Walkabout Paris

Took a long walk, saw the Champs Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, and went to the top of the Eiffel Tower.



























































I did a lot of walking, plus I took the stairs when I got to the tower, so I was pretty tired and hungry. I had planned to go to the Pied de Cochon, which is a reastaurant that Nathalie's father started, and despite having looked up the address before leaving the hotel I couldn't find it, so I stopped at a pizza place and got a pizza and a huge beer.

Au revoir, Mas Carlot!

Hellooooo, Paris. Haven't had much to report the last few days as far as work is concerned. Mostly just moving wines around, pulling the ones that had finished malo off their lees and putting them into clean cuves. It's been bitter cold in Bellegarde thanks to the Mistral, which can take a day that's just a bit cool and make it utterly freezing. Wore 2 sweaters and a scarf to work most days this week.
Thursday night I drove back to Mouries to say goodbye to the Cartier family, and have dinner with them and their importer.
Friday night I finally got to make dinner for Cyril and Nathalie, unfortunately with all the cleaning and packing I was doing I ended up pressed for time, and the potatoes came out under-cooked. Dammit.
I've been wearing all the same clothes for nearly 2 months now, and most of the stuff I brought with me was stuff I knew I was going to get wine all over anyway, so I gave a bunch of my clothes and my boots away to one of the Moroccans, who seemed pretty excited about it. Despite getting rid of some clothes my bags are still too full though. I think it's all the wine and salt.
Anyway, now I'm in Paris and I'd love to stay here blogging all day, but I've got some touristy crap to do!

Ok, French road signs suck at giving directions

So, Bellegarde is a somewhat confusing little jumble of traffic circles and one-way streets, and I've been trying to figure out a shorter way to get from the center of town back to home, because my current route takes me straight into town, but then I have to take the long way out, past another traffic circle, and it's like an extra 2 miles to get back to the road where Carlot is located. So today, I tried following the sign from the center of town that points to Nimes, which is the basic direction of Carlot, but the route took me north of the road I normally travel on, then on a loopy path ending back at the traffic circle I was trying to circumvent. It was in fact even longer than the route I usually take that ends at the same traffic circle. So the sign in the center of town should in fact be pointing in the direction of the route I've been traveling the whole damn time.
So, that being said, today was pretty mellow at work. Putting things away, moving a few things around. I did draw the short straw for decuvage and spent an hour or so shoveling grape must, and I'm cultivating some pretty sweet blisters on my right hand. I also washed the bungs on all the red barrels. The process itself is not that interesting, however 'bung' is a funny word.

This is a bucket of dirty bungs.






This is a pyramid of clean bungs.





We also did some fining today, which is a process I've touched on before where something is introduced into the wine to attract the heavier particles and make them fall out of solution. Sometimes it's done with egg whites, which offends some vegans. In this case it was done with a pair of chemicals, one introduced and mixed into the wine, and the other mixed in about a half hour later. Not all wines have to be fined, but press wines are cloudier than free-run juice, and since the quality of the press wine this year is high enough to potentially end up in the final blend, it needs to be fined to bring the clarity level up to par with the rest of the wines.

On an unrelated note, I've decided to start studying for the Court of Master Sommliers' Certified level exam, with the goal of taking the test in November. That means a lot of studying between now and then. Today's little bit of info: Chilean wine regions from north to south; (all valleys) Elqui, Limari, Aconcagua, Casablanca, San Antonio, Maipo, Cachapoal, Colachuga, Curico, Maule, Itata, Bio Bio, and Malleco. My mnemonic device: Everybody loves a chicken sandwich. My cousin can consume many. I'll buy mayonnaise.

Drivin' around weekend!

With just about a week left in my fabulous winemaking adventure, I figured I'd better make sure I see as much of the area around

me as I can. So Saturday I drove to Beaucaire, which is about 20km NE of Bellegarde, just down the Rhône from Avignon. It's a pretty little town, with lots of touristy things to do.


