Château du Bois

For a month now we've been the owners of a 20-hectare property – Château du Bois – just down the road from our place in Ste Colombe. This is the village where it all started in 1965 and where we still live when in France.

In that month we've pruned all the vines and started the recruitment process for a 'Regisseur' – estate manager – to run both it and the smaller properties we already had: Château La Clarière, Le Presbytère and Henry and Kaye's Château Verniotte.

Du Bois is different because it really looks like a Château … like a little fort with buildings on all four sides of a courtyard.

When we wake up in our house, and open the shutters, there, on the hillside in front of us is Château du Bois with its 'fortifications', its little wood, and vineyard terraces climbing to the top of the hill. I've long loved that view. But I had never seriously coveted it. Properties like that always stay in the family.

But last summer Henry said he'd heard that the place had been on the market for three years. The old lady had died – quite a colourful ex-dancer of an old lady – and her three children had all got other lives not involving wine.

But they'd followed the curious local custom that it is somehow shameful to put up 'For Sale' signs! The price, as a result of recession and nobody knowing it was for sale had come right down and was – just about – affordable.

So we got Simon to go in there and get the best deal. He and Clare spent the best part of a day in a stifling lawyer’s office in St Emilion without anything – even water – to drink, going through legal rigmaroles they said would provide material for a whole series of sitcoms on French lawyers.

But the deal was done. However, France being France, there followed the six month period necessary for the fonctionnaire lady to stamp her big rubber stamp.

Then, last month, Simon and Clare had another gruelling/hilarious session and du Bois was finally ours.

The winery was all kitted out in the '80's. It was a good job. It is therefore not 'state of the art' but perfectly useable which is good because we can't afford to do much in the way of upgrade. Because, firstly, we need to replant three hectares at the top of the hill which have been allowed to decay. They should be the best vineyards of all – they are the steep ones, right next door to Henry's best Verniotte vineyards – but they've sadly been let go. Vineyards need constant love and attention.

The plan is to produce a very reasonably priced claret. Not the standard of La Clariere, Presbytere or Verniotte but just what our customers seem to like to drink regularly.

And … like we have always kept the doors of La Clarière and Verniotte open to visitors – mostly the beloved Confrères – we plan to have 'open house' at du Bois. Quite what or how we don't know yet, but it will be good. There are a lot of rooms and big chais. Maybe it'll be possible to stay there as well as come for tastings and events. There are masses of possibilities.

But our four properties combined now make one economically viable wine producing operation. Henry will be in charge. I will be given a broom.

Which will bring me full circle and suit me well.

In the '60's I had a broom when I worked in a big cellar near here. This cellar had concrete tanks four high and looked just like a prison; tanks look like cells, hung with steel catwalks and stairs. One very significant day, sweeping my floor, it started to rain … red wine. Way above me a group of visiting wine buyers were tasting the top tanks. Sip, swirl, spit over the railings … and on to the floor-sweeping Brit student below.

It’s wonderful, now, to have our own wineries. You must all come and taste. Just please watch where you spit.