Harvesting in Marlow

There's something about sitting at a long table with a blue check oilcloth in an open shed for lunch. Specially if it’s a winery. And if work is over for an hour or two. No restaurant can match this. Passing forklifts, tanks, grapes, hoses, barrels, family, customers, dogs, babies; the full team. Smells of grapes and Boeuf Bourguinon . Sounds by Planet Rock. This is Henry Laithwaite's new winery shed on Pump Lane, Little Marlow, Bucks.

I don't mind being the basket washer from dawn to dusk. I'm a bloke; so I like the Karcher pressure jet thing. Dead macho gun stuff. The ultimate big boy’s water pistol. I wash the sticky stuff off every grape basket after it’s emptied into the press, before it goes out to the vineyard again. Countless thousands of baskets. I got this job at La Clarière, our French vineyard, after I was relegated from winemaker in the '70's. Water-jetting specialist ever since, me. It’s the few days every year when my brain truly slows down to tick-over.

I love the work … mostly when it stops. And I can sit down for the wife's lunch and plenty wine. Barbara loves mass catering. Which is useful. 

This year our Bordeaux harvest was disappointing to say the least. So H's first proper English vintage is great compensation for us. But we have imported the proper French ways of doing things. No sandwich lunch thing here. Good wine cannot be made that way. The lunch is crucial. Soup, things on toast, stew, cheese, cake, coffee. That's how you make good wine and keep going to midnight – with some late-night pizza.

  

In three years the juice now flowing out of this press will be fizzing into someone's flute.Long time to wait, isn't it?  Not great cash flow, English fizz. From buying the field, planting vines to now; four years. From first juice today to finished wine; three more years. That's lots of money going out for seven years and none in.

But what a fantastic thing to do. Come and see. Pump Lane, Marlow.

  

30 Bulgarian/Romanians picking about 20 tons of Pinot Noir in two days. Fast. We have trouble keeping up. The press takes two tons a time and takes three and a half hours to run through its cycle.

So lots of long breaks for the cellar team … except the basket washer who can never really stop. So can't write more. Need to go fire my water gun. More Pinot coming in. Then in a few days, the Chardonnay.

A visit to Pomerol

Christian Moueix is the same age as me (67) and we first met in '67.  I was writing my Geography 'Dissertation' and I'd been told if I wanted to see a good Negociant-Eleveur then Etablissements J-P Moueix were the best. They still are.

Where are all the countless other Negociants whose Chais once lined the Quais of Bordeaux? Where are all the famous 'Maisons' who built the fame of Bordeaux? ('Cos it wasn't the Châteaux who did that. They reaped the rewards.)

All are gone. Or changed beyond recognition. Whereas J-P M are still there on the Quai du Priorat in Libourne. Almost unchanged. Still buying young wines to 'éleve', to blend and bottle. We buy a lot. You cannot get a better generic Pomerol than theirs. Well, there's no Wine Co-op in Pomerol and Moueix owns, or have under contract, most of the best Châteaux. And they don't do Second Labels so all the young vine stuff etc goes into Christian's Pomerol Cuvée.

The extent of the holdings of the two branches of the family is unknown. But my belief is that it is more than anyone can possibly imagine. And all started by Grandfather J-P coming down from Correze on his bike in the bleak days after the War. Tough business people, but there is not a more hard-working, professional and likeable family in wine.

We looked in at a few Pomerol places. They'd all finished, all pumping over what looked to us like good, richly-coloured wine. But just very little of it. Last year was not big. This year is tiny. But they didn't really get hail damage. And anyway, here they can afford the kit that ensures they only make wine with the perfect berries which will always occur in every vintage. So don't be surprised if, despite all the woes of '13 there aren't nice wines on show next spring. 

Here and elsewhere the surplus wines of earlier vintages will soon all be gone. I wouldn't therefore expect any drops in price. Quite the opposite.

At the beautiful new La Fleur-Pétrus cellars we tasted everything we have on reserve. All good. Very good. Pascal was there. Runs the cellar. Son of Bernadette and Guy, brother to Olivier our farmer. I've know him since he was a tiny lad helping in our vineyard, so we greeted each other with the full French cheek-kissing thing. Which I think rather surprised my boy Tom!

Harvest Lunch of vegetable soup, beetroot salad, roast chicken, cheese and chocolate cake in the 'canteen' at Pétrus with the Moueix family and all their workers.  They drink a 'Harvest Wine' in unlabelled bottles which would score high in any tasting!