Unfortunately I didn't know exactly what those touristy things were before I came. I looked on the tourism board's website, but I generally find it's better just to go to the tourism office and ask. Unfortunately that only works if they're open. I took this picture with my watch next to it. 'Samedi' is Saturday, the day I was there, so this would seem to indicate they are open from 9:30 to 12:30, then from 3 to 8, and as you can see from my watch, it's just after 4, and they're not open. What I missed was the conditional sentence above the time, which I didn't understand at the time, because I didn't know what Pâques was. It's Easter. What it says is, the tourism office is only open Saturdays from Easter till the end of September. Shoulda come last week.

So I ambled about for a bit, and stopped off in a cafe to write in my journal. The only other person in the cafe was this man. I don't know how well you can see in this photo, but he has only two teeth, and one of them is gold. Bling bling, Monsiuer, bling bling.

After a bit more wandering I stopped at another cafe. I was trying to find some of the many touristy things that I know must exist so close to the center of town, but one of the rough bits about French architecture and city design is that damn near everything looks alike. So, at the second cafe, I noticed again that it doesn't seem like French bar and restaurant employees are strictly required to be nice to all the patrons. I didn't see the whole story, so I'm not taking sides here, but what I saw was as follows: A family with children was sitting out in front of the cafe. A girl who looked to be about 3 got up from the table and went inside unsupervised, where she grabbed a handful of sugar from a table where some men were having coffee. The waiter/bartender stopped her, took the sugar away, chided the child, and yelled at her mother. The mother yelled back, and the child returned to the family. Weird thing is, the family didn't leave at this point. I didn't understand all of what was being said at their table, but I'm pretty sure she said something along the lines of 'I don't care what he says, he's just some prick who works in a bar.' A few minutes later the girl walked in again unsupervised, the bartender yelled at the mother again, this time he definitely asked them to leave, she said 'we're going' and they left. I paid and left as well, because I was sure I wasn't going to get anything more entertaining out of that place.

I walked around a bit more and did manage to find one of the touristy spots. Apparently this village is known for eagles, and they have some sort of Renaissance eagle-show in the old fortress at the top of the hill. Unfortunately I missed the last show of the day. Perhaps I can give it another go this weekend before heading to Paris.

So, yesterday I went to the beach. They had a specially designated areas for dogs to poo, so you know I had to take a picture of the sign.





I wend to a village called Saintes Maries de la Mer.
I swam.
The water was wonderful and warm, although there was a bit of a breeze in the air.
Also a very touristy village, and with the beautiful weather, and it being potentially one of the last really nice days of the year, the place was bustling.

All the restaurants were open to the street, and all of them serving paella and fresh seafood. This area is also in the Camargue, which is well known for salt and horses and bulls and honey and rice, so most of the souvenir shops reflected the theme.


I was wandering around town and saw some sort of tourist attraction, and I didn't know exactly what it was, only that there were people up on the roof. I found the door and it was only two euros to get in, so I checked it out. Turns out the walking on the roof was pretty much the whole thing, but the view was amazing.

Today was pretty mellow at work. We drew the press juice off the mourvedre skins so it can be de-cuved tomorrow. We're still in the process of putting everything away for the winter, today we put a bunch of the hoses and pipes in the storage room. The Moroccans are still working on end of season maintenance on all the harvesting machines. Just about all of the wines are finished and we're working on getting them in the cuves where they'll rest for the next few months.

Language lessons

So, it's not uncommon for somebody to say something to me and for me not to understand one or two words that are being said. There are some regional dialect issues from time to time, for example the word I'd learned at Gourgonnier for 'hose' was 'tuyau,' which the dictionary defines as pipe or tube. Here they also use the word 'manche' which the dictionary defines as 'handle,' which can be confusing when they use the same word to refer to a hose as to refer to the handle of a shovel.
So, today, Nicholas was trying to tell me to do something, the conversation went something like this:
Nicholas: Can you take 1 kilo of tartaric acid and put it in cuve 33 in a (word I don't know)
Me: A (word I don't know)?
Nicholas: (word I don't know) like women wear
Me: What?
Nicholas: Like woman's underwear, you know?
Me: I put on woman's underwear?
Nicholas: No, you put the acid in the (word I don't know) like women wear (mime running hands up and down leg)
Me: I don't understand.
Nicholas: Come here, I'll show you.
Me: I'm scared.
(we walk into the lab, Nicholas pulls a stocking from a box)
Nicholas: This is a stocking.
Me: Oh! A stocking!
Nicholas: You put the powdered acid inside, and put it in the top of the cuve.
Me: Ok, I understand. I thought you were asking me to do something very gay.

