la gramiere

The moment we've all been waiting for!

Weedbadger syrah 2
Vidéo envoyée par lagramiere

Here it is in action! Yes, it's true, the Weed Badger is up and running. We're pretty happy with how it works, now Matt just has to practice! I think he'll get better at it as we go! There's also an automatic sensor that needs to be installed,which will make it much easier, but it is recommended that you learn to use the manual function first. That's fine, but if you screw up, this thing just rips the vine right out! We've only lost a few, but we certainly don't want to lose anymore. I have decided that Matt will be the official Weed Badger operator, I'm not sure I could handle it! Another video to follow...

Oops!

Here's a good one. 

Friday night I was relaxing with a cup of tea waiting for Matt to get home from a business trip to Zurich.  The phone rings and it's Mr. Paume, the man we bought our vineyards from and from who we are renting our white vineyards.  We had asked him to grind up our vine cuttings in all of our vineyard, we don't have a chipper and they're so expensive, it's just as easy to pay him to do it.  Well, he tells me while he was shredding the cuttings he noticed that we hadn't pruned one of the white vineyards, the clairette.  What?? I said.  Of course we have.  We finished pruning it about 3 weeks ago.  No, he said, you haven't.  I was completely perplexed.  We had spend 2 days freezing our butts off with my parents pruning it, attaching the new canes to the wires and everything.  I couldn't understand, I thought he'd lost his mind, and he thought I'd lost mine.  "I'll go look again, and call you right back," he said. 

Five minutes later he calls me back.  No, you haven't done it.  Holy shit,  we pruned someone else's vineyard that happens to be about the same size and right next to it.  Ugh.  Not only did we prune it, we plowed it and put our nifty organic fertilizer on it last weekend!  I said to him," Oh no!  Do you think he'll be angry? "  "No, he replied, I think he'll be thrilled.  But you should call him anyway. More importantly though, you've got to get out there and prune the Clairette right away."

So guess what we did on Saturday...??? 

Unbelievable, but, in the end I suppose it's better than harvesting the wrong vineyard, right?

Vine food and body building

We recently had our the soil of our various vineyards analyzed, and found that some of them were  out of balance and that we needed to give them a boost.  As you certainly remember we spread some horse manure this fall, but we decided that it probably wasn't quite enough.  While we were in Germany last fall for a wine fair, we met some other organic and bio-dynamic winemakers from the Loire -Domaine de Bellivière -who told us about a product that is approved for organic viticulture that they used and had very good results with.  We decided to give it a try.   This is definitely something we don't want to do often; number 1, because it costs a small fortune, and number 2 because we'd like to seed nitrogen fixing plants, and find other ways to build up the humus of our soil naturally without having to have to use these types of fertilizers, even though they are organic. 

The product is called Bio-Post Bouchon, and it is, according to the company's literature, it helps regenerate the microbial life of soil and also helps fix nitrogen.  It's full of micro-organisms and microbial flora that help to revitalize the soil, especially ones that have been weed-killed in the past like ours.  So we ordered 4 tonnes of it!  That's 4 pallets of forty 25 kilo bags.  Yippee!  What a way to spend your Saturday!  We asked the former owner of our vineyards, M. Paume, if we could borrow his spreader, and he of course agreed.  We told him we were fertilizing our vineyards (well, we left out the organic part)  and he thought that was a very good idea.  The only problem was our PTO shaft on our tractor wasn't long enough, so he had to loan us his tractor!  That was super nice!  We got it all set up, Matt driving his tractor (I didn't dare)!  So once we got the first load in the hopper, we realized that I would have to transport all of the bags of "fertilizer" up to the vineyards; otherwise, Matt would spend most of his time going back and forth from the vineyards to the hangar to fill up. 

What a great job.  First filling the back of the car with these 50-pound bags of fertilizer and then unloading them up at each vineyard.  Then Matt would slit them open, lift them up chest high, and dump them into the spreader.  By the end of the day we figured I had moved 4 metric tons, twice and Matt once!  Now that's a great way to get in shape for summer. 

