la gramiere

We thank you for your support!

Remember that old Bartles and Jaymes ad?  "...and thank you for your support."  Well, I have to say thank you to all of you who are out there reading along and joining us on our adventure.  It really is amazing.  I've been getting emails and comments posted from many of you, and I really, truly appreciate all of the good thoughts you have been sending our way!

Here's an example of an email I received this morning from Pat:

Wow!  I just finished reading your account of your visit with Kermit Lynch and taking an order from him for your red wine.  You know, I share in a small way your feelings of success and happiness because reading your blog has taken me along on your journey.  Please keep up the blog…I am waiting with great anticipation to see how the upcoming harvest goes, the winemaking and, of course, how your second vintage turns out.

I’ll also keep an eye out for a mention of your wine in Kermit’s newsletter, because I can’t think of a better way of cementing this long range bond with you at La Gramiere than opening a bottle, toasting you both across the ocean and tasting your wine.  Cheers! 

            Pat B.

Now, I want you to know that I don't know Pat B., I just received this email out of the blue this morning.  It's so exciting how much goodwill this blog has created towards our project.  Thank you so very much, to Fritz, Terry, Kelli, Pat, John, Maryanne, Iris, Rob...all of you who post comments and send emails from time to time, I love it! 

The Pilgrimage

Wow, where to start?  Friday morning we had an 11:00 appointment to meet Kermit Lynch at Domaine Tempier. The purpose of this visit was, of course, to have Kermit taste our wine now that it is in bottle.  When setting up the appointment with Kermit, I also mentioned that I had never been to Domaine Tempier (one of Kermit's flagship wineries) so we decided to meet there, since Kermit lives in the next village over. 

As we arrived at Domaine Tempier, I felt as if I were coming full circle, as if this was a place I should have visited years ago.  You see, when you work at Kermit Lynch, there are a few domaines that are really cornerstones of the business, and Tempier is at the head of the list. There is a sort of mythical quality surrounding this winery and their wines.  Made famous by the wines of Lucien and Lulu Peyraud, Domaine Tempier has come to symbolize the philosophy of Kermit Lynch.  It's so much more than the wine, it's the whole southern French lifestyle magically brought together by Tempier wines and Lulu's cooking.  Richard Olney, who lived nearby, wrote a cookbook about the cuisine of Lulu Peyraud, entitled Lulu's Provençal Table, a wonderful historical collection of the food and wine served over the years at Domaine Tempier.  Finally I had the chance to visit, and with my own wines in tow, hmm, that seemed a bit out of place.

We met Kermit in the entrance and waited a short while, the time for Daniel Ravier, the winemaker, to finish a previous visit with other clients.  He walked up and said hello, immediately handing us glasses and pouring us a taste of the 2005 rosé.  As we were driving down, the thought crossed my mind that Kermit might want to taste our wines there, at Domaine Tempier, but I quickly put that thought out of my mind - that would be too much.  Well, guess what?  Sure enough, Kermit says, "Let's go to the cellar and taste your wines with Daniel." Ugh, the last thing I would ever want to do.  Taste our first wines, rosé and red, in the cellars of one of the most famous Provençal wineries!!!  Well, we had no choice.

Tractor Troubles

When you have a tractor that was built in 1962, things tend to go wrong from time to time.  Whether it's the hitch literally breaking the first time you try out your brand new sprayer, the tire going flat after ploughing when Matt is off in another country and I am at the vineyards alone, or,  like today, the battery simply was dead.  Somethings are big, like the arm of the three-point hitch breaking, some things are little like a flat tire or a battery being dead, but all of these things add up to a lot of time lost when we're trying on a weekend to get some vineyard work in.

Luckily for us we have some very generous friends who are always willing to help. Like Jacques, he lets us store our tractor in his back yard, for free.  When we first got the tractor we

had it at our house in St Quentin la Poterie, which is about 20 minutes from our vineyards by car.  Consider this though, by tractor it takes an hour to get to our vineyards, ugh!  We did it for the first few months, it was awful, but we couldn't find anyone who had a garage or hangar for us to rent. 

Finally, in desperation, I went to see Jacques who had asked all of his neighbors for us, but didn't find anyone either.  He agreed that we could keep it in his back yard behind their house. We've offered to pay them rent, but they refuse to even consider it.  Whenever we have any trouble with the tractor, Jacques is there to help us out.  The tire went flat again a couple of weeks ago. Jacques has a compressor and filled it up, but it went flat again before we could get it to the garage.  Jacques jumped in his car, borrowed a heavy-duty jack from a friend and helped us get the tire off.  He then called the garage in the next town over and found out that they couldn't take it until the next morning. In order to save us a trip down there, he offered to take the tire over and drop it off for us! What a guy!   

You know the grapes are getting ripe when...

The boars start sampling them!  I found this example of the boars having a tasty treat up in our Syrah vineyard on Tuesday evening.  (See how the grapes are missing on the end of this bunch?) In some areas people have big problems with boars eating the ripening grapes,  luckily for us, our vineyards are located in an area where there are acres and acres of vineyards covering the hillside, thus giving them a large choice of delicious grapes in various stages of ripeness.  (I think that's a run-on sentence.)

Something else kind of interesting , the existance of several white grape vines inter-planted with the grenache in our biggest vineyard.  I have no idea what varietal it is, probably grenache blanc, but it's fun to come upon one and taste the grapes.  We just put them right in with the red ones during harvest. The percentage of the white grapes is so small it won't make any difference and it maybe even  adds a little something.  It used to be common practice to plant up to 10% white grapes among the reds, adding more aromatic flavors to the red. Some people still do it in Côte Rôtie and Hermitage.  We even thought about replacing some of the vines that are dead in the vineyard with some marsanne or roussanne, or some other southern Rhône white varietal. I will have to do more research on that though....

