Hi people!

Herewith the latest Froggy Finaglings from Glorious Gaillac.

We are both in good health and enjoying life - for more news, read on below.

All the best,

Elizabeth/Liz/Lizzie and Alistair/Ali/Al Moon

News from France. DECEMBER 1999

And so ends a very busy 3 month period!! Since the beginning of September it does not seem to have stopped, although the jobs and priorities have changed during that time. As you can imagine it has mostly been dictated by the crop. So let's do it in chronological order.

I was last in the UK towards the end of August, as I knew that things would hot up after that. How right I was. The first part of September was spent getting things ready for the harvest (vendange in French). There was the press for the grapes to clean out thoroughly and to test, similarly the hopper (known as the Conquet - a trade name I think) into which the grapes are tipped from the trailer. Both worked fine. Like anything designed by someone who never would have to use it, the latter has all sorts of nooks and crannies where bits of grapes and skins can lurk and fester and whoever cleaned it out last year didn't do a very good job. At this stage it was just beginning to be apparent that anything connected with the vendange would require much water and one would get WET! I suppose it is a good thing that sugar is fairly easily soluble in water, but, boy!, doesn't it make things sticky!

Pipes were washed out, washers and joints were replaced and the odd bit of new pipework was bought and fitted. There is a big pump that receives the grapes from the Conquet into a hopper and then moves them with an archimedian screw (no, that is NOT a sexual experience!) into the pump proper which then delivers them 15 foot up into the press or into the fermenting vessels. Patrick (my employee - lovely man, hard-working, and I'm now able to understand something more than half of what he says. This is a major improvement from when we started when I understood one word in 20!) was sorting out this pump and it would not work. Fortunately, the magic fingers were working and with a bit of fiddling I was able to get it to work. A dirty contact in a relay or something like that - but more later!

The next issue was when to pick the grapes. We have 2 crucial sorts of grape which must be picked at the optimum time if we are not to lose all the flavour - Sauvignon Blanc (as the name suggests, white grapes) and red Merlot. A local winemaker who does 20+ times as much wine as I do offered me a good deal for my Sauvignon. I sold him 3 of my 4 hectares of Sauvignon and 1 hectare of Loin de l'Oeil as grapes off the plant, for which he will pay me round about now, which will be a welcome piece of cashflow. (Payment for other, made wine, as opposed to fresh grapes, sold in bulk does not come in until between March and May) So I was out there every other day sampling the grapes to see how much sugar they contained and how much acid there was in the juice. The sugar content is measured with a neat little piece of kit called a refractometer. You put a drop of juice on the front face and the change in the refraction of the light compared to that of water is registered on a scale which reads out in probable percentage of alcohol in the finished wine. The acidity needs to be watched as, if you wait too long for the sugar level to rise, the acidity can start dropping and the wine ends up all flat and flabby and not fun to drink at all.

Taking a sample of the grapes is a little more complicated - and time consuming - than you would at first think. One grape is not necessarily representative of a) the bunch, b) the plant, or c) the whole patch of vines, so a wider sample is needed. I started off doing maybe a dozen grapes across the field, which was time consuming enough, but then I was shown how to do it properly! 200 grapes, approximately, are required! It's done by taking a double row of vines and taking a couple of grapes of this bunch and a couple off that, some from the top, some from the middle and some from the end of the bunches, until you have 200 grapes. Having been shown this once, I was able to see that it was about 400ml, so the next time I used a wine carrier and half a dozen cut-down plastic water bottles to gauge the correct amount. The refractometer is dead easy to use so I bought one of those, but it seemed to be a real pain to have to take the samples down to the lab for the analysis of the acid content, so, remembering my chemistry from school - which I have to say I enjoyed - I got myself the necessary to do the analysis myself: a couple of bits of graduated glass and a couple of pots to hold things in, all connected together with taps and such, for some ridiculously high price!