I also went to Bressades with Cyril today for tasting and to see the winery. It's a bit smaller than Carlot, they have about half the acreage in vines, but it's very cleverly arranged, with all the metal cuves for primary fermentation on top of the concrete ones, so the grapes are pumped in, then the wine is fed by gravity into the lower cuves when primary fermentation is complete.
It's almost dinnertime now, I was supposed to go to Nimes with Cyril and Nathalie, but their babysitter got sick, so we're eating at their house.

Long day.

Just got done working and it's 7:45. The last hour and a half was mostly waiting though. We tasted through tanks with Alain again this morning, and made some more blending decisions. These decisions basically led us to moving around what seemed like all of the wine in the winery. All the pumps were active, and several moves were in the queue. Jordan, Nicholas, and I have been waiting for the last hour and a half for the last cuve of press wine to finish pumping onto the Mourvedre skins. Since it was the last to finish fermenting, and since the Mourvedre generally has the most punch to it, and since the press juice seems to far like it's good enough to maybe end up in the final blend, we're adding all the press juice to the Mourvedre skins to try and get them a little more complexity.
With all the wine moving around there was a lot of sanitizing to be done too. Normally the pumps and hoses are just rinsed with water, but at this point we're dealing with some wines that are going through, or have finished malo, and some that aren't done with primary fermentation yet. As we've learned previously, the bacteria responsible for malolactic fermentation can go after the sugars in the wine and raise volatile acidity, so it's very important to make sure the wines are completely finished with sugar fermentation before they're exposed to the malo bacteria. I also learned that there's a visual test for malo; wines that haven't gone through malo have a very purple color to their foam, while wines that have gone through malo have a white foam. This distinction of course applies only to red wines, and it also explains why most sparkling red wines, such as Australian sparkling Shiraz, and Italian Lambrusco have such intensely purple foam.
Also, the mosquitoes seem to be back in force today. Dammit.

Bugs in your wine.

Provocative title, eh? Too much? I'm not trying to gross anybody out or put them off wine, I'm really just trying to give people a realistic look at where the things they eat and drink come from. All wine get some bugs in it, I firmly believe this. The harvesting machines bring in crickets, snails, grasshoppers and the like with the grapes, and flies and bees are attracted to the sugar and you can't help having a few of them end up in the fermenter. Now, all of the wine's going to go through multiple stages of settling and filtration, so it's not like you're likely to find solid evidence of this by the time the wine reaches your glass, I guess what I'm really trying to say here is that there is no such thing as vegan wine. You might now be thinking, 'but isn't all wine vegan, not counting the bugs?' but sometimes wines are fined, a process that helps clarify it by introducing a protein that will attract heavier particles and cause them to settle to the bottom of the barrel, and one of the preferred options for fining is egg whites. Some vegans have objected, saying this adds animal matter to the wine. Now, I'm not trying to step on anybody's veganism, I'm just saying that if you object to about one egg white per hundred litres of wine, you might just want to skip wine, because egg whites or no, there's probably been some snails in there too.

So, that being said, check out this picture. We de-cuved inside today, which is more complicated than doing it outside, where the press moves back and forth between the cuves, and it's really pretty easy. To do it inside, first we had to jimmy-rig the conveyor, hanging from the straps there, so the wine could be shoveled onto it inside the cuve, then carried out. The thing is, then it had about 4 feet to fall from the conveyor to the auger that pushes it outside, so there are 3 buckets, a mess of plastic, and one Moroccan in charge of making sure everything that falls ends up in the auger. They also had a brilliant solution to the sometimes-the-must-is-too-dry-to-move-easily problem. We installed a pump from the cuve that holds the wine coming out of the press, going back into the box with the auger, this way they were able to pump the wine back into the circuit when necessary, making it flow easier. This also made it a lot easier to fill the press, since the more liquidy the must is, the easier it flows into all the hard to reach corners.
Oh, and also today, I got a speeding ticket. Funny thing is, I didn't drive today. Apparently they do that take a photo of your car and mail you a ticket thing, which eats because I'm pretty sure I could have done the stupid lost American act if I'd actually been pulled over, and gotten out of it. And it's not even my fault, I was going 99kph in a 90kph zone, which is really pretty good considering the speedometer on the car doesn't work. Funny thing is, the ticket didn't actually come to me, since it's not my car, it came to Nathalie, so now she's got to send them a photocopy of my driver's license with a letter saying "I lent my car to this speed-demon American, please don't deduct points from my license."