What to write, when there's nothing to write about?

Truth be told, there's not much exciting going on around here this week, but I keep thinking to myself, I've got to think of a post for the blog.  I could write about digging out the drive way and preparing it in order to pour cement. That's not very exciting or romantic, but we're trying to get it done before harvest.  I could tell you about the wonderful dinner we had with good friends at a new restaurant not far from Uzès.  That was fun. It's called "le tracteur" (the tractor).  They have a well chosen wine list and a very reasonable menu that changes nightly.  I wanted to write about that today, but I forgot to bring my camera so I don't have a picture, and I like to post pictures.  There's also the delicious bottle of  1999 Hermitage Blanc "Le Rouet Blanc" from Jean-Luc Colombo that we drank the other night.  It was such an amazing bottle of wine, but I'm not really a wine reviewer, and I think it's kind of boring to read about someone absolutely "loving" a bottle of wine that is no longer available on the market. It's almost like bragging.  This week I am catching up, organizing things, getting ready for harvest, which is only a few weeks away and taking a bit of a breather since the last few weeks have been so crazy.   A few friends have stopped by to purchase wine, both red and rosé. That is a nice feeling, always flattering.  Otherwise, my life this week, is probably a lot like everyone else's... There are some exciting things coming up though, I'll be sure to tell you all about them!

Veraison bandwagon

Well, everyone is talking about it, so I figured I may as well join in.  Here are some pictures of the Mourvédre (1st picture) and the Grenache (next two) starting to turn red, a process which is called "veraison".   When this happens we know we are in the home stretch, looking towards an early September harvest.  Luckily, the heat wave has ended and we are back to warm days and cool nights which will help tremendously.  If the temps had stayed in the upper 90s until harvest, I'm not sure what we would have been picking, raisins most likely.

We're looking at a pretty small crop this year, but hopefully  
that will mean the quality will be comparable to last year.  The biggest problem we could encounter is that the ripening actually gets "stuck"  which can happen in drought years. The grapes start to turn color, and then, due to the harsh weather conditions, they get stuck and remain half ripe dark berries and half pale purple unripe berries.  We already saw some of that last year, I'm really hoping we'll avoid it this year.... we'll see.

Loading the boxes

Loading the boxes
Vidéo envoyée par lagramiere

The two people standing up on the steps are loading the boxes with bottles, the two on either side of them are handing them the boxes and the separators. I'm grabbing the cases as they roll down after being taped shut, and Matt is loading them into the truck!

Corks going in

Corks going in
Vidéo envoyée par lagramiere

Here are the bottles being corked

Bottling clips!

Mise Alison
Vidéo envoyée par lagramiere

Here's a few short videos of the bottling! Thought you might like to see them. This is Alison loading the bottles onto the line.

C'est finit!

Unbelievable! All 8500 liters of our wine is now in bottle.  That makes 11,400 bottles and it all fits, miraculously in our garage! 

Yesterday we actually got started right at 7:30 and had enough people so that it seemed to go much more smoothly than the previous day.  You see, the bottler shows up with his truck, the machines, etc. but we have to provide all of the labor.  Since our situation is less than ideal, meaning that we don't have a proper winery, and the layout isn't at all what it should be, it makes for a lot more work.   Yesterday we had 11 people, at times 12, so it was a piece of cake. (ha ha ha) We finished in 3 hours!

As I said we have converted part of our house into the store area for the wine. The cellar floor hasn't been cemented (due to lack of money in the budget!) so it's river rock, meaning that you can't drive a fork lift in there, meaning that we had to stack
2000 6-bottle cases by hand onto the pallets.  I say "we" but it was mostly Matt and the other strong guys we managed to round up.

That's one of the biggest challenges, doing this on a shoe-string budget, makes it that you sometimes have double, even triple the work.  We got some good ideas though, of how to make it work more smoothly next year.  And for now we're just savouring the moment with great satisfaction, knowing that vintage number one is now safely in bottle, and just waiting to be tasted by all of you! 

WOW!

Imagine, coming in after a long morning bottling to find, to my utter delight, that two other bloggers had written about me on their widely read websites! 

Check out both, they are two of my favorite bloggers, and they have honored me by writing about me on their blogs!

Wine Camp by Craig Camp

Fermentation by Tom Wark

Thanks you guys! I still have a smile on my face just thinking about it! :-)

Fatigue

There's a point where fatigue sets in, and all you can think about is crawling into bed, and I'm pretty much there right now.  We had a pretty good morning of bottling, after several starts and stops, little adjustments, etc. we finally got rolling.  Luckily there was a bit of a cloud cover so we weren't frying until about 10:30.  The temps here in southern France are flirting with 100 degrees, so at 11:30 when we finished the first vat, we decided to break for lunch, and call it a day.  No reason to risk damaging the wine when we still have the bottler booked for tomorrow and we can start much earlier since everything is all set up and ready to go. 

One of the things I often marvel at is the generous attitudes of our friends and family.  So many people came out to help, and stayed the whole morning, and even volunteered to come back tomorrow, amazing.  We counted, and really to run smoothly, we need 10 people to man the bottling line, stack the cases into the truck, drive them around to the front of the house, unload them and stack them on pallets.  Amazingly enough, we came up with those 10 people, even in the middle of summer when everyone here is on vacation.  Not to mention, Bri and Jenn who drove down from Switzerland just to come help us, and it was Jenn's 40th birthday today! How lucky were we?!

So, many many many thanks to all of our dear dear friends who came out today! Including; Viviane, Jean-Marc, Sylvain, Jean-Paul, Alison, Nick, Denis, Beatrice, another Denis, Bri and Jenn, and to all the others who are coming tomorrow morning to finish the job!

