Last day of harvest.

So, after the art show Saturday night I went to Eve’s apartment for dinner with her and her boyfriend. I had my first beer in a week and it was delicious, despite being a Heineken. I tried my first pastisse, which was not bad, basically like milky licorice with alcohol. Eve’s boyfriend Eve loves xbox360 and guitars. They both love Battlestar Galactica and True Blood, among other things. My less than perfect French came in handy, because they haven’t seen the last season of BSG yet, and I’m sure I would have blurted out something if I was capable of blurting in French. Is blurting a word? That doesn’t look right. Anyway, I had a lovely time. There wasn’t too much work to be done Sunday, just the pumpovers, then we went into the village. I didn’t understand how exactly the system worked, but basically it was all of the clubs and groups and activities that are in Mouriés, like tai chi and painting and fencing and astronomy, and they all take sign-up. I don’t know if you sign up for a whole year or what. It was basically like club sign-up in school, but not just for kids. We had a picnic in the park, and I had a lengthy discussion about wine, a subject about which I seem to be quite good at speaking in French. Not everybody here is aware that Americans even make wine anywhere other than California.

I had been instructed a few days earlier that keeping the fridge flush with cold rosé, and that Lucienne and Luc had friends coming to dinner Sunday night, and that more rosé than usual would be advisable, so when we returned from the picnic I made sure the fridge was stocked. The friends, Joél and Florénce arrived just in time for dinner. I tried andouilette for the first time. Bobby warned me ahead of time about andouilette. He tried it on his trip last year without knowing what it was. He was unpleasantly surprised. Andouilette is a sausage, and like most sausages it has a lot of assorted things in it. It’s the distinctive odor that makes andouilette, unique. And it’s the fact that it’s supposed to smell like that which makes me wonder why anybody would ever eat it. My co-worker Arnaud put it quite succinctly; he said “Good andouilette is like politics. It should smell a little like shit, but not too much.”

Today we did more rémontage, plus some pressing. As most wineries do, here at Gourgonnier they keep the press juice separate from the free-run juice. The press juice can be more rough and harsh than the free run juice, so everybody deals with it differently. Here it will be kept in a separate vessel until assemblage, at which time they will decide whether the incorporate it into any of the blends, or just put it in the vin de table.

We picked the last of the grapes today too, which means that much less work for me to do around here, so hopefully the grape maturity is a ways behind at Mas Carlot.