Harvest 2012 in Burgundy

Picking on Pommard Beaune, Burgundy
The harvest has certainly been very atypical in 2012 in France, with weather conditions often cumulating hail, frost, rain-related disease and drought. I heard about growers, particularly the ones farming organic, who wouldn't have much to pick if any, because the relentless rain around july terminated what had been left over by the frost and hailstorm. And when there was still something to pick, a rigorous sorting was de rigueur because damaged grapes scattered among the clusters could endanger the whole harvest if let through.
all the pickers pictured on this page have been harvesting day after day the parcels from which Philippe Pacalet will make his cuvées and they are among the ones you can thank for rescuing the harvest. They're part of a weathered group of pickers who come originally from several countries across the globe and join this pagan ritual of the end of summer. this story will be about this pivotal and vibrant stage of the winemaking process.
As you may know, Philippe Pacalet is a Burgundy vintner who doesn't own any vineyards here but has still been making wine for a little more than 10 years, using purchased grapes sourced from carefully-selected terroirs and vines. His approach is basically non-interventionist and the growers he relies on are following his vineyard-management guidelines (not always fully organic). Finding the right parcels to purchase the grapes from has proven a hard job, as valuable terroirs are a rare commodity in the region.

Monica Pacalet picking the Pommard I had reached Burgundy the previous day from Paris on my motorbike, using slow-travel highways (not the toll highway), and I stayed at my sister's place in Chalon. Beaune is just 30 km from Chalon-sur-Saone, and I was in Beaune at the Pacalet facility early last saturday, Monica driving me from there to the slopes of Pommard 1er Cru Les Arvelets (Pommard being a village located just on the south-western outskirts of Beaune -- see linked map above) where the pickers had already been busy for a while. Monica Pacalet takes part to the hard work too, commuting between the chai and the vineyard if necessary, and picking in between and overlooking Philippes's kids all the while. This Brazil-born Burgundy transplant probably knows now more about Burgundy and winemaking now than most wine amateurs including the French ones. There's probably a side of this wine trade that she didn't suspect back then in Brazil, it's the avalanche of regulations and hassles that the French administration is pouring over the wineries, it's like if they devised ways to prevent businesses and particularly wineries from working. Last year, she says, they found out that wineries should have sun-protection cream available for pickers, I guess it's the welfare-state mindset applied to the horrible world of capitalist-oppressed hand-pickers.... This year they discovered that gloves were the hot issue of the year, and wineries should now have a pair of gloves for every picker. I guess these bureaucrats have never set a foot inn a vineyard (they're known to have never worked in a real-life business either), I imagine the nightmate of having to pick the grapes with gloves.... You do cut your fingers once in a while in this job, but if you end up using gloves, you can stop picking right away...
Philippe Pacalet typically comes and go from the harvest site to the chai where there's always some kind of activity, either a pressing of a white batch or some kind of cleaning or preparation for a fermenter soon to be filled.
You can see Johan on the picture on right, Johan is the maître de chai and he is is doubling here as harvest supervisor, directing the pickers to the remaining rows. The A team Pic above : Monica, an Italian native, with Alex (a Frenchman) -- Pic on left : Reka, from Hungary, and Monica
The pickers were quite diverse, there were teenagers from the region, a few other grownups from the region too, a group of Dutch men, one of them being 78 and very productive, and there was a large group of young people, many living together, and who seem to hop from picking contract to the next all the while living in their truck and changing region when the season is over (they also pick in Spain, and not only grapes). They are originally from scattered locations across Europe and further : Italy, France, Spain, Hungary, Brazil, and you could feel by watching them the pulse of freedom and adventure in motion. They looked like living on the edge of society, free like the wind, earning their living picking across the country and abroad, and travelling the rest of the time, I guess. I felt this was some sort of Bohemian life adapted to the 21st century, work, fun and togetherness at the same time. Ever watched Point Break ? I felt at times like I was an FBI operative trying to infiltrate a group of unruly surfers, I felt close to them deep in the heart but had to prove I was not on the surface of things.... On this picture you can see Monica who is from Italy and Alex from France (he was my facilitator as several of them weren't much talkative. Picking is a lot of hard work needing relentless effort and discipline, and this tight-knit community seemed to have plenty of it. I must dig a little more after all, they might well rob banks in their free time (they'd be wise to do it here, Beaune will be soon almost as rich as Bordeaux)...
