A cross between a grub and a lazybones

Posted on | November 9, 2005

From Sunday 3 October, 2005

There was a time when, not making wine and not even having the idea or the hope of making it one day, I idealised a little, or even a lot, on the daily life of the vigneron.

For you see, in truth, the vigneron’s Sunday in the middle of the harvest isn’t that glamorous.

After a good ten hours of being in a deep coma, the vigneron gets up at 6, even if his alarm clock didn’t go off: twenty days of conditioning. After having bounded from his bed and felt the heavy weight of his stiff body, the vigneron realises it is Sunday and so he has the right to a day of rest. He goes back to bed and drifts off again. After two more hours of a sleep filled with tormented dreams (this morning, it was the carving of a beautiful roast of veal, in a dinner jacket if you please, in the gallery of a supermarket!), he gets up, prepares his son’s breakfast, puts on a tracksuit and begins to roam around the house, like a zombie, in search of sustenance. On top of which, all day his walk resembles that of the living-dead like from the cult series «the grave robbers». He knocks against things. Grunts. He drops half what he takes. He suddenly gets up to shave, without reason. He goes towards a room, then thinks better of it, having forgotten why he was attracted there in the first place. In fact, the inactivity disorientates him instead of resting him. He doesn’t understand why there aren’t any harvesters, buckets, grapes, destemming, sorting, pumping-over, stress. He attempts to look at the TV but after fifteen days without the box, the images seem so extraordinarily foreign. He picks up emails, swallows a lunch without really paying much attention to it, walks his son under the chestnut trees: collects conkers and throws them against a door, which seems wonderful…

OK, fortunately, towards 5, real life takes over: in the cellar, 8 out of 10 tanks are more-or-less full and all demand attention. One of my old friends (Maurice, if you read this, it’s far too long since we last met..) a livestock farmer in the country, told me a story about his childhood…the absolute rule… it was: «animals first»: no one ate or rested until the animals were taken care of.

My tanks, although inert objects, are for me, the same. The « 1 » demands to be cooled, the « 2 » too, the third instead, needs heat to terminate the sugars. The « 4 », the youngest, is only juice and needs nothing but peace. The « 5 » starts its slow fermentation and cries for air. The « 6 » wants to be vigorously mixed and would not refuse a good unloading. The « 7 » asks me, already, to be racked off. Will I satisfy it? So, attentive, I must now think and feel what each one of these demands. Alright, we’re there, the vigneron lives again.

Hervè Bizeul

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