The next factor is the number of grape varieties we have and the number of different places in which they are grown. Even the Sauvignon - all one variety, all in one place - has variability across the 4 hectares - nearly 10 acres - of vines. And there is Mauzac in at least 5 places. To control the maturity of all our grapes requires 18 samples, of which 7 are at our remote site about 3 miles away. So taking samples of this lot is not a trivial matter, and when they were back in the house then they have to be juiced and the juice has to be analysed. Fortunately a liquidiser comes in very handy for the first bit, but it still means an awful lot of sticky juice floating around the kitchen. Her indoors was very understanding, principally because she wasn't here most of the time, having gone back to the weekly grind after the return of our last visitors. (Yes, we have had visitors, although they have had to stay with Mr. Bonnet in La Verrerie who does a very nice B&B for around £34 for a couple. Hotel prices in France can be surprisingly cheap, cheaper than self-catering in many cases!)

Patrick asked me who was going to do the work in the winery (cave, pronounced "carve"). I told him Mr. Tricon, my predecessor, had said it wasn't worth getting someone else in, and that I would do it. He shrugged and said "Fine" - little did I know! One or two of my local friends were a bit concerned that I was going into this blind and at great risk to the business, however with advice from a local oenologue and good ole' Patrick that was the least of our problems.

Then we got to the stage when we were ready to start to pick the grapes. Most of our grapes are trained on wires and these can be picked by machine, which is very much quicker than by hand. I reckon you would need a gang of about 20 or 30 pickers to get anywhere near the capacity of a machine. Red grapes go straight into the vat, and it takes about as long to put a trailer load of grapes into the vat as it does for the picking machine to pick a trailer load. So red grapes are relatively simple. 

White grapes, on the other hand, go into the press first. It takes about a trailer load and a third to fill the press and about 3 hours for the pressing to be finished (can be more or less depending on the amount of juice that you want to extract from the grapes - the first pressed juice is much nicer and more flavourful than the later juice but has less sugar in it). Then it takes about an hour to empty the press and clean it out ready for the next load and then we start all over again! The juice that comes from the press runs into settling tanks to let the heavier rubbish settle out - looking at the juice that comes out you would never credit that crystal clear wine could be made from it, it is like thick sweet mushy soup! - and then it has to be pumped into the tanks in which it will ferment.

The great day came. Fine and warm, and my remaining hectare of Sauvignon was ready to pick. My contractor - a neighbour with a big harvester and grateful for extra work for it - came with his machine and in no time at all we had a trailer full of grapes. Into the Conquet and thence into the press. Another load and the press was full and off we went. The press started and then stopped - and wouldn't go again! A Conquet full of grapes and a trailer brim full, and nothing moving, and this was 9.00am! Frantic call to the agents for the press - no-one available at the moment: the harvest had just started and the whole world had broken down, or so it seemed. Eventually went down to the agents and sat on the desk until they found someone to come out and sort out the press. Came back to find a water leak in the main supply, FORTUNATELY on the receiving side of the main stop-valve. Went down to the ironmongers and got the last 3 washers they had of the right size for the leaking joint. Fixed that, and said jokingly to Patrick, "What's the 3rd one then?" And he said, "The refrigeration unit!" That was all I needed. Of course it was the one thing we hadn't checked the previous week, not that in the long run it would have made too much difference. Another call, this time to the refrigeration man - he too was snowed under but would come when he could.

Things gradually improved. The press problem was cooked insulation and broken wires on the motor that does most of the turning of the press. Luckily it was repairable without having to have a new motor - and the bloke worked through his lunch two-hours, almost unheard of in France! So we were able to get the Sauvignon pressed and the juice into the cuves where the yeast was added and it was started on its merry way to make wine.  What's left in the press after the juice has been extracted is of course loads of grape skins, pips, stalks etc. The press is essentially a horizontal tubular colander which rotates. The rotation makes two plates at either end screw themselves together on a screwed rod which goes the length of the press, through its centre. The grapes get confined between the two plates and the cylindrical wall of the colander and the juice runs out through the holes and gets collected in a trough underneath. From there it runs by gravity into settling tanks from whence it is pumped into whatever cuve we are going to do the fermentation in. The colander is loaded and unloaded through two doors in the side. We have a good system whereby we can move the juice collecting trough and then drop the skins etc. into a lower trough which has another archimedian screw in it which then moves the skins etc. through the wall and into a waiting trailer outside. Neat, eh?