Tom had to fly home to see his chum Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen about his wine and classical music show, Sunday. Jean-Marc, Mark and I went to Le Comptoir de St Genes to try Remy's Autumn menu  with Elsa Lejeune (who last week was in Marlow helping her Dad install Henry's shiny new tanks which will be baptised any day now. The Lejeune's in St Magne right next to our village are known throughout the entire wine world for their amazing stainless steel tanks. Works of art really … masquerading as fermenters).  

Happy to see the Comptoir as buzzy as ever. Shook quite a few black-stained, horny, scarred old hands. Exhausted winemakers still with the energy to stagger in here, late at night, to eat huge chunks of meat with copious quantities of their wines. Sometimes too copious. 'EPL' we call it in the trade: Excessive Product Loyalty! Every trade has its risks.

Bordeaux 2013: a commando vintage …

A 'commando' vintage' says Aurelie. She means, just in case anyone might get the wrong idea, that 2013 Bordeaux is not a classic, set-piece harvest where all is planned and the battalions moved accordingly.

Aurelie: she has a way with words ...

 Not at all; this is a real fire-fight of a vintage. Attacked on all fronts, we are. Weather, rot, recalcitrant machinery; we have it all. She has to whizz people here and there according to where the problem is worst. Secure a quick win here. There a quick rescue. If you move fast you can make small amounts of very good wine. She's resourceful and undaunted. 

We have 30 hectares of vines here. But they are split into many separate pieces. Some were hit hard by hail in August. Some escaped. Some seem to have survived the clobbering remarkably well. Others haven't. Others seem OK then suddenly the rot gets in there and spreads fast. On the plus side, there's quite a bit of the 'Noble' rot around too which enriches rather than destroys grapes. 

Problem is when grapes suddenly sprout the dreaded 'grey beards'. Spotting the bearded ones, says Aurelie – who has a talent for political incorrectness – makes her feel like she's running anti-terrorist operations, not making wine.

What a vintage! Is it the worst ever seen? No. Worst in recent decades maybe, but only in the villages hit by hail. Of which we, alas, are one. Plenty places got off Scot free. And the best viticulturalists really shine in years like this. 

The worst vintage I ever saw was 1967 when I was a student working in a co-operative winery here. Grapes came in mostly as husks. The skins looked almost normal but the insides had been eaten out by rot. There was a fog over everywhere … except it wasn't fog. It was spores of mould. That was BAD. They had no defence against rot then. Today we do. Winemaking and grape-growing today is light years ahead of then.

We'll make some very good wine this year. Not a lot, true. Hardly any. But you'll like it, I promise.

This will only be partly down to technology. It’s human spirit and never-give-in stubbornness as much as technology.

I have just worked all day at the sorting table with Aurelie, husband Lucas Eveline, farmer Olivier, and the others. Even Old Denis who's about to retire but has been helping out since he was Young Denis at our original Railway Arch forty years ago,

Sorting out the furry grapes is serious work this year. Hour after hour. You really have to concentrate. But we are going to win.

As are our friends. 

With Ludo Rousillon and JMS

Yesterday I went with Jean-Marc to see Ludovic Roussillon – he of the confusing name – in his village near Rauzan in Entre deux Mers . Ludo is an ace viticulturalist. Head and shoulders above the rest says J-MS. His land and his vines are always vibrant with health. And they didn't get hailed upon. 

His half-fermented Sauvignon Gris and Blanc juice is clearly going to make exceptional wine this year. That's Château Le Coin. The most remarkable juice though was the black stuff just turning into soft, aromatic claret. Ludo also farms the vineyards of a Château Pellbouc belonging to the Thienpon family of Château Le Pin and Vieux Château Certain, Pomerol, fame. That will be excellent too, when it arrives. 

Nadja tasting at Le Chai

The Chai au Quai, which was all empty barrels when I was last here with the group, is now all full barrels. The Chai is so upbeat. Mark, Nadja and Jean-Marc have Sauv Blanc and Gris, Chardonnays, Viogniers, Vermentinos and more all fizzing away. I love our baby Sauvignon Blanc when it’s fermenting and looks like fizzy milk. I'd love to sell it like that. But bottles would explode and it would be a very short season – about a fortnight – but it’s the most superlative 'Bourru' consumed round here with roasted chestnuts. 

"I must have filled a thousand barrels, but this is the first time I
can see what's going on inside!" - a very impressed Mark Hoddy

You want to try something similar, fly to Vienna and get a tram to the wine-growing suburbs where they'll sell you milky young wine with roast meats in their 'Heurigen.' 

A harvest lunch, Poulet Farcie