Monica Pacalet (not the one on this picture, but the one from Brazil) told me that she was surprised at first by their outlook but that they were a very efficient team of pickers, skilled, serious, and resilient, even under difficult weather conditions.
Hmmm, utterly suspicious indeed... Skilled picking So at this stage I was left alone with my conjectures and thinking about choices and the real life : so many people think that life should remain locked in the secure boundaries of studies, career and financial prosperity. They may awake too late realizing that they passed the real challenge of adventure and wonder, which always means living day to day and without safety net, at least in the youth...
When I joined the pickers that morning, they had already had their sandwich break at around 9:30am (they started picking at 7:30), and this is one of the high points of the day, because at Pacalet, the pickers are treated with top food and drinks. I'm not sure I'm supposed to reveal all these secrets, because as a result the winery might be swamped by dozen of calls, not only from "surfers" wanting to join the Point-Break team, but from people who would just pay for all this including the food... During the harvest season around Beaune you see many foreigners from eastern Europe who buy cheap food, pasta and other things like that in the discount stores of the area, because many wineries just don't care and don't feed the pickers. The Pacalets have a different approach, they take care of the food, buy good stuff and as a result they also have often the same people year after year, which is important for a skilled picking and sorting of the grapes. Back to the food, sit down before reading this : they even have local, unfiltered beer, and Pacalet wine to go with the food. Other wineries will have a hard time hiring away these surfers, believe me, they'll be locked at Pacalet for the next few harvests to come.... Sorting the grapes Until a year ago, the food was prepared by Anthony Cointre, a traiteur/cook working with a truck and who was based in Rennes, Brittany, who would come specially here during the harvest with his truck to provide the meals. That was top food too, but alas the guy left France for New York (Brooklyn) for some project of his. I unadvertedly heard two surfers discussing the issue while picking, and one of them was telling the other (I swear I'm not making this up) that he left the country because you basically couldn't run a business anymore in France, with the accumulation of taxes and anti-business moves of the administration. This couldn't be more true, I thought, the business climate was already dissuasive under the previous administration, but new highs of tax craze have been reached recently : predictably, the new government has been raising the taxes considerably on everybody, after the usual straw-man-burning against the rich, the last gem being a confiscatory tax on the sale of startup companies, set between 60 % and 92 % of the value of the business (up from 35 %). The new administration also set in motion the hiring of tens of thousands of additional public sector employees. Big [obese] government versus [dwindling] businesses...
Following the departure of the usual cook, the Pacalets set up an alternative kitchen with the help of a friend, Dominique, a woman who is focusing on good products and ingredients. The kitchen is now based in a local gîte rented by the Pacalet and where the pickers spend the night. I'll experience the food myself later that day. But I'd have liked to check it by myself at 9:30 am too (just for fair reporting of course)...
On the picture above you can see the type of precise sorting needed in the harvest 2012. Elodie is holding a small cluster from which she swiftly takes out the undesired grapes, letting them fall on the ground so that only healthy grapes get into the bucket. Pic on left : Romain, who is otherwise holding a permanent job in the cellar and chai. Man in a beret All the pickers get free accomodation provided by the Pacalets : they sleep in a gîte, a rented house complete with kitchen and bedrooms, it's actualy a former boy-scouts facility with a park along a river. They're served their dinner there with the wine too of course. It's also convenient to commute everyone to the chosen parcel early in the morning. When people are scattered all over the region you always get people lost or arriving late. Plus, even the weathered "surfers" don't need to sleep in their truck and they can enjoy a comfortable accommodation with showers et al. It's common that pickers elsewhere sleep in difficult conditions. In Champagne, the pickers are often gipsies who come with their white trucks and trailers and settle in fields near the villages, you'll often spot these settlements here and there in Champagne at harvest season