Then the fun starts. The press has to be cleaned out. And, yes, you've guessed it, it involves lots of water at high pressure! Even with the protective gear I got wet, often twice a day! The holes in the colander are really slots, wider on the outside than the inside, but for all that it is amazing just how much stuff can get lodged in them. And it was my job to do the cleaning, while Patrick was off getting another load or two to fill up the press again. It is about a 4 hour cycle to fill the press, carry out the pressing procedure and clean it out again. After the first try-out, it was clear that protective clothing was required, so I got myself a pair of plastic trousers and a jacket in which to keep reasonably dry. Big deal! The trousers split first time on! I existed with them for a few days, trying to repair them with sticky tape, but in the end gave up and paid twice as much for a pair of polyurethane coated nylon ones which have been fine.

The man came to fix the refrigeration unit, necessary to keep white wines and some red wines cool when they are fermenting, otherwise a lot of the aroma can be lost, which spoils the whole thing. He arrived late in the evening and worked well into the night to refill the system with the refrigerant gas which had all gone, which was why it wasn't working. All sorted, he left it working but saying that he had found a leak in the flexible tube that goes from the unit to the cooling coil which sits in the top of a 5000 litre tank of water (1100 gals in Imperial units. The cooled water circulates through pipes and heat exchangers actually in the wine cuves to cool the wine). Next morning the water was 10° cooler but the system had packed in again for lack of refrigerant. Of course, when he looked into it, the cooling system makers were no longer in existence and whilst there was a company who could make up a new flexible tube, it would cost the earth and would take at least 2 weeks, by which time it wouldn't matter anyway. So to cut a long story short, I had to buy a small mobile system, which got me out of trouble and saved the Sauvignon, and we then replaced the flexible tubes by rigid ones, and so my cooling system is now a completely fixed one. Then the compressor broke! The control of the compressor was a bit antiquated and had not been regulated properly - if you don't let the pressures equalize on either side of the compressor before it starts it eventually breaks it, as it did - so that was replaced by a new, modern, microprocessor-controlled system, just like the one on my newly acquired mobile one, and eventually we had a proper working system. I shudder to think what it is going to cost me, as he hasn't given me the bill yet! The final breakdown was the big pump. The electrical control box developed a fault that even the magic fingers couldn't fix so I had to get a replacement - not just the part itself, of course, but the whole thing, box included, as the contents had been superseded with new models which were the wrong size for the old box, and so on and so on. Yes, I know why it is done and given half a chance I'll change the label on the wine and charge more for it too! Fortunately that was the last of the breakdowns, but I am expecting the battery on the 3rd tractor to give out as soon as the cold weather gets stuck in. C'est la vie, as they say round here!!

When the wine is fermenting it has to be controlled, i.e., a sample has to be taken regularly to check the specific gravity/density (tells you how much sugar there is left to be fermented) and temperature (which has to be kept within bounds. Too cold and it stops fermenting, and is a pig to start again, too hot and all the flavour is lost.) So my days started to become very busy! Doing the controls first thing, cleaning, refilling and emptying the press, pumping wine into vats and doing the field samples to see how the rest of the crop was coming on. Start work before 8.00am, finish around 10.00pm with an hour or two for a quick bite in between. It was fairly tiring, but good fun and a lot to learn. Then we started on the red grapes. And I said they were simple - wrong! They at least don't have to be pressed, as they get pumped straight into the cuves from the Conquet.  However they do require a "remontage" twice daily. Because the grapes and all go into the cuve in order for the juice to extract colour, tannin and all those good things which make the taste of red wine, what happens is that the juice sits at the bottom and the skins float on top. Not only is there no contact with the juice to extract all the good things, but there is a risk of the skins starting to turn into vinegar - very nasty indeed!! So twice daily the juice has to be pumped over the skins for 15 minutes or so. Piece of doddle I hear you say. X tanks, 15 mins each, shouldn't take very long at all. Ah, yes, but then the pipes have to be set up, moved between each cuve and the wine run into a big box first to aerate it and the pipes and pump have to be cleaned out afterwards. So it takes around 2 hours to do the 6 tanks which could be on the go at once - twice as long as you first thought it would! Oh well, just cut down the meal breaks to half-an-hour each! I definitely think we need a third hand in the cave for next year - cheap apprentice or someone who wants a working holiday for a month or 6 weeks. Any volunteers? With a third person, life would be a whole lot less hassle for all concerned.

