggested a large tree: good for birds, bats and other winged creatures, and a spot for shady repose for the earthbound…and behold, here it is!
And we’re feeling rather pleased with it and with ourselves. Though this will be the last oak we will plant (ever, probably).
Friday 30 November
Yet another milestone! Today we tasted the 2019 wine that is slumbering in the barrels, for
the first time. Some of them still had that smell of fermentation, which is quite difficult to taste through.
Some were absolutely stunning in parts and less exciting in others, depending on which make of barrels they came from.
And some were drop dead divine: marks my words, 2019 will be the year of the chenin blanc, Dédicace.
…/to be continued next month.
To be continued …/