And at the end of the harvest, the Pacalets hold their own Paulée des Vendanges, the traditional dinner in honor of the end of the harvest. This dinner is particularly festive with lots of bottles popped open. Philippe brings more bottles for this Paulée, his own and others sourced from other good vintners, once a few years ago 600 bottles were opened, Monica tells me, I didn't get if it was for the whole harvest period or just for the Paulée (in any option, it would make lots of wine...). They also serve wine from friend wineries at the pickers' meals, wine from Nicolas Vauthier and from Christophe Pacalet for example these days, not really cheap plonk... The actors behind the winery Here are basically the three players at Pacalet : the winemaker on the right (Philippe Pacalet), the cellar master in the middle (Johan), and the vineyard broker on the left (Remi Barbier). The vineyard brokers (courtiers en vignes) are not well known by the general public, but they are pivotal for the trade, especially when you don't own any vineyard and you look for some surface to rent or to purchase the grapes from. With the real-estate prices reached in Burgundy lately, this is anyway the only remaining option unless you're running an Iphone sweatshop factory in China. This man knows all the families, growers dynasties or smallholders of the region, his job is as much about intelligence gathering as about diplomacy : he knows what his customers are looking for, the price they want to pay for a given terroir, and he will navigate with caution in the unchartered waters of parcels proprietors, softening the angles so that a business deal can be settled profitably for both sides. In a region where the vineyard surface is limited and with more demand than offers, this job is strategic.
Philippe Pacalet is probably breathing a sigh of relief because the harvest is ending soon without too many bumps apart from the heavy downpours of the previous wednesday when he had to cancel everything abruptly. He had already decided to harvest earlier than planned because these rains had been forecasted. Now on september 29 with the Pommard almost finished and the Gevrey-Chambertin les Plantières to be made in the afternoon, there will be only a few parcels to harvest, the Pernand-Vergelesses, the Bourgogne Générique and the Chablis (a long drive from here). Children play The vineyard is not only a playground for grownups, kids have fun there too, as long as they don't play with shears. The dreaded MSA (the administration overlooking the registration of workers) must not mistake them for undeclared workers, There's always the shadow of the MSA surprise-checks hanging like the Sword of Damocles over the vineyard. You hear the MSA acronym here and there between the rows, usually with an ironic or sarcastic tone; growers must check that even their friends don't join the fray during the harvest, even by dropping benevolently and for only a few hours, as they might be accounted as unregistered workers, which translates in huge fines for the owner...
Philippe Pacalet had 4 children with his previous wife and 3 of them were around, including the youngest who are twins and were in the full innocence of their young years, light-years away of wondering if this will be their destiny too... Alejandro drinking water Alejandro is from Colombia, I don't know if he came separately or if he's with the couple of people from Brazil. I heard a supervisor saying he was doing a very good job. The village in the background is Pommard, the view and the light on this parcel is gorgeous, they could have people pay just to do this job (I'm kidding, this is a tough job that you can't replace with wine-tourism tricks). The slope on this terroir is arduous for tractors as the slope runs the wrong way (the tractors could easily overturn), so there's no plowing here and that's why I noticed there were mosses on the ground. Philippe Pacalet says he's considering having someone use a horse to plow between the rows. Mixed bag As boxes are piling up in the truck, we see a passing one one with both white and red grapes (the red being still the majority), it's because there's a white vine in the parcel, it's probably more the result of a mistake when the planting took place than an a traditional complanting scheme. When grafts are gathered at the nursery, it's common that a stray plant from another variety ends up in the load, no big deal and a good thing for the future wine. Laurent, who is holding the box here, is one of the first pickers who took part to the Philippe Pacalet's adventure. Leaving Pommard les Arvelets It's time to leave and go eat, but this parcel had to be wiped clean first. It's 1:30 if I remember when we leave the place. Everyone grabs his belongings, the extra cloths which were peeled off as the temperature rose in the morning and heads to his car or minibus. These side roads connecting the terroirs were not too busy as most growers had finished picking days ago, but Monica told me that the previous weekend it was a nightmare in the region, the marauding tourists driving around to take pictures being the drop making the cup run over. If you plan to tour the vineyards at this season, beware, the people working around here are a little edgy in these circumstances and you car might be brushed by a tractor if your license plates are from out of town... Lunch break This is what everybody was waiting for, the rewarding lunch break. It takes place in a warehouse belonging to another grower, we all had to drive around a bit to reach it, and everything