And so it went on, until around the end of October, when things got a little quieter. Just to add insult to injury, the company year-end is August 31st, so any spare moments were taken up bringing the books up to date, doing stock checks and answering the myriad queries the accountants had. As you would imagine, although the basic principles are the same, the details are done differently in France! And they hate giving you TVA/VAT back! It took me from the end of July until the end of October to get back the VAT I paid in the 1st and 2nd quarters.

As you may know/remember, anything sugary spilt on clothing, floor etc goes black in a very short time. Not a problem with clothes - they either went in the laundry regularly or were sufficiently wet for most of the day so as not to be worried about that! - but the floor of the cave was as black as your hat. I began to get a bit concerned when it started becoming slippery as well. So when the rush died down and we had finished cleaning out the press and the Conquet for the last time, I turned the high-pressure hose on the floor (and walls!) and was rewarded by the appearance of clean concrete underneath, eventually, after a week of back-breaking work! I also found that bleach was a great help, so now we have fairly pristine floors and walls in the cave. As soon as we stop shifting wine about (it needs to be racked off the deposit of yeast etc at increasing intervals) and thereby stop sloshing water all over the floor to clean up the drips and spills, I shall paint the floors with garage paint so that they place a) is a bit lighter and b) looks a lot better for when I take visitors round.

Well, so much for the wine, or at least nearly so. Lots of people have been waiting for our red wine, that was made last year, which I bought from my predecessor to put in bottles myself. It turned out that it had not done a very important part of its maturing - the malo-lactic fermentation, done by bacteria, as opposed to yeasts, which turns malic acid into lactic acid, softens the wine a little and more importantly, makes it stable. Thinking that it had been done, they had put sufficient Sulphur Dioxide preservative into it to prevent any further goings on, and it has taken us all year to gradually rid the wine of the SO² so that the malo-lactic bugs would have a chance to do their stuff. Mirabile dictu, it has at long, long last taken place and we shall be able to bottle the red before too long. One needs the cashflow!

November has been taken up with the somewhat arcane calculations that need to take place for the Declaration of Harvest that has to be submitted and approved. Very, very boring and introspective, the upshot being that EXACTLY the same wine can be described as Appellation Controllé, Vin de Pays or even Vin de Table in order to make the numbers come out right. I somehow feel that it defeats the object of the exercise, namely to restrict the production of Appellation Controllé vines to maintain the quality of the product. However, who am I to judge!

What else has been going on? As I said, we had some visitors during the summer, all of whom were very welcome and very kindly helped me make space for more bottles in the stockage by taking amounts of wine away with them. An hotel in the south of the Tarn is now taking the wine, thanks to the good offices of Richard Edds - he took one case to start with and then came back for 4 more - apparently the guests liked it! Rupert Moon took a palette-load for one of his benefit year dinners - apparently it went down a bomb, but then rugby players will drink anything! Let's hope they come back for more.

I did a combined event with another Brit locally the other day. She was selling Irish smoked fish and I joined in with the wine. Lots of freeloaders of course, but we sold 80kg of smoked fish and 120+ bottles of wine, so it was a good way of getting the name known. And people were very complementary about the wine - even more complementary was buying it!! There was a lady from a local hotel who said she would be doing business so we have something more to look forward to.