Today it's gently raining on our newly spread soil amendment (I hate the word fertilizer!) and this weekend we are planning on using the Weed Badger to work it into the soil.  Though they are predicting rain all week, so it may be too wet in the vineyards for the Weed Badger!  But we'll never complain about rain here, well at least not spring rain, this winter's rainfall is again far below average, AGAIN, so we are hoping to get more before it gets too hot.

Getting Certified

Since we bought our vineyards in late 2004 we have farmed them organically using only copper and sulfur in the vineyards along with many biodynamic preparations such as infusions of nettles, horsetail, willow and other natural remedies.  We didn't apply for organic certification though,  at the time it seemed unnecessary; for us, farming organically was a life choice, not some fashionable band wagon we were trying to jump on.  Recently though, we've felt differently.  More and more it is apparent to us that we need to have that certification, even if we never put the logo on our label, we must be able to say that we are certified organic. 

The certification process takes 3 years.  The first year you can't say anything on your label or anywhere in your literature about organic conversion.  The second and third years you are allowed to say that your wine is made with grapes that are "in organic conversion" and finally after the third full year you can be organically certified.  Currently in France there is only a certification for "organically grown grapes" and not organic wine or winemaking, that is changing though and we will soon be able to be certified in both, grape growing and winemaking.

It was Martin Kössler our German importer that first asked us to go ahead with the organic certification, he is a big proponent  of organic and biodynamic wines and is planning a convention of sorts in 2009 and wanted us to be a part of it.  Martin felt though, that if we were to participate, we needed the certification, and I agree.  It's too easy to say you're organic and/or biodynamic and then say that you're not certified because you haven't taken the time or because you don't believe in the label, more and more I truly believe that it's an important process that needs to be supported by all farmers who refuse to use chemicals in their fields. 

We met with the agent from Ecocert who will oversee our conversion.  First we visited each parcel (we have 6) he looked at the surrounding vineyards, for potential contaminations from neighbors, looked at the soil, at the weeds growing in our vineyards and at the general state of our vines.  He asked us some questions and finally I realized that he was trying to find out if we were earnest, trying to see if we were hiding anything and wanted simply to be certified without really believing in the process.  Of course in the end it was pretty easy to see that since we have all kinds of weeds and other interesting plants growing in our vineyards, that we were pretty serious about organics.  We then had to take him to the place where we store our tractor so that he could make a list of any chemical products that we might still have in reserve before going organic.  We showed him the half bag of sulfur and the half bag of copper that was left over from last year, both of which are allowed in organic agriculture, and he seemed content that we were on the up and up. 

So we signed a bunch of papers, he gave us a three ring binder in which we now have to keep track of   all of the products we purchase for use in the vineyards etc.  We are on the way to being certified organic grape growers, and as soon as we can be certified for winemaking we will be too.  There's another good one.  There are lots and lots of people out there who grow their grapes organically, then when it comes to winemaking will put anything and everything into the vat including GMO yeasts, enzymes, vitamins... all sorts of industrially produced things.  That seems completely incomprehensible to me.  Our one caveat is SO2,  which is used as a preservative in wine,  I'm not willing to give it up, I've tasted too many funky,  bizarre, unstable wines recently to go 100% SO2 free.   We don't use a lot, and I'm sure could use even less, but we're just not ready to go there quite yet. 

Weed Badger Progress!