Bottles

Never thought I'd be so glad to see 11,500 bottles behind my house.  They were supposed to be delivered yesterday, but the salesperson called and said there was a problem with the truck and that they weren't going to make it.  I swear I am cursed when it comes to bottles.  Her solution was to deliver the same color bottles, but a lower quality instead this morning.  No, thank you.  I hate it when I drink a bottle of wine and the glass is really thin, looks like the winery was cutting corners, and for me it's important that our wine is well presented.  So, I said what about another color, the one called  "feuille morte" of dead leaf.  It's the classic greenish-brown bottle that you see for many wines.  I had wanted the color they call antique, which is a richer brown, but was willing to go with the green if we could have a higher quality, thicker bottle.  In the end you really can't tell the difference in color when the bottle is full, only once it's been opened. Luckily, they had enough to deliver to us, and they did so at 7:45 this morning.  Yippee!  Now everything is set for tomorrow.  The man who does the bottling is arriving this afternoon to set everything up so that we can get an early start tomorrow morning.  It is very hot here so we want to take advantage of the lower temps and get everything done we can as early as we can.  We've got tarps to hang over the street so that we can keep it as cool as possible back there, and our neighbors across the street went on vacation, so we have full access to their pool in order to cool off. Thank goodness.  I'll let you know how it goes..... if I'm still in one piece.

The countdown begins...

Next Wednesday, less than one week from today, we will be bottling our red.  Everything is pretty much ready. We have everything except for the bottles and they will arrive Monday.  I spoke with the man on the phone and he had already been informed by the salesperson that I was very nervous about the bottles arriving. Hopefully, everything will go as planned this time.

Last weekend we had Matt's brother, Brian, his wife, Jenn, and their two girls here, so we took advantage of the extra hands to move the boxes and dividers from the garage into the upper part of the winery so that we could finish cleaning out the garage. Sure is nice to have help!  Makes people think twice about coming to visit us though as there's always a project to be done. Having visitors seems to motivate us to get those projects done!  Hmm, wonder why!?  We filled up our friend Peter's pick-up truck twice with junk to go to the dump.  You see, we inherited a lot of stuff when we bought this house. Some of it is wonderful bits of the history of our house, some of it is just plain junk.  I really hate to throw things away, especially old things.  I drew the line though, at a jar of mushrooms that had been preserved back in 1956, even though it was a very nice, old canning jar. There was no way I was going to open it!

Anyway, once again, we were saved by members of our family.  It's really amazing, no matter how far they have to come, it's like magic they just appear and help out!  We really are so very lucky!

Jenn and I racked the wine one last time before bottling in order to reduce the amount of CO2.  This occurs naturally after fermentation, and you really don't want to have too much when you bottle, otherwise your wine will have a slight sparkle to it.  Now, it's just waiting until next Wednesday when it will be bottled!  I can't wait.  In the meantime, I pulled a sample this afternoon to taste it.  Mmmm, it's pretty darn good. I think you'll like it! 

Going Fast!

The rosé is selling fast.  Granted, with only 700 bottles, it won't take much to sell out, but none-the-less, it's on its way.  Last week, Terroirs took another 120 bottles and when we had dinner there on Saturday night, Tom told us that he was almost half-way through it!  Geez, we may have to tell him to slow down a bit. It would be nice if it lasted through August.  Friends are stopping by to pick up a case here and there, so we have sold at least half of it already.  Not bad for a first try!

On Saturday night as we sat at Terroirs with Matt's brother Brian and his wife Jenn, we kept saying, "Ooh look, they're drinking it! Oh, and over there too!"  It was pretty funny, kind of like watching your kids at the school play, glowing with pride as they come out on stage..." Finally, I got my courage up to take a picture of Tom (the owner) pouring our wine at a table right behind us.  The customers were a couple from England who have a house in the region. We asked if they minded, and they graciously accepted to be photographed for the blog!  Also, here's a picture of the wine list, if you squint hard enough, you'll see us listed in the section under rosés!  Pretty exciting!

BUGS

Right now, in the vineyards, you gotta love the bugs. They're everywhere, cicadas, grasshoppers, spiders of all shapes and colors... The cicada, along with the bee, is one of the symbols of Provence. You'll find them embroidered on table cloths and napkins and in almost any form of cheesy tourist junk you can imagine.  In the vineyards though, they are amazing.  The Cigales (cicadas) start singing their song about 10 in the morning.  In some places it's almost deafening. Well not really, but the buzz is amazing.  It's super hot and dry here,  just the right weather for them.  As you walk through the vineyards and brush up against the vines, suddenly you'll hear a squawk, which normally scares the tail off of me, and a cigale will go flying away... Take a closer look, they really are very beautiful bugs.

On Thursday when we were out spraying sulfur on the vines to prevent powdery mildew (oidium), I looked over and Matt was covered with them (click on the picture you can see them on his shirt!)! He calls them his friends.  They are quite cute.  When it was my turn on the tractor, I had one on my shirt for a good hour.  They just like hanging out.  Then there was one on my La Gramière hat. Pretty great picture, huh?  Couldn't have staged that one if we tried!

Version Française

FYI- For my French friends and readers, I have started a French Version of my blog. You will find the link on the left of this page. I hope you are patient because, I barely have time to write this blog. How I'm going to succeed in writing this in French, I'm not sure.  I am going to do my best.  Afterall, I do live in France and I do speak fluent French. It's a very tough language to write though!  We'll see what they have to say!

Pour mes amis francophones, j'ai commencé une nouvelle page en "version française".  Merci de me corriger quand il le faut! 

Escape to London!

Well, Egham really.  To any Brits reading this, I'm sure they would not consider Egham being London, but to me it's all the same... My sister, Molly, and her boyfriend just bought a house together in Egham and they moved in last week.  I flew up on Friday to help out a bit.  Egham is a nice place to live. There are some great café-restaurants, a bit of shopping, and only 40 minutes to London.  Since only the super-rich can afford London, it's a nice compromise. 

