la gramiere

Mable, Mable if you're able, hurry and get those bottles labeled!

Finally!  Finally we got our labels and finally, we spent a whole weekend putting those labels on the bottles.  Remember back in August when we bottled and I said how much more smoothly the whole bottling process went?  Well that's partly because we only did half the job!  Last year we bottled, labeled and boxed, this year we only bottled, without putting the labels on and putting them in the boxes.  At the time it made it seem so much easier, but now seeing how much time it took to label the bottles, and the fact that they're still not in boxes, I'm not so sure.   Of course, last year, once we had all of the wine in the boxes we had to open them all and add two stickers per bottle for everything we sent to the US, so in the end it's not that simple.  The advantage to doing it the way we did it this year, is that we'll prepare each shipment as the order comes in, and we'll put the appropriate back label on the bottle according to where it's going!

It turned out to be a much more labor intensive process that I thought it would be.  When Mr. Fraison, our bottler told us that we could rent his labeler and capsuler in when we were ready to put the labels on, I thought great, it will be just like the machine on we used last year, a machine that you feed the bottles into, then it automatically takes the bottle, runs it through the process of putting the capsule on and then sticking both front and back label on and comes out the other end all finished.  Not the case.

First, you stack 20 or so bottles on the table next to the capsuling machine, then you place a capsule on each bottle, then someone takes the bottle and places it at the base of the capsuling machine and manually pulls the machine down over the capsule to tighten it onto the next of the bottle.  Piece of cake right?  Well it's not as easy as it sounds, if you go too fast, or not far enough, the capsule gets little wrinkles in it or it doesn't get tight enough.  It was a real art to learn, and even then they all didn't come out as we would have liked.  Once the capsule is on then the bottle is passed on to the person manning the labeling machine, this is an easier task, once you get the spacing right between the back and the front labels... Not as easy as it sounds either...

But once we got the system down, it went pretty smoothly.   Especially when our friends the Tills showed up!! Without them, we would still be out there slowly getting the labels put on.  Lucy and Cameron came on Saturday afternoon and we got the system going trying to get the kinks out.  Cameron was a great help and really got good at all of the jobs, even creating new techniques for putting the capsules on the bottles.  I said to him at one point, "see Cameron, this is why you want to do your homework and study hard, so you don't end up in a factory doing this all day."  He replied, "Why?  I think this a pretty good job."

The next day the whole gang showed up.  Peter, Lucy, Cameron, Lara and Esme.  Then we were really cookin'.  The girls liked it more than I would have thought and we were able to really jam through a couple of piles of bottles.  After lunch though, the kids petered out and we were left with just Peter, Lucy, Matt and I.  We decided to get through one more pallet, 1000 bottles and call it a day.  In the end we labeled about 5000 bottles,  a little less than half of our stock,  but that's a good start for now. 

We did it just in time too, on Tuesday we shipped out first pallet to our importer in Germany - K&U.  They are having a big open house this weekend and wanted to make sure the wine was there so we can sell, sell, sell it!  I say we, because Matt and I are headed to Nuremberg this weekend for the event.  I went last year and it's lots of fun, great wines, great winemakers and lots of great food.  Just my kind of weekend!

So when you're opening that bottle of La Gramière, and you notice that the capsule isn't quite perfectly sealed onto the bottle, you'll smile to yourself and think of our weekend of labeling!

The Olive Harvest

At this time of year, farmers in our area are all out harvesting their olives.  I took part for the first time this year, picking the olives from our lone olive tree located in the corner of one of our grenache vineyards.  Matt was on the tractor plowing, so I occupied myself by taking a plastic bag and picking all of the olives I could reach, which was just about all of them, except for one side, which was tough reach since it was flanked by a ditch.  If  I was really serious, I could have gone to borrow an olive-picking ladder from a farmer nearby, but I wasn't that serious, and there were maybe 30 more olives that I could have picked.

Harvesting olives for olive oil takes place from November-January, depending on the type of olive you have. They are picked as the olives turn from green to black, as you can see here, they are just beautiful, some still green, some a pinkish green color, and some already a deep purple-black.  Harvesting is not an easy job, and isn't mechanized in our area.  Some people pick them by hand, putting them into a small basket as they go, some use a rake-like tool to comb the olives off of the branches, they then fall to the ground into nets laid around the base of the tree.  There are several olive mills around that you can take your olives to, they will then process them and give you a corresponding amount of oil.  Since my olives didn't add up to much, I got about two cereal bowls full, and they had all already turned black, I decided that the mill probably wouldn't be interested in my 2007 olive crop.  Therefore,  I decided to cure them in a brine of salt and vinegar.  We'll see how they turn out.  Someday I hope to have enough olive trees to be able to make a few bottles of La Gramière olive oil, but for now I'll have to settle for a few jars of black olives!  Christmas presents maybe?

A whole lotta horse s*#t!!

We spent the whole weekend and yesterday plowing all of the vineyards, for today, they got a nice dose of some well-composted horse poop!  Our vineyards definitely need a bit of a boost after 3 years of drought and deprivation of their previous chemical treatments.  That is to say that the man we bought then from used to give them a good dose of fertilizer every year, and we cut them off, cold turkey.  So a little bit of organic matter will be good for them.  A fellow vigneron and friend, Pierre Goisbault, called us a few weeks ago to offer up some good old horse manure from some nearby stables.  Pierre knew that we had wanted to spread some compost this year, and he was getting some for himself, so he offered to get some for use too!  He rented a truck and brought us 4 truck loads.  Then he offered to have someone spread it for us, which was a god-send, since otherwise we would have had to borrow his spreader and figure out how to do it ourselves.  I don't know about you, but that's about the last thing that I want to do.  So presto!  As of this evening, all of our vineyards should have some nice shit spread throughout.  Now if only the wind would stop blowing and the skies would start raining, things would be perfect.  If only....   (That's the horse shit, in case you were wondering!)