I'm sure you have all been waiting with baited breath to find out how the Weed Badger assembly is coming along.  Matt has spent lots of time working on it, and at times has regretted not ordering it pre-assembled.  But in the end he's learned a lot about how the whole thing works, which should help in the event of a problem!  We even had to have our local blacksmith create a part that would help stabilize the arm.  Matt measured and re-measured drew a model and then finally decided to create a model out of cardboard so that he was sure it would work.  We took the model to the blacksmith and explained it to him, he said he would have it done in a couple of days.  The very next day he came by with it, it weighed a ton.  He said;  "you'll have to see, I made this part a bit shorter than the model, the piece of iron I chose was too short.  If it doesn't work, bring it back and I'll fit it."  Hmm, seems like Matt might not have spent all of that time making a model if he felt that the blacksmith could wing it!  Of course it didn't work, it was too short.  Matt took it back, the guy fixed it, but it still wasn't right.  So he ended up grinding some holes out himself and cursing the blacksmith for not having followed his directions.  Ugh.

Then there was the "thingy" he needed to attach the arm to his newly forged part.  The Weed Badger parts included a top link (a part used in a 3-point hitch)  to use to attach the arm to the tractor via our newly crafted part.  The only problem is that our vintage Massey Ferguson isn't quite as big as those new fangled John Deere's that everyone has in the US, so the top link was way too long.  So Matt took it over to our friend Peter Till's house and they had fun doing what boys do, cutting it down and welding it back together with sparks flying everywhere!  Finally we've  got the whole thing put together - well I can't really take much credit- but it's just about there.

We actually fired it up on Friday, pulled it out of the garage and started up the hydraulics, it was all going great until I noticed that there was a small, slow leak in at the oil filter.  Matt tried and tried to tighten it, but it clearly says to only tighten it by hand.  Ugh.  What to do?  There's over 60 litres of oil in the tank.  Do we drain the whole darn thing?  And if so, where do we put all that oil?  Matt had the brilliant idea of putting the pump on the oil drum into the reservoir and pumping it back into the drum.   The fun isn't over yet!!

But we did get it running and even got the head to rotate, so we know he's got 99% of it right!  It's just that little, tiny 1% that's the fly in the ointment.

Don't forget to vote, if you haven't already! :-)   

And the winner is....

Maybe me!  The nominees for the American Wine Blog Awards have just been announced and La Gramière has been nominated in the category for Best Winery Blog!  I realize that my blog has a more narrow focus than most wineries, therefore a bit less of a broader readership, but I'd sure love to win! Not everyone dreams of living in Southern France and making wine, and after reading this blog for awhile, I would imagine that I've convinced some that it's not a dream at all, but more of a nightmare! 

We've spent the last 4 days pruning, this is our last push, spring has sprung here and the sap is rising, some of the buds are very close to bursting open.  So, the pruning has to get done.  By the end of Northern Planting Time next Thursday, I hope to be finished.  The mistral wind has been howling this week, and my poor parents decided to come out to help us prune!  Once again we have our family out there with us slaving away.  I looked up over the vines at one point and asked them if they ever thought for a minute that they'd be spending their retirement pruning vineyards in southern France.  My mom replied; "Retirement, what retirement? " and my dad; "NO, not even for a second!" So there you have it, you never know where life will take you.

Easter weekend is always a time when, according to the bio-dynamic calendar, it is "unfavorable" to do any sort of work in the vineyards, we call these "black days".  Right now we are looking at 3 days where we can't prune or do any sort of vineyard work, I can't say I mind!  That doesn't, of course, mean that we won't be working...  We have an 8:30 meeting at the vineyards which I'll tell you about later,  then it's back to the garage to put the finishing touches on the Weed Badger!!! Stay tuned,  it will be making it's debut very very soon!

So, if you love this blog and you want to see it win, please vote!  And tell all of your friends to vote too!  Check out all of the other blogs in the other categories, there are some great ones out there, and lots of newcomers this year.  It's very exciting!

Le Mazet and the Saladin Sisters

Saturday night we  were invited to a party at a  "restaurant" called "Le Mazet" by the Saladin sisters of Domaine Saladin in Saint Marcel d'Ardèche.  It was in celebration of the first anniversary of the re-opening of the family restaurant called "Le Mazet" (or little house in provençal) .  A Mazet is typically a small stone building that was built in the vineyards for the vigneron to take shelter in during the cold winter months while out pruning or otherwise working in the vineyards.  It's not really a house, but a place to warm up or even cool off in the summer.  Nowadays it's often it's just a small one-room cottage or a small house that is used only in the summer with no heat, but if you're lucky there's running water.