You have to be kind of a renaissance man/woman when you work in a winery.

You can't exactly stop everything and wait for the plumber or electrician to show up when something needs to be fixed, so everybody needs to know a bit about everything around here. Today I disassembled and reassembled the plug to a pump and the cuve lantern, and rebuilt the end of one of the hoses. Here's Cyril taking apart the control box on the jimmy-rigged conveyor belt.

My pants are also filthy, because I cleaned lees out of three cuves, so my jeans are covered in purple.

Today was another day of intricate ballet, with all pumps in operation, moving wine from this cuve to that one, inside and outside. Between yesterday and today we sent off 2 full cuves of finished wine from 2008, which Nathalie had sold to a negociant. We took all the rose that was still varietally segregated and consolidated it into 2 or 3 cuves. When the cuves are being filled with juice, somebody has to keep an eye on them from the top to make sure they don't overflow. You can get kind of seasick doing that, watching the bubbles on the surface of the wine move below you. It's like staring into the ocean at night.

We're in the process of pulling all the Syrah off it's must and consolidating the various vineyards together, which is a big process since there's more Syrah than anything else. We've got the Moroccans working outside, emptying one cuve, and meanwhile we're pumping the free-flow juice that went from that cuve into cuve 19 overnight into the cuve where it will rest for a while. The whites as well are being pumped out of varietal segregation and into their various blending tanks, as are the pinks. Many times since I've been here we've found ourselves standing about, waiting for something else to be ready to get done. Today was the first time we had to stand and wait for the pumps to be done with what they were doing so they could be moved on to their next task. By the end of the day, we had literally every single red wine hose in the winery in use, and even had to wait a few times because we didn't have enough double-male joints to couple them all together.

We also went about the process of taking apart various bits of equipment that won't be used again until next year. We cleaned and disassembled the whole receiving area for red grapes, and I even got to drive the forklift to take the stem bin over to the garage for storage. Forklifts rule.
By the end of the day I think I must have gone up and down the stairs at least 50 times. Last time I was in France I gained 10 pounds in 2 weeks due to excessive wine and cheese consumption. This time I don't think I've gained a bit, may have even lost weight, and I'm pretty sure those stairs are to thank for it.

My legs hurt now, and I have a new episode of Heroes to watch. Goodnight all.

Last day of harvest again!

Also, today I finally figured out what the deal is with the shopping carts at the grocery store! I had previously figured out that the carts aren't kept inside the store, but upon finally figuring out that they're kept out in the parking lot, I thought they were a rental-type deal, because you have to put a coin in them to detach them from the rest. Turns out the system is just to keep them from getting stolen, because when you take it back to where it belongs, you get your coin back. Pretty smart system now that I understand how it works. Keeps them from getting stolen, and makes sure people put them back where they belong.

Today we received the Cabernet, which was the last thing still on the vines, so as of tonight we are fully harvested.

This morning we also tasted tank blends with Alain, this time of white and rosé. We tasted through the various possible blends of the finished tank wines to decide on blends for the Tradition Blanc and Tradition Rosé.

Despite being done with harvest, there is still a lot of work to do this week, with all of the Syrah cuves still needing to be pulled off their must. It was an intricate ballet of pumps in the winery, taking juice out of one fermenter and into another, and assembling the white and pink blends we'd decided on during the morning tasting.