It was quite hot in London last weekend, not really what I expected since we always think of rain! We took a break from unpacking Saturday morning and went to the Bourough Market, in the city.  Apparently, it is now on the "must do" list when visiting London.  I had been there a couple of years ago after reading an article about it in Saveur magazine. Boy, has it grown since.  What an amazing place to visit.  Fruit and vegetable stalls, wine shops, a shop specializing in all things from Spain, lots of local poultry, lamb, beef etc.  It's great fun.  Oh, and did I mention all of the yummy baked goods, grilled meats, and fresh fruit drinks to sample on your way around.  If you go, definitely go with an empty stomach.  There's lots of great places to eat scattered around, not to mention, the great British Cheese Shop "Neal's Yard Dairy" has opened a store just across the street. The market is only open Friday from noon to 6:00pm and Saturdays from 9:00-4:00. Plan your day accordingly.

Chicken

Well, I went into Uzès tonight, by myself, since Matt is still in Shanghai. They were serving our wine at "Terroirs", but I chickened out.  I didn't really have the guts to walk up to the table and ask to take their picture!  I did see the manager and asked him how the wine was being received. He said very well and that it was  "delicieux"!  Great! That means if he likes it, then he will sell lots of it! 

There wasn't any room at Terroirs for me to sit, so I went to our favorite crêperie in Uzès, La Bolée. (sorry the photo is kind of dark, but you can see the TV on the wall.)  Lo and behold (this is very American of me) France was playing Spain in the World Cup.  It really is contagious.  I am not a person to sit around and watch sports, but even in Uzès, every bar and even some restaurants have flat screen televisions for all of their customers to watch the games.  Someone must be making a lot of money on television rentals right now, if every terrace of every bar in Uzès has TVs. Imagine what it's like in the bigger cities.  The owner's little boy had come to watch the game, and as I was alone, I offered him a seat at my table.  His father was beside himself with excitement and tension. His mom had to come help his dad with the service since once the game started he was all but useless.  The little boy, whose name I think was Tristan, explained why Zidane had missed the last game and a few other important points to me.  He was obviously a big fan, and I was obviously clueless.  When Spain scored the first goal on a penalty kick, the whole town went quiet and you could have cut the air with a knife.  Then France came back with a goal, and everything was better. Cheers went up from around the city. "Allez les Bleus"  (Go Blues) was shouted from every bar, every house.  There's something magical about a whole country, even a whole continent, that stops for a brief moment to cheer their respective teams.  There's nothing quite like it in the US, besides maybe, the Olympics, but that's several sports and several teams, not simply one country against another.  All of France was watching, as I'm sure all of Spain was as well. I left the restaurant at half time and finished the game at home.  France went on to score two more goals, one on a penalty kick, one more by Zidane.  In the end I felt sorry for Spain, but thrilled at the same time for the home team!  Next round Brazil, now that should be a tough one.  "Allez les Bleus!"

Deliveries!

I was looking through the "recent posts" list on the sidebar of my blog, and it seems I either end everything with an exclamation point or points of ellipsis.  Funny, huh?

Anyway, just thought you'd like to know that our rosé is now officially available for purchase at the restaurant and wine shop called "Terroirs" in Uzès.  In fact, I delivered 120 bottles to them last week.  That's quite an order! The owners, Tom and Corrine, have become good friends and supporters of our wines.  As of Saturday Tom hadn't had time to change the by the glass list for the café-restaurant, but as soon as he does, I plan to stalk the place until someone orders the first bottle. As soon as it is served, I'm going to ask the unsuspecting people if I can take their picture!  Do you think I'm going too far???   

This week it will also be on the winelist at the restaurant Bec à Vin in Uzès, they were the first people to order it, remember?   I can't wait to see people acutally drinking our wine! 

Coulure...

Remember how I talked about the risk of coulure (or flower shock, or "flower abortion") ?  Well, that's exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago when the wind blew hard for a week straight and the temperatures dropped overnight from in the 80s to the 50s.  Grenache, as I said is quite prone to losing it's flowers and our grenache took a pretty hard hit. See all those little black dots? They used to be flowers, or potential grapes. (click on the picture to see it upclose.) So that means we'll have a small harvest again this year, but in the end, that's not such a bad thing. If it's anything like last year, we'll have small grapes, with lots of concentration and color.  It's been really hot here lately and we haven't had much rain at all.  We're headed for another drought season. We're keeping our fingers crossed for some rain, though I don't really expect any...

The Visit...

Ok, sorry for the week-long delay.  After finishing the bottling, I had 3 days of wine tours in the Northern and Southern Rhone.  It's funny, when you're stressed and tired, you really don't feel like blogging... go figure!

Anyway,  back to the visit... I rushed home 15 minutes before Kermit was supposed to arrive, jumped in the shower, got dressed and then tried to relax and take a few deep breaths to shrug off some of the stress of the day.  Luckily for me, he ended up being about an hour late, so I had some time to prepare myself.  Molly had prepared some nice bowls of olives and our favorite almonds roasted with rosemary, sea salt and a touch of Aleppo pepper, as well as putting a brand new bottle of rosé in the fridge to chill.  All I really had to do was get the glasses out and the sample bottles of our red wine ready.  I had pulled the samples from the vats early that morning so that they had time to breath.  I then aerated them by pouring the wine roughly between two large pitchers in order to get as much air into them as possible.  When you draw a sample from a large tank of wine it's often quite closed, so it needs a little oxygen to open up the nose and the flavors.

