la gramiere

After pruning cocktails!

A couple of weeks ago we went to the central market in Avignon where Matt bought some bitter oranges, among other things...  When we got home, he kept trying to think of things to do with them; a dessert, some "vin d'orange", maybe we could even preserve them in salt like the moroccans do with lemons?  Finally he decided to make some "vin d'orange", he also added some lemons to it that came from the town of Menton, the only place in France where citrus will ripen, so the legend goes...

He didn't use them all though, and here is where this story gets interesting, he decided to make us bitter orange margaritas!  Yum Yum! After a few minutes on the internet he came up with a general recipe, then he went to work, trying his best to be a master mixologist!  Well, let me tell you, he's pretty damn good at it!  They went down way too easy, and I was asleep on the couch at 9:00!  The next week he ordered a whole case of organic bitter oranges from Sevilla!  We juiced them and then froze the juice for margaritas next summer.  Hmmm, I'm not sure the juice will last that long, we still have a lot more pruning to do, and I sure do like the way they taste!

Matt's Bitter Orange Margaritas:
1.5 cups GOOD Tequila
Half cup Cointreau
1.5 cups bitter orange juice
4 tablespoons sugar

Mix it up and pour it over crushed ice, and don't forget the salt!  Not sure how many this makes, depends on how big you like your margaritas!

Amy's got a new toy !

Amy's got a new toy !
Vidéo envoyée par lagramiere

Yes, folks it's true, we at Domaine de la Gramière have now joined the other avant guard, or shall we just say "modern", wineries and have bought an electric pruner. This is a shortvideo clip from our first day out with our new Felcotronic (www.felco800.com). It's a new model that just came out 2 years ago, with a super light battery that lasts up to 3 days. They are super strong and can cut through wood the size of my wrist! Gotta make sure to keep those fingers out of the way! A couple of days have now passed and we're getting the hang of it... as I watch this clip, it seems like I'm going pretty slowly. In the end, it's not that I can go that much faster, it's just that my hands don't hurt when I wake up anymore. It was definitely not in this year's budget, but we decided that this would be cheaper than sugery for carpal tunnel, or worse!

Vote!

Hey everyone, the official nominees for the American Wine Blog Awards have been posted on Fermentation.   Unfortunately, La Gramière did not make the final cut,  but I sure do appreciate your efforts.  There are some great blogs out there so be sure to check them out, and vote on your favorites.  I will definitely be casting my vote.  In the mean time, I'll be trying to figure out why I didn't make the cut... was it the post on Arbois and Popcorn, my casual writing style, or the fact that I used a French swear word as the title to one of my posts...????  Oh well, I guess I'll never know, but I'll keep trying, there's always next year!

They're in!

Our new baby morvèdre plants are now safely in the ground.  On Friday we went over to the pepinieriste, Lilian Bérillon, to pick up the little guys.  They sure don't look like much when you get them just a little stick really with some roots on it.  There is red parafin on the top to protect the spot where they grafted the French Mourvèdre plant to the American rootstock.  I've explained this before, but for those who missed it, here goes again (copied from my previous post in November:

In the late 1800s French plant enthusiasts started importing vines that were native to America and planting them in French gardens and vineyards.  Little did they know that the American vines carried a louse called Phylloxera that fed on the root-system of the European vines and killed them.  The bug spread quickly throughout Europe and devasted the winegrowing industry in France, Spain and Italy. Other countries were certainly affected, but I'm not sure to what extent. France was the hardest hit, to the best of my knowledge. (If you're interested in reading more, there's a good book on the subject called Phylloxera by Christy Campbell- certainly available from you local bookstore.) They tried just about everything to save the vines until they figured out that the American vines were immune to the Phylloxera bug.  So, the solution was to graft French vines onto American root-stock, and thus the European wine industry was saved. Today most European vines are still grafted, though vine-growers are toying with some French-root vineyards, but only in small quantities.

Now on to the actual planting of them! 270 was the number of the day, we had no idea how long it would take us, but we hoped that we could do it in one day. This series of pictures will basically explain how it worked... First Mr Paume (the man who sold us the vineyards) came to show us how it is done:

He also loaned us his hole-making tools:

It's a good thing he came to check up on us, because he had some very valuable tips, like always turning the plant so that the graft is facing north, into the wind.  Once we got going, it wasn't too bad, two people planted, two watered the plants and two followed behind mounding up the dirt to make sure it was planted deep enough, and to also make a little trough so that when we water them this summer all the water won't go flowing into the rows... Ah, we are a hi-tec operation!

Vine replacement Part 2: Filling the holes

Remember about 6 weeks ago I posted a little video of a backhoe pulling out dead vines and making holes for us to replant them?  Well guess what?  Now we have to fill them back in. By hand.  No nice modern machine to do it for us!  Did I mention that there are 270 holes? Ugh. When we started on Saturday it was cold and windy and the piles of dirt were frozen, this does not help.  It was awful.  We lasted about an hour and a half, then decided to wait to see if it got any warmer.  Sunday it was much better and we were a bit more productive, except for the fact that we were slightly hung-over from a blow-out black truffle dinner the night before at our house, where we very stupidly drank too much wine, Champagne, White Burgundy, Chateauneuf-du-Pape and then the nail in the coffin, one last bottle to go with the cheese an 85 Margaux... It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the next day out in the vineyards we definitely regretted it!  Oh well, the fresh air did us some good. Needless to say filling holes is hard work.  My dad needed a rest when we got back!

Tomorrow we go pick up the baby vines, and Saturday we plant them!  It's going to be a fun-filled weekend, I can't wait to plant those new little mourvèdres!