Can you remember when you'd limp, gasping off a sports field, feet swollen, legs gone, back bent, arms bruised, scratched, bleeding, sore all over?

Well it's like that with grape harvesting in France. I had to go off for the early bath yesterday.

But it's all OK if you've won. And this year we've won. Almost all of us.

Young Clare, our Bordeaux buyer, has been all over the place and was, last night, going on about it was all such a lovely deep luminescent purple colour she'd fancy wearing it.

Some of us are working on this thought. Certainly, you just stick your hand down through the cap to feel the warmth of the fizzing juice/wine, your arm comes out all dark red.  So if we popped Clare in for 5 mins ...?

Seriously though it's a good 'un. We've declared so many 'Vintages of the Century' here that some of us are wary of seeming to do it again. But there are these key indicators. The colour. The strength. (The Puritans will go bananas over the strength but we are not to blame, this is what nature gives us). The smiles. Clare noticed this and she's right; despite a lot of difficulties for many in selling the wine, just making stuff like this makes you happy.

Then there's the sticky roads. Spilt juice on M. Le Maire's new tarmac. And its the first harvest for me when I didn't ever put on my overalls. Even at 8 a.m. It was too warm.

This morning however it finally looks normal; drizzly-grey for the first time. But I'm headed out. Just going past the Terraces of Tertre Daugay where our 'Epiphanie' came from (customers certainly went a bundle on that ... could we do it again please, JMS? Clare?).

I'm off to meet this week's Staff Trip for tasting and lunch at 'La Louviere' (Graves) then on to airport and home.

No rest though. English harvest starts tomorrow! Then next week it's the Great Thrash. I can't see how I can get out of making a speech. But come anyway.

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