When Kermit arrived with Dixon Brook, his French office manager, I had had ample time to get everything together, and then pace around the house for awhile.  Luckily, their late arrival also gave Matt enough time to finish working, so that we were both able to welcome them and taste with them.  After we chatted a bit about our house and the renovation, I took the plunge and offered to open the first bottle of 2005 Domaine de la Gramière Rosé.  Drum-roll....

What a day...

Remember those bottles we were promised?  Well, it turned out to be a total nightmare.  I called the supplier at 9 am to confirm that we were the first on the list for deliveries and the woman said that he had already left and that he shouldn't be too much longer.  In the mean time, the bottler showed up and I led him to the bottling site. He started to set up shop and I told him that there was a slight problem, but that the bottles should be here by 10.  He explained that the time it took him to set up, even 10:30 or 11:00 would be fine, as long as it was before lunchtime.  There was another winery that was bottling some red just after us, but we had to go first since we had rosé.  We began our wait for the truck.  At 10:30, still no sign of the bottles. The bottler asked for the labels, corks, capsules, and an empty bottle similar to the ones we would be using so that he could get everything ready.  In the mean time, a whole team of people had showed up to help the other winery bottle their wines.  Everyone was hanging around waiting for us, so the pressure was definitely starting to rise.

Matt (whose trip to China was delayed) called the bottle supplier to find out where the truck was and she said she would call him back.  Ten minutes later when they still hadn't returned the call, I called back and literally blew a gasket.  I'm not a person that gets angry very often and I do everything I can to avoid conflict, but this was too much.  They were completely unprofessional and I was extremely angry, especially since they had been highly recommended to me by a friend.  Finally, I get the call I was waiting for and what does she say?????  The driver did the route backwards and he won't be at our house until 1:00.  I wanted to cry. I felt like a total idiot.  Here there were at least 10 people who had wasted their whole morning and now we weren't even sure if our wine would be bottled.  I asked the bottler and he, clearly reaching his limit, said that if they were there right at 1:00 he'd still do it.

At this point, everyone split up for lunch. The tension was a bit high.  We invited the bottler (his name is Mr. Fraison) out to lunch and he gladly accepted.  It was a bit of a difficult lunch. He was trying to be nice, but it was obvious he wasn't happy, and who could blame him?  Finally, the hour came and Matt went back home to wait.  Sure enough by the time we got back the driver was there unloading the bottles.  Everyone jumped into place and we got started.  Our friends Peter and Lucy were there, as well as Nick and of course, my dear sister, Molly, who flew down to help.  It was so very exciting to see the wine actually going into the bottles, the corks getting stuffed in, capsules going on, then the labels.  In all it took about 30 minutes to bottle our 550 liters. Incredible.  720 bottles is what we ended up with, not bad!

How exciting it was to have some of our wine finally in bottle, especially after that awful morning...

I'll save the rest for the next post, but I will tell you one thing about Kermit's visit.... 

He liked it!

The Very First Bottle

Here it is...

Merde!

Well, originally this word was to only have one meaning for this post, but today's events have forced me to use both meanings.  What??? you're asking is she talking about?   Let me explain.  Merde is the French equivalent of our 4 letter word sh*t.  So far, everything has gone very smoothly. We got the corks last week as well as the boxes.  Saturday, I went and approved and picked up the labels, and the capsules were delivered today.  I called this morning to confirm that the bottles were going to be delivered and the woman told me yes and that it would probably be in the afternoon.  Well, when 5:00 came around and I still hadn't heard anything from the driver, I called again.  No, they'll be delivered tomorrow, the woman on the other end of the phone tells me.  MERDE!  No, I say, that's not possible I need them at 9 am tomorrow.  Silence.  I can promise you that they will arrive in the morning, but at what time I can't tell you, she says.  No, I say, I need you to promise me that I will be first on the delivery list and that I will have them by 10.  (Knowing that the bottler probably won't even be set up and ready to go until 11.)  Ok, she says, I'll ask the driver to make sure that he starts with you. Merde, we'll see. I have a very bad feeling about this. Merde.

What I was really planning on writing about for this post was the other meaning for the word merde.  It's the French equivalent of "break a leg".  The first time someone said it to me, I just stared at them with a blank look on my face. They explained that it was for good luck.  So when you are walking out the door for a job interview, or an audition, or something like that your friends will say "Merde!"

So tonight when you go to bed, or tomorrow morning when you wake up say a little "merde!" for me. We're really going to need it! 
1. for the bottles 
2. for the bottling   
3. for our visit with Kermit Lynch

Merde!

Baby Grapes!

Take a look at these lovely little syrah grapes.  The flowering now finished, the grapes are starting to really grow! The grenache isn't far behind. I'll take some pictures tomorrow.  I haven't been down to check out the mourvedre in a few days , so we'll do that too. Last week the wind blew for 6 days straight.  Often people ask me if the wind on a certain day is considered a "Mistral" and I tell them that any time the wind blows over, say 30 km/hr and out of the North, people call it a Mistral.  Last week was exceptional though, it was 6 days of winds with gusts up to 95 km/hr the temperatures dropped 10 degress celsius overnight and stayed quite cool for the whole week.  That's not great for grapes in flower...it causes what we call "coulure".  In my handy little French-English wine dictionary (written by Paul Cadiau) called "Lexivin" in French or "Lexiwine" in English it says that in English it's called  "shatter" or flower abortion.  These poor little flowers didn't choose to shatter or abort, they were simply blown off, all the way to Morocco perhaps...  The syrah seems to have withstood it pretty well, we'll see how the grenache fared.

Two Big Weeks! - Week 2

Here's the big news coming up next week:  Monday, they are printing our labels. I have to go over to approve the final colors as they are printing them. I can't wait to see them actually printed out on the right paper and everything.  The same day they are also delivering the bottles. Hmm that will be interesting since Matt is going to Shanghai for two weeks. Who will be here to meet the receive the bottle delivery?  I'll have to work that one out. Oh wait, my sister, Molly, is coming to help out, so she can take the bottle delivery.