We were invited by Marie-Laurence and Elisabeth Saladin, or as I like to call them the "Saladin Sisters," who are well-known here in the southern Rhône.  These two women stand out for their hospitality and - for lack of a better word - "sunny" personalities.  There really is no better way to describe them, they are the most genuine and generous people I have met in a long time, and their wines reflect their personalities flawlessly.  Natural and honest, never over extracted or over-done, they are wines that you want to drink, and not simply taste.  For me, in a wine tasting, this is one of the most important criteria.  There are many, many wines out there that show well in a tasting, polished, lightly oaked, soft rounded tannins, but somehow not real, if you will.  Wines that are as real and honest as those of Domaine Saladin are rare to find, and a pleasure to drink. 

The restaurant, which is more like a grill, with a short, simple menu, is a breath of fresh air.  No frills here, just fresh, high-quality ingredients that make your mouth water.  Piping hot grilled sardines were served as an appetizer, then they brought out a nettle soup that was thick and concentrated, we could just feel the cleansing properties of the nettles as we ingested this wild concoction. Finally there came wooden plates full of perfectly grilled local beef that just melted in your mouth, all washed down by Saladin Côtes du Rhône.

We were lucky enough to arrive early before the crowds of villagers, family and friends filled the restaurant.  It was even more crowded due to the fact that it was windy and raining outside which is rare for our region, bad timing, but lots of fun with a fire in the fireplace and a band singing in the back room.   We talked and talked wine with Marie-Laurence and Elisabeth, tasted their 2007s and then our 2007s.  Finally they were pulled away by the call of their guests that were thirsty for more of their delicious wine, so we made our way home down the windy roads of the Ardèche and the Gard happily recalling the wonderful evening we spent with our new friends.


Definitely seek out these wonderful wines!  They are imported into the US by Becky Wasserman Selection

If you're visiting the area:                    Restaurant Le Mazet

Saint Marcel d'Ardèche Tel : 04.75.90.50.46

restaurantlemazet@orange.fr

 

Checking in

Well, this week went by without me writing one blog entry, and without me really even thinking about it!  Of course it's always in the back of my mind, but for some reason I really didn't consider taking the time to write until now. 

Let's see, all of sorts of fun things happened this week, I made an appointment with the accountant, always a fun thing to do.  I think I might be her very least favorite client.  The first year I arrived with a file folder full of receipts and handed it over to her.  She was nice enough explained a few things to me that I needed to do and that was that.  The second year was a bit bumpier.  I am not good at keeping track of accounts and expenses etc.  I have a folder I put all of my receipts into it and hope that magically at the end  of the year we will get a big chunk of the VAT the we paid out back. 

The VAT is basically a 19.6% sales tax that we are able to get back when we buy any equipment, bottles, tractor parts, have work done in the cellar etc.  Pretty much anything winery related we can get this money back.  Subtracted out is the VAT that we collect when we sell wine from the winery directly to the consumer.  We don't sell much wine out of the winery largely because we're not very well set up for it, we haven't taken the time to promote the "winery" being open to visitors and mostly because it means that one of use would have to be here to greet these potential customers and sell the wine.  The amount we get back can be pretty substantial so, I've been getting better at keeping track of things.  Isabelle, out accountant has also gotten much better at reminding me to bring her my receipts ahead of time so that she's not inundated with my mess right at the last minute, like she was last year!

Anyway that's boring.  But my week seems to have been a series of boring things, things that have to happen in order to keep plugging along here.  I've finished all of the Côtes du Rhône tastings for Bettane & Desseauve, so now I've been trying to buckle in and get writing, but there's always something that slows me down.  Writing this blog for example, or contacting several wineries asking them to send samples of wines that haven't been tasted yet.  Or having Thierry Desseauve ask me about a certain winery that didn't send samples, then I have to track them down to find out why.  It could be that they don't want to be in the guide, it could be that they simply forgot, but all of those things take time.