All about me...

If you have a burning desire to know even more about this blog or about my last dinner requests, check out Fermentation's  blogger profile of us!  Many thanks to Tom for his continued interest in the blog!!

Field Trip - The Printers!

FINALLY!!!

I can't tell you how long it has taken this year to get our labels!  It seems like an eternity, but finally today I got a call from our printer saying that they were going to print them and that if I wanted to come and check the color, I had to come now!!  Good thing I didn't have anything too important planned.  So I hopped in the car and drove an hour over to Sarrians, which is right by Vacqueyras, to give my OK on the label color.  When I got there it was all set up and it looked to me like they had already printed them, there was a huge roll of them at the far end of the printer.  I asked if they could run them back through to change to the color. No, once they've gone through the machine, that's it.  But this was just the set-up and calibration.  My eyes grew very wide, you mean you're going to throw all of these away???!!! Yup, that's how it's done.  I was, and still am shocked. Next year's project will be to find a printer that uses recycled paper and vegetable based inks.  I asked around a bit this year, and in general people looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language.  But I'm not going to give up, I'm sure it's out there.

Anyway, the color did need some tweaking, so I'm very glad I drove all the way over there.  I showed the man the color I had in mind and he immediately grabbed the pot of yellow ink and started scooping it into the "ink well" of the press.  I suppose since he does this kind of thing every day, he has a pretty good idea of what is missing, and with just that one adjustment I was satisfied!  I left him to finish his work and about an hour later they were done!  It's very exciting to finally have them, no we are just waiting on the back labels which need to be printed on a different press.  We'll have them next week.  Then we'll embark on the huge task of labeling 11,000 bottles. UGH.

So, I forgot to tell you that we completely changed the label.  Hope you like it!  If not, too late, it's done.  (Sorry about the flash, I couldn't get it to turn out the way I wanted, and I am not patient enough to read the directions on my camera to turn it off !)

Winery visits ~ Chez Nous??

Here's a new one.  Winery visits.  Now here is something that I am having to get used to, and better at!  The French always say that wine making isn't the hard part, it's selling it! Selling has never been one of my strong points, although I've done a fair amount of it in my lifetime.  Well, let me say that I can sell something if I truly do like it, if I don't, it's not one of my better honed skills.  Then when it comes to our wine, of course I like it, I even love it, but when it's your own product, it's hard to be so laudatory about it.  You know, it's something you've made, you really really want people to like it, but you also want to be somewhat humble in the process, not seeming too pompous at the same time.  I have been witness to more than one scene in which a customer tells a winemaker that their wine isn't that good, or isn't their cup of tea, people that have no idea what has gone into making that bottle of wine.  No idea that their heart and soul went into making it and this guy just has to tell him that it's not good!  It's not a pretty sight, and it's not something that I want to endure! Of course our wine isn't for everyone, but I sure hope that when they come to our place, they'll try to be polite and thoughtful of all the hard work that has gone into making that bottle of wine.

Which brings me back to the point of this post.  Tasting at our "winery".  Yeah, that's it.  Does that put an image in your mind of a beautiful building, an entryway and a tasting room surrounded by lots of oak barrels and bottles of wine??  Well, uh, it's not quite like that here.  We haven't fixed up a "tasting room" yet, so when people ask to come and taste our wine, I gladly accept, and then hang up the phone wondering what they will think of tasting in our kitchen!  Yes, for some reason we end up tasting in our kitchen.  It's as nice a place as any... Though a bit strange for some people.  Recently there was a group of 5 Canadians that were staying at a place down the street.  One day they rang the bell and asked if they could have and wine tasting, and asked  "what do you do here?"  Like do you have a tour?  Uh, well... sure, I can give you a tour, as you enter, on your left is the cellar where we store the bottled wine (used to be a garage.)  Please come with me now, through the house, into the back yard, and now here's the vinification cellar.  (About as big as your two-car garage).  On your right and left there are our 4 concrete fermentation vats, as well as three other fiber glass tanks.  On the upper level you will see our 500 liter oak barrels, both of them.  There's also a pump, a horizontal press just outside the door, and various other winemaking equipment - a shovel, a long-handled squeegee and a stainless steel contraption that is used to draw a tank sample .  Well, that's about it, would you like to follow me into the kitchen to taste our wines?  Yes, we make a red, and a red.  Just one wine.  Hmm, not quite like a  "real" winery is it??

Oh well.  In general people love to hear our story, and their eyes get very wide when I explain that it's just the two of us, Matt and I.  No, Mexicans, no Moroccans, over even a Pole, just us.  The story gets more interesting for them then, and people tend to leave with a great story, and an hour well spent.  Jeff and Carolyn Mitchell from Minneapolis came to visit a few weeks ago while they were in area.  Jeff had discovered my blog and had even bought some La Gramière in MN before coming.  After they left, they sent me some great photos and an email that warmed my heart.  Here's an excerpt:

Thanks again for the gracious welcome and tour of your cave(s). You and Matt have a beautiful home; I wonder if it's as obvious to you as it is to visiting outsiders how much the two of you "create" together

-- a domaine, a wine, a home, a business, a brand, etc., etc. Not many people take the plunge so deeply with another person. We felt lucky to join the conversation for an hour or so.

They even sent me a picture of a bottle of our 2006 that they happily drank in Barcelona! (not yet labeled - notice the cork neatly displayed at the base of the bottle)

- photos courtesy of Jeff Mitchell.