Tuesday is the biggest day of all! We will be bottling our rosé!  Taaa Daaah! How exiciting is that?  Finally, a real bottle of wine from our very own vineyards with a label, cork and capsule (providing they all are delivered in time!). 800 bottles, that's not so bad.  It's just that we (meaning myself, my sister, Molly, and hopefully some very very good friends) have to then put the bottles in boxes, tape them up and transfer them to our garage which will become our storage facility.... It's going to be a fair amount of work, but not as much work as when we bottle 12,000 bottles of red. Oh, did I explain the bottling truck?  There's a nifty service here in France for wineries that aren't big enough to have their own bottling lines.  They take a semi and install a bottling line on the back of it, then they go around from winery to winery (there are lots here) and bottle the wine at the "domaine". 

Then, that afternoon, is the biggest event of all... 

Kermit Lynch is coming to taste our wines!!!! I am so excited, and so nervous at the same time!  Kermit, for those of you who don't recognize the name, is my former employer, and the person responsible for a very large part of my wine education.  Working at his retail store in Berkeley, was the best wine education anyone could ever hope for. He's the kind of person who loves to taste wine with his staff, so when he was in town we did it often.  What an amazing job.  Anyway...he's coming, here, to my house, to taste our first vintage. I debated on whether to announce it on the blog, in the event that he doesn't decide to buy any, but in the end I've been sharing everything else with you so I might as well share this too.  I tasted the red again yesterday and you can tell that the malo-lactic fermentation is almost finished. It's tasting better and better.  I think he'll like it, but who knows....we'll just have to wait until Tuesday to find out.

(Photo from the recent SF Chronicle article about Kermit.)

Corks and Boxes!

Well, surprise, surprise! The corks didn't show up until today, but the boxes were delivered yesterday, so at least there was still some excitement.  It's starting to feel as if we may really have everything we need to bottle the rosé next week.  It's going to be down to the very last minute for the labels, which are to be printed Monday.  I don't expect to have the capsules until then either.  Since I decided on a custom color, they are taking a bit longer than planned... Keep your fingers crossed for me.

It's very exciting to see our name and logo on something real, like a box and a cork.  The guy tried to deliver the corks yesteday, he called and we were on the phone and then claimed that he couldn't find our house, so he went on his way.... arrgh, delivery drivers. Oh well, now they are here and I think they look oh so good!

Two Big Weeks! - Week 1

Yes, it's true everyone, this is going to be a big week here at Domaine de la Gramière.  We should be receiving our corks today, directly from the producer in Portugal, tomorrow the rosé bottles should be delivered, and later in the week we will be spraying copper and sulfur in the vineyards. 

Corks were a tough decision.  There has been a lot in the American and British press lately about the use of corks and cork alternatives such as screw caps.  I thought long and hard and asked a lot of people what they thought.  I really wanted to be bold and bottle all of our wines the first year with screw caps, but I wimped out.  Too many people simply said that screw caps remained to them a sign of a cheap plonk and not high quality wine.  I know there seem to be more and more quality wines out there with screw caps, but I just wasn't brave enough to jump on the band wagon.   The French especially, seem to be against it, the argument mostly being about the ritual of pulling the cork on a bottle of wine.  I must admit, I agree with them.

One of my worries was though, that being such a small winery and just starting out, how on earth could we guarantee that we would get great corks from the salesmen buzzing around in the region?  It seemed nearly impossible.  Well, in talking with our friend Dunja Ulbricht of K&U (our German importers),  I found the solution.  Dunja told me that the one winery that they never had cork problems with was Poiera.  Poeira is a small winery in Portugal run by Jorge Moriera, that makes incredible wines in the Duoro region.  Dunja suggested I contact him and ask him where he got his corks.  Jorge kindly directed me to Susana Ferraz at a company called Uva Portugal.  I looked it up on the internet, and it turns out  she's a cork expert that inspects various lots of corks for you and in a way guarantees that they will be of top quality.  I called Susana and she was wonderful! 

She sent us prices from 3 different suppliers for 3 different qualities of corks and asked if we wanted her to send samples.  We didn't really have time to have samples sent, so we told her that we would trust her opinion, but wanted to understand more about the differences between the prices.  Apparently , according to Susana, the only difference between the lowest price-range and the highest price-range qualitatively is the visual aspect.  The occurence of TCA, which causes a wine to become corked is the same for the highest priced corks as it is for the lowest.  Many wineries prefer to have a perfectly smooth-surface cork that's very pretty and that 's why they pay the highest amount of money.  Wow, I had no idea. When I explained to her what kind of wine we make and what price it would be selling for, she recommended that we choose one of the cheaper grades, assuring us that they would be of excellent quality for our wine.  So, we'll see how they turned out! One of the best things about it was that we also were able to have our logo and "La Gramière"  fire-printed onto them! I guess when you're starting out like we are, it's the little things get you excited.   I'll post a picture as soon as I get them! (This one is from the Uva Portugal website.)

Thanks so very much to Susana for her expert services! 

The perfect Vineyard Vehicle!

For those of you who don't know me, this will provide you with some insight to my personality.  Yes, it's true, in my mind, this is the PERFECT car.  It's a 1978 Renault 4L, affectionately called a "quatrelle" (the word for 4, quatre, and L all run together pronounced cat-trelle.)  I took this picture yesterday after I had finished the "suckering" in our big vineyard.  As I was walking towards it, my heart swelled up with love just looking at it.  A little lopsided, dented and scratched in many places, not to mention that the seats are falling apart, I just love driving around in it. It's so French! and since I am an American (though most of our friends say that we are more French than they are) it's nice to have a little putt-putt car to get around in. It fits the dog, all of our pruning gear, bags of cement, even wine lees to take to the distillery, really what more could you ask for!  Everyone that comes to visit loves to drive it too, and they all want their pictures taken in it. 