Yesterday we shipped out 100 cases to Kermit Lynch's Berkeley store and 28 cases to Cavatappi Distribuzione in Seattle.  That was yet another story!  I get a message on the answering machine from the driver saying that he didn't know where our place was so he was parked in front of another winery about 10 km away from here waiting for my call.  Hmm.  That's interesting, he's a truck driver and he doesn't even have a map, or sense enough to at least follow the signs to our village???  Even better, he didn't leave his number.  Luckily our voice mail gives you the number before the message, but I had to hang up and call back to get the number!  About 20 minutes later he pulls up in front of the house in a huge semi.  I run out to greet him, look at the back of the truck and realize that there's no lifting apparatus on the back of the truck ( I don't know what you call the tail gate part that lifts merchandise up and down from trucks, in French it's called a "hayon".) 

I run up to the cab and ask him.  He says no, he doesn't have one.  What, you don't have a fork lift?  ARGH!  I felt like saying, "listen buddy, last year we had a dirt floor and no pallet-mover, this year we have concrete and a pallet-mover and now you want me to have a fork-lift!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????  Where exactly would I put one?  In our front courtyard?  He looked at his paper work and at the date the shipment would be leaving the port in Marseille, well maybe we could come back.  No way, I'm not missing that boat! He came all the way here I wasn't going to send him away.  There is one fork lift that I know of in our village at the local garden store/agricultural supply luckily we've become friendly with the staff, maybe they'd come to help us.   I hopped on my bike since it would be faster than the car, and as luck would have it the guy I know best was out in the parking lot.  I begged him to help, putting on my most charming and coy smile.  He asked the other guy if it was ok if he took it for a few minutes, and it was a done deal.  Twenty minutes later the wine was loaded and headed to the port.  Phew.  The whole experience left me with a happy feeling inside, it's great to know that you live in a place where others are willing to lend a hand especially in a tight situation like that!

Otherwise, things are just about normal, well I suppose even that is normal these days... 

Indie Wine Fest - Here we come!

A couple of months ago I got an email from Alice Feiring asking if I had any plans to be in the US  this May.  Hmm, I didn't really have any plans to go, but it could be arranged, why, I asked?  Well, it turns out Alice - blogger, wine writer, and now wine book author extraordinaire - is organizing a seminar on Natural Winemaking for the Portland Indie Wine Festival, and she was thinking I might be a good person to invite to participate in the seminar.  Wow! Me?  I'm certainly no expert, we're just trying to figure things out here, I don't even have an enology degree or anything, and it seems like we've had nothing but problems from the get-go.  Well, for Alice that was precisely the point, I could be a real-live witness to the trials and tribulations of natural winemaking.  But just that phrase already poses a problem...

Here in France there is a big movement taking place called;  "Vins Naturels."  A vin naturel here is a wine made without SO2 a preservative that is added to most wines.  Not to add SO2 is taking a big risk, bigger than using naturally occurring yeasts, not adding enzymes or not filtering, all of which we do, except the SO2, we add SO2.  So to me, I wasn't sure if Alice wanted to include me.  It turns out that I am natural enough for her definition, especially given that our total SO2 numbers are way lower than most.  So I've been invited and I am thrilled to be taking part in the Portland Indie Wine Festival!

The seminar is on May 2nd from 3-5pm at the Hotel Vintage Plaza in Portland, Oregon and is entitled: Natural Winemaking in the Age of Technology and Robert Parker.  Other participants in the seminar are Clark Smith of Vinovation and Doug Tunnell of Brick House Vineyards in Oregon.  It should make for a very interesting discussion!  I just hope I can hold my own with these guys, after all, I don't consider myself a winemaker, we're really just farmers who make wine with their grapes.   Alice will also be celebrating the publication of her new book, The Battle for Love and Wine - or- How I Saved the World from Parkerization .