Lizzie has been back on her travels since the beginning of September. She had her annual trip to deepest Ukraine just recently. Makes Bandit Country look like suburbia, but the client provided escorts to keep her out of trouble! She is off to St. Petersburg soon and then she has a month's break for Xmas. We both had a weekend in Brussels with Pam and David at the end of October. Pam did a buffet supper as a combined birthday do for David and me and a good time was had by all.

The Chateau. The new stone for the windows and doors has AT LAST started to arrive - the trouble with craftsmen is that they are in high demand and you just have to wait your turn - and the floor and walls on the first floor have been put in. The plumbing is being sorted out and the electrician and plasterer are next. I don't suppose for a minute that it will be finished by Xmas (ah!, but WHICH Xmas) but there is some hope that we should be installed by Easter next year. I was quietly confident at the beginning of October that things were on the move - unjustified optimism I'm afraid. The stone for the front door arrived, with promises of windows to follow. So far nothing has happened. The electrician called briefly and did some work, but then he had to take his wife to hospital for tests. We all thought the worst, but apparently she is OK - still no electrician though. The roofs over the 3 towers have been renewed with the addition of roofing felt for extra protection, and the walls in the courtyard have nearly finished being rejointed, as has the end wall of the chateau. It is looking so much better now, although the mess inside the courtyard has had to be seen to be believed! Even the cat got dusty! The plumber has also turned up and is busy laying pipes for water and drainage and central heating. Most of the pipes are laid under the ground floor and when they and the electric cables have all been laid we can put the floor slab down on the ground floor. This will be a great advance as then things can be done inside, which is no bad thing in the winter. 

The weather. Speaking of winter, it has been very pleasant here of late. We had a cold snap in mid-November and we had one episode when a depression curled round the east of Spain and came inland in a north-westerly direction from the Mediterranean. This caused horrendous flooding in the region to the south of us. Fortunately the Tarn was only just touched, with one village being inundated by floodwater. The departments directly to the south of us were very badly affected with loss of life and property and lots of vineyards being washed out, literally. It was a Friday evening and we could see the storms in the distance, flashing away almost continuously through the night. We got a fair amount of rain but nothing serious. Apert from that and a bit of fog from time to time, the past couple of weeks or so have been very pleasant with clear sunny days that have not been very cold at all and night-time temperatures which have rarely dropped below zero.

Tinkerbell. Pussy-cat gave us fright one Sunday night. He came in through the cat-flap and crouched beside it looking very subdued. And then we noticed some blood round his backend. It turned out he had a 6 inch gash from in front of his tail to half way up it, which had just pulled the skin away from his body without damaging muscle or his bottom. It looked horrendous but was not as serious as it looked. Our nice kind vet in town turned out at 8.00pm on a Sunday evening and stitched him up, keeping him in over night. Next day he was a bit subdued after the anaesthetic but soon perked up and was his old frisky self in no time at all. So much so that he pulled out a couple of stitches and had to go back for more needlework. However now he is as right as rain and the scabs are falling off to leave a very neat scar. To this day we don't know how he did it, but we think, because he had oil on his fur near the cut, that he had been clambering over some of the machinery and had slipped or otherwise caught himself on a sharp point which had done the, fortunately superficial, damage. One life down, eight to go!

And that is about it. The natives remain friendly as do the ex-patriates. Christmas will be upon us soon. It is not as big in France as it is in UK. The celebration here is Xmas Eve and Xmas Day - they don't have St Stephens/Boxing Day off - with presents being opened on Xmas Eve. People often take their last week of holiday in Xmas week but not to the extent as in UK. We shall spend Xmas here and then we are going down to Spain to spend New Year with Pam and David in their place near Marbella. We are going to drive down the coast road and back via Toledo and Madrid. It is further from here to Marbella than it is from here to Calais - it looks.