As I was leaving my house this morning the plastic thingy that holds the sun-visor cracked, and subsequently the visor hung down so that it was right in my line of vision.  I ran back in to get some packing tape to hold it up, that didn't stick, so I tried duct tape, that worked for a bit, but I had to stop once or twice on my way to re-stick the tape.  Finally when I got there, I took a screw-driver out of the handy toolbox that Matt put there, and started to unscrew the plastic holder, but when I did, the whole roof-liner came unscrewed with it!  So in the end I just twisted it until it popped out!  What a great car!

Grape Flowers!

Ever seen them?  Well they are easy to miss.  The little bud suddenly bursts and there are all these little  tiny feelers with little white puffs at the ends that make up the flower. (How very scientific of me, I know! Click on the picture to see more detail.)  There is also a sweet fragrance that they give off, very subtle, but once you notice it, there's no mistaking that the vineyards are in full flower. It's amazing, you go away for a week and suddenly everything has changed. Both the Syrah and the Grenache vines are in flower, the Mourvèdre is, as usual, a bit behind.  There's an old adage in Burgundy, that harvest will be 100 days from flowering.  If you count 100 days from today that means we'll be harvesting around September 9th...we'll see if it holds true for the south!

Getaria - Txakoli

Ever heard of it?  Well, I must admit I had. Txakoli, a white wine from the Spanish Basque country, has been in my wine repertoire for some time.  Never had it risen so high though, as this week when we were in the Spanish Basque country, just a few kilometers past San Sebastien.  We happily "quaffed" a bottle of TXOMIN ETXANIZ a txacoli from Getaria in a wonderful local restaurant called Iribar.

Txakoli, is known for being a "fresh" crisp local basque wine, great with sea food,  that's how I remembered it from my days at "Coaltrain Wine and Liquors", a great wine store in Colorado Springs.  In fact, it's thanks to Peggy McKinlay, Jim Little, and Jeff Frees, all of Coaltrain, that I learned anything about wine at all.  I distinctly remember a conversation with Peggy in which she asked me if I could explain to her the difference between Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.  At the time I couldn't !!! Boy, have I come a  long way since then.  After all these years, it's still to Peggy and Jim and Jeff that I owe all of my gratitude, for without them, I might still not know the difference between these two grape varietals.  They gave me my first job in the wine business. In the end, I guess I owe it all to them, for without them, I could have very easily been led astray.... I still consider myself today, a Coaltrain alumni.

After lunch, we decided to try to go buy some of the wine. I asked the waitress in my best Spanish and she understood me, more or less, that I wanted to know where the winery was.  She warned us that there may not be anyone there, that often they were out in the vineyards in the afternoon. We wanted to try anyway.  We drove up the steep road leading out of the village and into the countryside that overlooked the Atlantic.  In fact, the roads were so steep they almost gave me vertigo. After asking some locals along the roadside, we found the right driveway that led down to the winery.  There were several wineries around, but not one had a sign. I guess they're not really interested in selling direct from the winery.  Once there, we saw a few cars in the driveway, but not a soul in sight, just a fairly mean-looking boxer.  We sort of made peace with him while we walked all around the place looking for someone, some sign of life, but no luck.  Nobody was around, either that or they were hiding from us! We got a good look at the vineyards though, pretty mind-boggling really. They are all trellised so that in order to pick them or prune them, you would have to reach up to do the cutting,  not to mention the steep, steep hillsides. I just kept thinking to myself, thank goodness we moved to southern France where the vines are nice and low!

Lack of Experience...and Lessons learned

Arrgh! Bit of a setback on Thursday.  I decided, just out of curiosity, doubt, a hunch, I don't really know what, to call an enologist friend in Burgundy to chat about the latest analyses of the wine.  It's funny, and not so funny.  I am not an enologist,  not even close, so, when I receive these bulletins, I have learned over the past few months to interpret some of the numbers, but some I still have no idea what they mean.  That's what happened when I received the last numbers for the malolactic fermentation, I had no idea what they meant.  So I called our enologist to find out what he thought and he didn't get back to me right away.  So, I decided to call my friend Kyriakos Kynigopoulos, who is a well-known enologist in Burgundy and also a good friend. 

Stop! Hold the presses, or the bottling machine in this case, it turns out the malo-lactic fermentation isn't finished, and according to Kyriakos, there's no way we can bottle the red in 2 weeks. Ugh! Just when I was getting everything in place.  Needless to say, I was a little disappointed and not very happy with our enologist. To be fair though, he is used to working with big cooperative wineries that just want to get the product out and get it sold. He said that we still could bottle if we want in June but that we would have to give it a good dose of sulphur to block the malo-lactic fermentation! Just what I want to do, after working so hard all year to make an organic wine, right,  add lots of sulphur just so we can bottle it a few months early!  I asked him what he would do if it was his wine, he said he would wait.  Arrghh! At the end of our conversation I think he understood me a bit better and realized that for us the most important thing is the quality of the wine, not the need to bottle it early! 

Now I know what the Malo-lactic numbers mean, and believe me I won't forget it! We are still going to bottle our rosé on the 7th, that is ready and waiting to be drunk!  The tourists are starting to arrive in Uzès and we want them to be quaffing Domaine de la Gramière rosé while sitting on the Place aux Herbes!

On another note, remember those cherry blossoms I took a picture of last month? Take a look at them now! Yum....

Another Order!

