The Harvest has begun

Catherine Roussel of CRB dispatching pickers Clos Roche Blanche, Mareuil-sur-Cher (Loire)
This is it : the 2011 vintage, with all its suprise turnabouts, the drought, the heat in the spring, then a rainy and cold summer, plus some sun to cover it all at the end, this is all behind us and harvest time has come. From now on, it's hard to predict what this shaky weather will yield, and we might get a surprise, as these artisan winemakers whom we like to follow tend to make the best of difficult conditions.
At Clos Roche Blanche, the harvest began friday last week, this was still august and the Sauvignon grapes are the first to be picked. While Didier stays in the cellar or at the press, Catherine manages the team of pickers who will be around there from 2 to 3 weeks. You can see on this picture the joyful diversity of the vineyard, where flowers and various plants grow, some of them being edible like wild garlic, leeks or lamb's lettuce. The soil is itself fully alive, even if we don't visualize it so easily, with an active microbian life and happy earthworms. The wine is what it is undoubtly because of all this.

Laurent waiting for his load The hardest job in the harvest may be to carry the grape load from the middle of the row to the gondola at the other end. Laurent Saillard was in charge that day. Laurent works year around on the vineyards of both Clos Roche Blanche and Noëlla Morantin, and when we dropped there monday, Noëlla hadn't begun to pick yet (she began this tuesday), so he could help at CRB.
There is always a high demand for pickers in the French wine regions, and if you're around and look hard, you should find a job as a picker. You have to take care of your accomodation though, few wineries lodge the pickers nowadays. You must also have working papers to work in France (or in the EC), because there are sometimes surprise checks from the French administration in the vineyard to see if all the pickers are registered (the penalty is enormous for the grower is someone is caught without valid papers). As I get emails about the issue from non-European citizens, I can advise as a solution to register as student in France (ideally in a viticulture school), which should allow side jobs like this one. Catherine Roussel, picking Catherine manages the pickers and checks their proper repartition among the rows, but she also picks like everyone else. Her daughter Claire whom I met the previous saturday with Catherine on the marketplace of Saint-Aignan, has also taken part to the picking, but she wasn't there that day. She is a nice young woman as you can see on this excellent picture by Jim Budd (I'm jealous). who like usual, has been touring the Loire wineries during these harvest days and brings back good informations and pictures. Claire spends a few days in the region and occasionally plays with a yellow ukelele. Silent companion Dogs are around as usual during the harvest, there were a couple of them that day, including the one of Catherine and Didier, pictured here. The mother of this dog passed away last year, alas. Both of them would always follow the pickers and keep cool from the sun under the rows or under the tractor.
Asked about the quality of the harvest, Catherine says that it's not too bad. Of course there's some rot here and there resulting from the rainy summer, and they sort these grapes out, but there's also some wasp bites and they must spot the grapes with these bites and cut them down. What you see in the gondola is otherwise a very beautiful harvest, very healthy. The acidity is low at this stage after the press, like 4 grams, even though the nights were often cold in summer. The rain main explain that. Sugar is fine, between 12 and 12,5. The Sauvignon of this plot will go into the cuvée Sauvignon # 2. Filling of the back basket Let's follow Laurent for a while to see how his particular job unfolds. Here is the filling part, where he walks around the pickers and have them unload their buckets into his back container. When you have a couple of buckets, it's OK I guess, but when it's more than half full, it must be a pain to walk around. On the picture here, the pickers have just finished a row and are going to be dispatched for the following ones. Climbing atop the gondola It's full. You head to the end of the row where the tractor and the gondola awaits you, and you climb over it. As you can see, it's nearly full. The grapes seemed nice and healthy, and there were many ladybirds on the grapes. Empty ! after bending over the gondola on the side, the basket unloads smoothly. Seems easy but needs probably some training and a good back. Ready for the next That's it. Laurent is ready for another load. When this row is over he will probably drive to the press and unload the gondola.

Intensive cleaning at Noëlla Morantin Noëlla Morantin, Pouillé (Loire)
As Noella Morantin hadn't begun to harvest when we passed (she began the following day), we decided to make a surprise visit at her facility. Noëlla rents 7 or 8 hectares of vineyard to Clos Roche Blanche and her winery is just on the other side of the woods that you saw on the pictures above. As expected, the chai was in full preparation mode for the harvest, with extensive water cleaning on everything. Hygiene is essential for natural winemaking because there's usually no sulphur adding during the fermentation process or at the arrival of the grapes. Spotless chai The chai and vat room, with the traditional tronconic wooden vats, was spotless, the ground in particular. But the walls kept their precious ambiance built over the years and which must be so important for a vinification with wild yeasts.
Noëlla has some adjustments made in the chai recently : the cement ground wasn't flat in some areas and she had it evened up. Now it will be more functional and easier to move vats or other tools around. Martin, the king of hose spray gun Martin who is helping Noëlla clean everything before the harvest, is from Argentina. He lives in Paris otherwise, where he is a professional clown. He says that it will be hard to leave this area and return to the big city...
The turquoise boxes on the picture are the harvest boxes, they will be filled with the pickers' buckets and hauled to the chai. See my story on Noëlla's harvest 2 years ago, you can see how dry the grass was then compared to 2011. Noëlla Morantin in the cask room I love taking Noëlla's picture, not that I'm reluctant to do it for other vignerons, but you know, we all have our favorite subjects, and she is one of mine...
Noëlla just bottled her Cot 2010 and she gave us a bottle that we drank the same evening with a couple of friends. Gorgeous drink, suave liquid food, you don't expect that from a Côt which is not even a year old.

Comments

[Mack Owen]

Thank you for this wonderful posting. I really enjoyed it. Any viticultural schools in that area I can look into?

[Bertrand]

Yes, Mack, there's the Viticulture school of Amboise along the Loire river (it's 30 kilometers from there). You need some basic knowledge in French to follow the courses I guess :

http://www.epl.amboise.educagri.fr/

The school even makes its own wines !

http://www.epl.amboise.educagri.fr/vinsdulyce.html

Here are the types of training that they teach (click on the different links) :

http://www.epl.amboise.educagri.fr/les-metiers/metiers-de-la-vigne-et-du-vin.html

[TWG]

Thanks for the update. Did you mean ladybirds or ladybugs?

I meant ladybugs, isn't that the right name for these cute orange bugs ?

[TWG]

Yep, ladybugs. Seems to be a lot of concern in the US about ladybugs and Burgundy. Any concern in the Loire?

...
Haven't heard anything, or could be that I didn't listen closely. I'll ask one of these days...
Bert