It's a whole weekend packed with great winetasting events and seminars. There's two afternoons of Grand Tastings at Urban Wine Works and a VIP Cellar tasting which will allow you to taste rare wines from the Indie Wine Festival Cellar.   Oh wait, I forgot to mention that the wineries at Indie are small producers, people producing 2000 cases or less, people just like us.  It will be a great way to find new wines and talk directly to the people who are making them, not to mention to get a better idea of the "young" Oregon wine scene.

So, if you can't make it to France, why not come to Portland for a great wine and food weekend?!  Matt will be coming along too, and he'll certainly have some interesting things to add to the discussion, we'd love to see you there!

What were we thinking???

Every once-in-awhile, Matt and I ask ourselves that question; "What exactly were we thinking?  Who's idea was it to buy vineyards???"  This coming off of our third weekend in a row of vineyard work and now labeling, yet again.  Yes, you all must be getting sick of hearing about us labeling wine and packing boxes for shipment.  But, that's why you read my blog right?  To hear about the glamorous life of a "Winemaker" in southern France?! Well this is the reality of our "living the dream." On Thursday after pruning for awhile, I drove 2 hours to a town north of Beziers to pick up the labeling machine and capsule crimper, then 2 hours back.  Friday I pruned most of the day since it was the end of the Northern Planting Time for this month- the bio-dynamic calendar is what I am referring to here.  Then Saturday we got up early to get started boxing up our next shipments: 100 cases to the Kermit Lynch store in  Berkeley, 28 cases to Seattle, and 15 cases to Maryland!  Great news, we are thrilled that the wine is shipping, BUT!- we have to get it ready. 

Setting up the label machine always takes awhile, getting the spacing right between the front and back labels - not to mention trying to remember how to properly thread the labels through the maze of the machine.  Ugh, that was the first slow-down.  Then we go to plug in the capsule crimper and there's an error message on the display. Double Ugh.  Nothing doing, we call the man we rented it from, he has no idea, and is 2 hours away, he's no help what-so-ever.  Finally we realize that it's not going to work and if we're going to get these shipments ready for the end of the week, we'll have to find another capsule crimping machine.  Luckily our dear friends at Rouge Garance, have one and were willing to loan theirs to us for the weekend.  Once again I ask myself how we would get along with out them! 

Finally after getting it all set up, we started out about 3pm.  We got about three quarters of the way through the big order for Berkeley and we called it a night around 8pm. Poor Serge, who happened to stop by, got roped into helping us for an hour or so, which was a wonderful boost to our morale, his son Matthias loved helping and was a spitfire when it came to speeding us all up.

With the help of the Till family, we worked all day today, getting almost everything labeled, even beyond what we are immediately shipping.  We sent them home around 3 and decided to keep on working, we had another 500 or so bottles to label, plus maybe some magnums.  The only problem was to get to the magnums, we had to move a bunch of other bottles.  By this time our bodies were so sore from transferring the bottles, boxes, pallets, etc. around all day we just wanted to climb into a hot bath!  This was when I looked at Matt and asked him; "What were we thinking when we bought these vineyards??!!"  We both laughed, decided to work a bit longer and then call it a day, this is at about 7 o'clock.  Both of us have busy days tomorrow, I'm starting 3 days of tasting Côtes du Rhône and CDR Villages, and he's busy with his paying job at Cisco!

After we finished dinner, I was reading and he was studying up on some biodynamic practices.  Matt went upstairs to print something out and he discovered a fax that had arrived yesterday and had fallen onto the floor.  It was from Kermit Lynch.   He had just opened another one of the  bottles of the 2006 that we sent for him to taste late last year.   He was happy with it!  Saying, among other things... "it is a neat wine and should be a success."   

Just what we needed to hear.