was ready just waiting for us. I didn't sweat as much as these early-awaked workers but enjoyed this lunch shamelessly, beginning with the onctuous unfiltered beer and the Pacalet wines. Now that you saw the place, they might well put some security at the door next year to filter the pickers from the freeloaders. Eliane, the mother of Philippe Pacalet (she's also the sister of Marcel Lapierre) helps on the kitchen side like every year, preparing or serving the food for the pickers is an age-old tradition which keeps the people tight. The menu is not the issue here but is was delicious. Most of the pickers chose to sit down on boxes to relax and eat quietly. There was a gorgeous soup (I'm not a soup fan usually), some sort of terrine, several delicious cheeses, the whole thing with excellent bread, and also some superb hot lasagna (a dish I'm not looking after usually).
I discovered this artisanal beer from the region of Dijon (bottles being popped up on left), La Mandubienne, that's something I'll be looking after, it was really excellent. Burgundy like most French region used to have many local breweries but unlike Germany or Belgium they almost all vanished, it's hard to know if we have to blame for this the wine lobby like some conspiracy theories pretend, or some wider business-atmosphere issue or shifting drinking trend. THey're coming back, although many of these beers are not cheap like they used to be back then, but the product is usually top rate. Rewarding wine I need to look at the picture to believe what I saw : pickers helping themselves at lunch with Pacalet Bourgogne Pinot Noir, not bad for a summer job... The beer was very good but I shamelessly shortened the newly-discovered beer and went straight at the back of this tractor to pour myself a glass, and that's where I met Jean-Benoit who is taking part to the picking too. His real job is in an investment bank in Paris where he's doing some IT work. He tells me that he discovered the wine world during a tasting event at Grains Nobles in Paris (a wine-tasting institution here). Once he had the revelation with a friend while having a les Suchots 1997 from Prieuré Roch which happened to have been vinified by P.P. The texture of this wine was just extraordinary. He subsequently met Philippe Pacalet, and Monica, and ended up working here for the vendanges. He now also organizes on the side some private tastings for HEC alumni (HEC is a renowned French business school). Another guy who might one day quit a promising IT career for the unsecure world of wine... From Hungary to Burgundy After lunch we all headed for a parcel in Gevrey Chambertin Villages, les Plantières.
This picture shows the challenge of picking and the risky play between the shears and the fingers. I experienced it the hard way mysel last year when I took part to a harvest in Joigny, Burgundy. That day I not only took pictures but I picked too and ended cutting myself. Lots of blood but happily not so bad. Here in Pommard I saw several pickers including the experienced ones with thick finger bandages, proof that their not immune to accidental clumsiness. The problem is that you need to have one hand go around the cluster while the other cuts, and there are often a screen of leaves all around, you're in a hurry and the ending is predictable...
Hajni here on the picture, joined the "surfers" recently with her boyfriend Attila. It's their first season in the region if I remember. Gevrey-Chambertin grapes This picture was also shot on Gevrey-Chambertin Village les Plantières (I mislabelled the files as Pommard). This is not like the slope near Pommard, the earth was more sticky and the grapes and clusters much bigger. Here you can see Attila, another Hungarian on the job (and Hajni's boyfriend). It's the middle of the day, it's getting warmer and sunnier and because of the size of the clusters and grapes, the boxes are filling much faster, at such a pace that pickers must sometimes wait for the box carrier because their bucket is full. Ania Ania is Philippe's daughter, this is her first harvest as a registered picker, I guess the previous year she walked around like here younger brothers but today she's allowed to work and she came here with a friend. Marine Is there a chance you could teach me surfing ? Gevrey-Chambertin 2012... Monica and Philippe

Comments

[L. M. (Lyn) Archer]

Awesome post!

[Richard Ewen]

I've traveled through this region several Julys taking photographs for paintings and really love the countryside. I was based in St. Mammes near Fontainebleau and could be in Burgundy in a couple of hours. I haven't traveled during the harvest so reading this account was very educational for me. Thank you.

[John Ingersoll]

I love your blog! The breadth and depth of your knowledge and travels are inspiring. I have recently moved to Napa and am getting to know the area much better after 2 years of tireless winery visits. I wanted to share my first blog with you - in the spirit of "Napa meets Burgundy." I see that you have posted about U.S. wineries (California and Oregon) and wondered if you have been to HdV in Napa? Here's blog post #1 (of hopefully many). I would be honored if you would read it - here's the link.

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