The English rain has arrived in Bordeaux.

The English rain has arrived in Bordeaux. Our dear visitors brought it with them. The vines certainly needed it. But personally we didn't! However it means I have a day to write some sort of diary. Listening to the pit-pattering.

You will be panting to know prospects of the coming 2008 vintage? Can't really help. We do at least have grapes. Not many. Some are now red, some still green. Depends where you look. We've spent ten days looking very closely and titivating them.

That doesn't sound serious enough a word for what is a screamingly hard job especially if you are no longer young and bendy. A small Scottish person in our party came up with the word 'de-fankling' to describe what we do. (Apparently an old word for the tangled wool often founds in turf-roofed crofts of old; such wool was 'fankled').

Grapes get fankled too. Boy, do they! You'd think a vine after millions of years evolution would be able to grow its grapes neatly and unaided. Not a bit of it! Daft things can get really confused! We didn't bother in the old days. We'd just throw away the festering great lumps of mould formed where several bunches had just got all fankled.

Trouble is mould spreads. You can end up with it everywhere. Best it never starts. Hence this fankling work. Which must be done in august. When the staff are all away. So you must do it yourself. Can going out at eight a.m. (should be six a.m. ideally, but never managed that) for 2/3 hours back-breaking, lunch, siesta, then out again at six p.m. be in any way considered a 'holiday'? But the wife says we must so we must.

Going slowly through our vineyards disentangling, dropping bunches where there are so many they'll never ripen anyway, removing the lower leaves. Basically doing the stupid vine's thinking for it. Leaving a neat arrangement of free hanging bunches through and around which the drying breezes may waft. That way your bunches stay healthy. Blokes understand this concept well.
Talking of which I have a suggestion for any gardeners who have to do lots of bending or squatting or sitting on hard earth. Purchase a cheap plastic football and a string bag. Ball goes in bag which is tied loosely around waist so ball hangs just below your bum. You win no prizes for elegance, you create much mirth. However you do have the pleasure of this nice little soft seat that moves with you and takes away muscle-strain. Would-be manufacturers should contact the inventor; Madame Bernadette Pallaro of these parts.

Anyway we've done what we can. The bumball is packed away till the real harvest. Now what those grapes turn into depends purely on the weather from now 'till October. That's here in Bordeaux. Down in Roussillon they've already started bringing in the Muscat but that's what they do down there. Vintage gets earlier every year. They'll be harvesting at Easter soon. Here, it certainly won't be early. It will be mid October I reckon. We shall see. We'll send our dear visitors home, so the sun returns and all will be well.