I spent about a half hour managing a yeast overflow situation when the yeast that was to go into the Cabernet was prepared too early. When you're getting yeast ready to go into the cuve, you mix it first with hot water, then a little later with some of the juice from the cuve it's going into. You let that all sit in a bucket for a while, then dump it into the cuve. Here's a picture of just one bucket of yeast for a smaller cuve. The problem is, once the yeast gets active, it starts to foam up like crazy, and often overflows the bucket it's in. In this case we were doing yeast for one large cuve of red, plus the rosé of Cabernet that was pulled off of the larger cuve, so we had 4 buckets of yeast going, and we ended up needing to wait to pitch it because not all the grapes were in yet, so all the buckets started to foam over. The foam will go down if you stir it a bit, but in this case there was so much I ended up having to dump it all into a bigger bucket, and still had to fight with it to keep it from spilling all over.

I didn't have an Champagne at my house, but I opened a bottle of Chateau Guiot Les Jumeaux Chardonnay with the guys in honor of the end of harvest. After that I went to the grocery store, which is when I finally figured out the shopping carts. I also learned an important lesson about reading labels. I was in the beer and soda aisle, and on the beer shelf I found something that looked like a store-brand beer called Panaché. So of course I had to buy it, because just the idea of Albertson's brand beer made me chuckle. Also, it was very cheap. However, I opened one after dinner and realized I hadn't gotten what I was expecting. After reading the label, I realized that I had bought something vaguely akin to a non-alcohol hard lemonade. A sparkling lemonade with less than 1% alcohol. Is it gay if I mix it with rosé and drink it anyway?

Chateauneuf du Pape!

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting at a pizzeria called La Mule du Pape in the village of Chateauneuf du Pape. It's about an hour northeast of bellegarde. The landscape is the first dramatic difference you notice when coming from the Costières de Nimes to Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The Costières is all pretty flat, and it gets a lot more hilly when you get north of Avignon. A lot rockier too. The area is known for it's distinctive rocks, typically the size of a fist, which absorb the heat during the day, and hold onto it overnight. I went to visit Yannick (the guy who was working here, who I thought was named Nick the whole two weeks we were working together) and to taste his dad's wine, Domaine Eddie Feraud. The family has 4.5 hectares, a very small domain, and they make just one cuveé of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
We visited the vines, which are northeast of town on mostly sandy soil, and are mostly very old. They're also all goblet pruned, which means they're not trained into a trellis system, all of the plants are free-standing. This is in part because they're so old, and that's the way all the vines were done in this area in years past. Most young vines in this area are pruned this way too however, which is because machine harvesting isn't allowed here. Most harvesting machines, at least the ones I've seen here, are only compatible with trellis-trained vines. Everything is hand-harvested here, which also contributes to the drastic difference in price between Costières de Nimes and Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Nick also explained the extensive work that is done in the vineyard during the year, with meticulous pruning and green harvesting, to get higher quality grapes at harvest.
There are 13 varietals allowed in Châteauneuf; 5 white and 8 red, with Grenache at the top of the food pyramid.

I tasted 2006 and 2007 from Eddie Feraud, which were very old-school, concentrated and powerful, with no new oak or barrique. The two wines were consistent with my experience with these two vintages from this area, with the 06 being lighter and more supple and ready to drink, while the 07 was pretty monstrous and, while drinkable, my preference would be to lay it down for at least 5 years. I also went and tasted at Domaine Durieu, Yannick is friends with the winemaker there. They're a much bigger operation, with several cuveés of Châteauneuf including a white, and some Côtes du Rhône and VDP wines. Their tasting room was much more fancy and formal, and the wines a bit more new world. Again, the 07 Châteauneuf was monstrous. They were also selling 2001 Côtes du Rhône for 6 euros, so I got a bottle of that to take home.

I walked up to the actual Châteauneuf, which is basically just a few old walls, though it used to be a full castle that housed the Popes of Avignon in the 14th century.





I also took a drive northeast of town to visit Clos du Caillou, but unfortunately they don't have a tasting room so I didn't get to go for the tour.

Painting barrels and whatnot!

