The Country Cooking of France by Anne Willan

Author:Anne Willan
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC

THE WINE HARVEST: GRAPE EXPECTATIONS

“The vendange is the most important time of the year for us,” says veteran Chablis vintner Michel Colbois. “The wine harvest is the culmination of a whole year’s work.” It is always a tricky time, too. Every autumn, wine-country people start looking at the skies and talking feverishly among themselves about the weather. “Will we get the two more weeks of sun we need?” “Is it threatening to hail?” “Is there any chance of a cold snap?”

“But the vendange is not what it used to be,” Monsieur Colbois sighs nostalgically. “When I was married in 1947, everything was still done by hand with horse-drawn carts. The vineyards were full of pickers who used to stay on the property. We’d have thirty-five people at lunch and parties every night. I used to have guys crawling out of my cave at three in the morning on all fours. But they’d be back in the vineyards to pick the next morning!”

Handpicking is now done only on a small scale in France, with machines doing most of the work. “Machines are good because they collect only the fruit, not the stalks,” says Monsieur Colbois, “but it’s no fun. It’s just you and a machine and no one to talk to.” Help is not as easy to find as it once was and seasonal hiring has become expensive. “It’s very difficult for a family vineyard to compete with the big houses, but I don’t envy them either, particularly those with grand cru vineyards where it’s hand labor or nothing.” But small vintners do compete and, in fact, make some of the best wines around.

To mark the end of the Burgundian harvest, which even with machines remains high-volume, high-pressure work, growers traditionally decorate their vans and tractors with boughs and drive through town honking their horns. Then producers and their families get together for the paulée, a festive banquet with abundant food and wine. The vendange may not be quite what it was in the old days, but wine-country merrymaking will never go out of style.

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