Big News! Last Saturday night we were invited over to our friend's house, the ones who import wine into Germany.  We met a couple of months ago and quickly realized that we had many things in common in terms of our views on wine.  Martin Kössler and Dunja Ulbricht have a retail store in Nürnberg Germany, www.weinhalle.de  and also sell to many restaurants throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland.  They work with many of the same producers that my former boss Kermit Lynch does, but also with producers from all over Europe and even the US. 

When had our big dinner to decide how to blend our wines, I invited Dunja in order to have her expert opinion.  Martin was away on business so he missed out on the chance to taste our wines.  Dunja liked our wines and therefore wanted Martin to taste them too.  Wow! How exciting.  In the end Martin was very happy with the quality, saying that it was truly amazing for a first vintage.  He ordered a whole pallet! That's 600 bottles!  Not bad for their first order!  Yippee!

We had lunch together again on Sunday and while we were talking they said that they receive over 2000 samples a year from wineries that want them to import their wines.  It really made us realize how very lucky we were to have met them. That personal contact is so very important, without it our wine would have been just another sample sitting on their shelf waiting to be tasted! Even more important though, is that we have found new friends that love to eat great meals and drink great wines just as much as we do, and they live in a village just 10 minutes away.  Could be bad for both of us!

We Passed!

Well it's official! I received the word today that we can call our wines "Côtes-du-Rhône".  I was supposed to hear on Friday, but when I called they said that there was a problem and I would have to call the INAO (Institut National des Appellations d'Origine- the French Appellations Institute, or the big cheese when it comes to giving the go ahead.)  Geez! I couldn't figure out what it could be.  I called right away, thinking it was that we had vinified our wine outside of the "Côtes-du-Rhône" appellation (for which I have received special permission).  After I explained who I was and why I was calling, I got a very nice man on the phone who told me that the problem was that I hadn't written the appellation on each of the vats (meaning the words "Côtes-du-Rhône on each tank)!  Luckily, he was pretty laid back and told me that if I promised to do it that he would go ahead and put the paper-work through, and that someday soon, he would stop by to verify that it had been done.  So there you have it, we can now officially bottle our wine under the label "Côtes-du-Rhône".   Even more exciting, I finally got through to the bottling truck, and scheduled the date,  June 7th it is!  Only 3 weeks away! Here's a mock up of the label, what do you think?

New Look!

Many thanks to my sister-in-law Elise Kling-Marty (Matt's sister) for creating my custom banner.  Looks pretty slick doesn't it?  Hope you like it as much as I do!  Elise has helped us so much with our new endeavor, she created our logo, and even flew over for a week this winter to help us prune!  Now that's sisterly love. She looks pretty good in her pruning uniform!

Lots of things going on here, lots of entries coming your way, but right now I'm headed out to the vineyards for some "suckering". ( I think that's what they call it in California.)  We call it débourgeonnage.  It's the main spring vineyard work, removing the "suckers" or buds that are growing in the wrong places.  In addition to that we're pulling thistles and other various nasty weeds that are sprouting up too! Good thing the weather is so nice.

Agrément

One of the requirements of the French appellation controlée system is that in order to be able to call your wine Côtes du Rhône, you not only have to have vineyards within the appellation, you also, among numerous other conditions, have to present your finished wine for tasting and analyses.   Once you are ready to present your wines, there is a first form to fill out in which you declare, for the entire harvest, the surface area of vineyards and the quantity of wine that was made from those parcels that year.   The second form you send in when you are ready for them to come collect the tank samples.  Each tank in the winery must bear a number, the volume of wine it contains and also the wine it contains; for example: 

Tank #2, 65 hectoliters, Côtes du Rhone Rouge

Yesterday they came to collect the samples for our wines, it was a very interesting experience.

The man is holding what they call a canne à pêche (a fishing pole) used to take tank samples, this one was designed to hold 4 bottles.  I plunged the bottles down into the wine and held them there until all the air bubbled out and the bottles were full.  He then corked them, stuck labels on them and  gave one back to me.  There's one bottle for  the tasting, one that will be analysed, one that they will keep as a control bottle and one that I have to keep for 2 months as a control.  During this time you are not allowed to transfer the wines to different tanks or to blend them further. 

I asked how long it would take to get the results and he told me that they would be tasted next Thursday,  on Friday I can call the Centre de Dégustation for the results. If they are refused you can present them 2 more times, if, for the third time a wine is refused, it is automatically sent to the distillery to become industrial alcohol!
Let's keep our fingers crossed that they pass the first time! I am quite confident that they will...

It can make your head spin!

Bottling.  It's pretty crazy.  Since the malo-lactic fermentation didn't finish before winter, I kind of let some of  the details of bottling slip thinking that we wouldn't be able to bottle right away. Well, now that the warm days have returned and the temperature of the wine has risen, the malo magically did it's thing and we can go ahead and bottle.  Great news, but boy do I have to get my act together!

The logo is done and I've met with the printers for the label, but  I still have to create the back label and write the text.  Then there's the actual bottling.  Here in France there are several companies that specialize in "mise en bouteille au domaine" or domaine bottling.  The law states that in order to put that oh so important phrase on your bottle, it must in fact be bottled at the winery.  Small wineries like ours and even much bigger ones, rely on bottling trucks that come to the winery to filter, bottle, cork, label, capsule and even box the wine.  These companies put a bottling line on the back of an semi, come with a team of people and in a day will bottle our entire production, that is to say, 13,000 bottles.  Some wineries choose to bottle their wines a little at a time as a function of the space they have to stock the wine and also as a function of the orders they have pending.  I want to bottle it all at once. This way it will guarantee that each bottle of Domaine de la Gramière Côtes du Rhône, is the same.  If we were to bottle say, half now and half in 6 months, the two wines would likely be quite different since the wine in bottle would evolve differently in bottle than that which was left in the