I (Richard) have been getting my hands dirty (purple) with the Bordeaux grape harvest – a fascinating experience. The work was at Château Rousselle, a producer in the Cotes de Bourg area not far from Blaye, which we'd visited during our previous trip in 2007. The proprietor, Vincent Lemaitre, has run the château for just over a decade so is a relative newcomer and not embedded in the traditions as some of his neighbours are.
Wine making in Bordeaux is heavily regulated; the grape varieties are specified (predominantly Merlot, Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon), the yield per hectare is limited, the areas which can be cultivated are limited by law. The Bordeaux authorities have traditionally been very cautious about accepting changes which they feel might threaten the area's distinctiveness and its good reputation. Within these constraints Vincent aims to make a great wine at a realistic price, and is happy to use the latest technical and scientific tools to help him do this.
The first day (6 October) was a bit awkward. Everything was arranged for the harvest, the regular team was in place and there was plenty to do. The last thing they really needed was a clueless visitor with poor French trying to help out, but they had agreed to let me join the team as a favour.
The team was harvesting a parcel of old vines some way from the château. The grape harvesting machine stands high, like a tall spindly legged tractor, straddling the row of vines. As it proceeds down the row, grapes are stripped from their bunches, the vines thrash about and broken leaves whirl into the air. It's not a gentle process but it's quick, so the grapes can be picked and used in peak condition. The job this morning was to follow the machine and pick any of the precious old vine grapes that had been left behind by the machine.
Old grape vines are a mixed blessing; the juice they produce has a richer and more concentrated flavour but yields are low and the vines are thick and brittle. The harvesting machines are quite rough with the vines, so old vines often need special care and sometimes hand picking.
At mid-day we all returned to the château for lunch; baguettes, cheese and ham washed down with Château Rousselle 2008. From the first sip it seemed surreal to drink such a good wine to accompany a hurried working picnic lunch.
I spent the afternoon on the sorting table – a conveyor belt from which any remaining leaves and stalks are picked out by hand before the grapes are crushed. At the end of the day, after cleaning all the equipment, Vincent agreed to meet me on Saturday morning to show me the work that goes on in the cellar to make the wine and show me how different it is from the traditional image of Bordeaux wine making.
Over the weekend I was, fortunately, able to make myself more useful. All the regular staff, who had been harvesting all week, had taken the weekend off, and Vincent was planning to work alone, apart from a brief visit from his flamboyant wine making advisor Olivier.
Olivier's visit changed everyone's plans for the weekend. The 2010 vintage, he said, is a vintage for the worker, not the lazy man. The hot dry summer has produced a concentrated juice which is going to ferment quickly into an unusually strong wine (14.5%). When the alcohol levels get too high it is no longer possible to extract the desirable compounds from the grape skins, so extra effort early on will show in the finished wine.
He advised Vincent to empty the juice out of every vat each day, leaving the floating cap of grape skins and pips behind, then to pump it back on top of the skins as quickly as possible, so that the cap is broken up and mixed, and as much colour and flavour as possible extracted from the skins.
So on Saturday and Sunday the two of us spent hours elbow deep in grape juice clearing strainers, dragging hoses, hauling buckets of grape skins up ladders, cleaning equipment and taking care not to spill a precious drop (yields are down this year, after a dry summer).
Anyone who's tried wine making at home would be surprised by how this process works. You don't need to be gentle with this stuff. While everything was kept clean, there's no need to sterilise equipment or protect the fermenting juice from the air. This is not like coaxing a reluctant demijohn of blackberries into fermentation. This yeast is is feisty stuff, eager to devour the juice. A big part of the wine maker's job is to try to slow down the alcoholic fermentation, so that more subtle flavours can develop. The tops of the vats are open to the air, but as you peer into them from the top of the ladder you're faced with an eye-watering blast of alcohol and concentrated grape flavours. This yeast is more than a match for any bacteria that might drop in wanting to make vinegar; the vapours were more like what I would have expected from new brandy than from wine.
In other ways it's delicate and subtle. The difference between an OK wine and a great one comes from effort and attention to detail; nursing those tired old vines through another harvest, picking out those bitter green stalks, extra extraction on a Saturday afternoon when your staff are resting.
Every day Vincent records the specific gravity and temperature of the juice, and tastes it. Every day the SG drops as the sugar is fermented away, and it's a constant struggle to keep the temperature under control to balance the heat of the fermentation. Every day the flavour of each vat changes; from cloyingly sweet to rich and jammy to something starting to resemble wine.
On the Sunday evening I left Château Rousselle to its work, with a box of six bottles to accompany us on our journeys. Over the next week the remaining vats will be filled, and within a couple of weeks will have reached their full alcoholic strength. After that, the juice will be transferred to concrete vats for a quieter few weeks, during which it will undergo the mysterious process of malo-lactic fermentation. After that comes months of further maturation, some of it in French oak barrels, some of it in American oak, and finally bottling and sale.
Berry Bros & Rudd sell Château Rousselle in the UK. If I can possibly scrape together £20 on my return, I'll be buying at least one bottle of Château Rousselle 2010. I was there at the beginning and I have to find out how this story ends.
After that we headed across the Gironde to the Médoc and its astonishing sandy beaches. Since then we have been making our way slowly south down the west coast towards the Spanish border.