So, today started off pretty slow, not that much to do. Quick remontage in the morning, pulling samples and the like, then Jordan and I were assigned to paint the red barriques. Not everybody does this, it's just an aesthetic choice, but Nathalie wants them to look nice. The thing is with barrels, there's really no way to avoid dribbling on them at least a little bit, and sometimes a lot. This is no big deal with whites of course, because they don't leave a stain on the barrels. Reds do, so you can either leave them like that, with random drips and drops on each of them, or you can actually buy ones that are already painted red down the center, or you can take the lees out of a cuve that's just been emptied and paint the barrels with a sponge. That's what we did. The winery had an eerie feeling while we were doing the painting. He and I don't chat much when it's not work-related, and there were no pumps going like there usually are, the only noise was the door that refused to stay open or shut, and kept banging every time there was a strong gust of wind.
The afternoon was on track to be slow like the morning when Cyril and Nathalie arrived with an urgent change of plans. It seems that the volatile acidity in the cuve of pressed syrah was climbing, which it shouldn't, and it needed to be pumped off it's lees immediately, or the v.a. could climb above acceptable levels by Monday. All wines contain some volatile acidity, but if it gets out of hand it can ruin the wine. In this case it had started climbing because the bacteria that are in charge of malolactic fermentation had finished their job and apparently gotten bored, so they went after the small amount of sugar still left in the wine. Unlike the yeast, which makes alcohol out of sugar, the bacteria turns the sugar into v.a., so the wine had to get off it's lees and get stabilized asap. This is one of those times when being educated as enologists works in Cyril and Nathalie's favor. Were it not for her education, Nathalie may have missed the significance in the change in v.a. on today's analysis, and had she waited for her next meeting with Alain, the level could have risen too high.
I planned on celebrating the end of the work week with a steak, but I couldn't find good meat at the grocery store, apparently you have to go to the butcher, so tonight I'll be having a burger and fries and some Enfants Terribles.
Oh, and watching last night's episode of The Office.

No power.

The lights just came back on.
Today at work we did a fair bit of the usual, but we also put together one of the vineyard blends. All the Grenache and Syrah blends have thus far been kept in separate fermenters. Today the Syrah blend that will go into the Tradition Rouge Grenache Syrah was assembled. After we pulled samples of all the finished Syrahs Nathalie, Cyril and Alain tasted through them, and blended them in various permutations until they arrived at the final blend. It's 50% from the Blanche vineyard (each of the kids has a vineyard named after them. Blanche, Eugene, and Olympe are all Syrah, and Achille is Grenache. There are other named vineyards on the property too, I haven't asked where those names come from.) 25% is from the Bergerie vineyard, and 25% from the Carlot estate vineyard.
I was dealing with wicked allergies all day. I had previously thought that I was allergic to sage, in Boise, but I don't think they have sage out here. I've had itchy eyes, runny nose, and sneezing all day. Normally when I feel this crappy I want comfort food, so at lunchtime I drove to the grocery store in Bellegarde for chicken noodle soup. The store, however, was not open. The close for lunch from...wait for it....12:15 to 3pm! Now I understand closing for lunch. A lot of people do it around here, and honestly I think Americans should do it more. What's getting me is the time thing. First of all, who the hell gets 2 hours and 45 minutes for lunch? Second, why the odd time frame? I get 3 hours, I get 2 and a half hours. Did they do some market research that told them there's a big shopping rush between 12 and 12:15?
So I had lentils and leftover chicken for lunch.
We finished assembling the syrah in the afternoon, and before going to the store I decided to finish watching Zach and Miri Make a Porno, which is an awesome movie. Even Jason Mewes was pretty good, and he's basically Kid Rock without the questionable musical talent. The power apparently went out while I was watching it, which I only noticed because my computer stopped charging. First I thought my power converter had crapped out, but after trying multiple devices in multiple outlets, I finally figured out there was no electricity.
I went to the store and bought chicken noodle soup and candles, then got home and realized I couldn't cook the soup without electricity, so I reheated my lunch over some tealights and had a romantic candlelight dinner for one. One of the Morroccans came over to ask me about the electricity. I told him I didn't know what was going on, but I gave him a handful of tealights because they didn't have any candles in their quarters. In return he gave me some fresh mint from the garden for tea, which seemed like a fair trade.
Now the power's back on and it's my bedtime.