Luxury, calm and pleasure of the well-equipped “vigneron’

Posted on | September 25, 2005

I could also have entitled this note « in praise of the banker », I hesitated a bit. Let me explain whilst the press delivers a slow white succulent grenache juice, I have a few minutes to write before returning to put the pump on (I have taken a small photo of the grenache blancs, roasted to the right condition…)

This year, finally, after eight years of effort, sacrifices and insane risks, we have a cellar which resembles a cellar, even if it is a minuscule garage. Finished with the permanent odd-jobs, plastic tanks, ice cubes, pumps running at destructive temperatures, mutilating de-stemmers: in the cellar, gleaming clean, shining steel, the pneumatic press throne, the air conditioning purrs. Thanks, then, to my banker (Jean-Pierre, if you read this…) to have permitted me once again to indebt myself in a totally unreasonable manner to buy some equipment.

You will thout doubt ask me ( like my wife..:) ), why is it so important, to have so many implements, since we were making excellent wine without, or almost without, technology?

Simply to make it even better, in a greater quantity, with less fatigue, with greater regularity, in perfect hygiene. And above all, in order to be able, if we are obliged, to bring in the harvest in a matter of days.

We can thus wait for the best day without anxiety, the right hour even, to bring in the grapes at their optimum maturity, adapted to each type of wine we are trying to make. So I am much more relaxed this year, despite the sky which rumbles and the clouds which skid by. Personally, I can’t get over it…

Hervè Bizeul

Comments