Lineanongrata

try me

The boys, or rather Pierre-Yves, painted this trailer a light blue today and there was much discussion going on about the color and whether or not he should add pink flowers. And while I get the impression that the menfolk on this winery think about color only in terms of 'rustproof' or not, they still got into the game enough to challenge me about those pink flowers.
Terms like 'dare not' or 'cannot' or 'won't' were used, if I remember right.

Well, watch me if I can't.

I just wish I would be able to get up at five thirty to see the men tomorrow morning when they discover their trailer. Or I would very much love to be at the nearest village the next time Pierre-Yves has to explain to one of our neighbors why our trailer is in full bloom.

sometimes life just wants to be ordinary life

As I wander from work table to computer and back, I try to find a fancy story to tell you. Something witty to make you laugh. And maybe me, too. That's what blogging is about, at least for me. A glimpse in someone else's day, and for the writer a reminder of the good, and sometimes bad events that happened. An exercise in finding the positive and the funny.

There have been both, here on the winery, of course. The good and the bad, the funny and the angry.

But I can't find a way to tell you about it all. The fancy words are on holiday, and maybe sometimes life just wants to be life. One day after the other, more or less the same. And that's fine with me.

Not that we were resting. Harvest has started more than a week ago. The first red grapes came in today. But the photos I took are exactly the same as last year, the words that come to mind are nothing new. I can't find a new angle to the same procedure.

This will be Vincent's and my last harvest. We are leaving the winery. In October I will go to Berlin, to work as an illustrator again. I'm full of hope and also greatly relieved to be able to do what I like best full time.
But there's also sadness at leaving this place, at leaving the people here. Sadness also because Vincent wants to go to Marseille, where I don't want to go, and I want to go to Berlin, where he doesn't want to go.

Meanwhile we're waiting for the lady who will take over our work to arrive, to help her get started. It feels very much like a bubble in time. We're full of new projects and ideas but we're still here, still responsible for parts of life on the winery, for the welfare of our team, for the way harvest plays itself out. 

Sometimes our nerves are stretched thin and near the breaking point, but at the same time things always flow forward. Like I said: One day after the other, more or less the same, and it doesn't really matter if they're pleasant or not, even though I would prefer them all to be one happy stretch of memories. The important thing is that things move forward.

a walk

This post is titled 'a walk', but it might have been 'a week's worth of photos' or 'what we love'. Because at the moment I don't have a lot of time to post or even to think about the things that are happening, but there is one hour that is more or less always the same. The one hour I reserve for taking a walk  with the dogs.

It's usually a solitary hour (even though there are four of us) where I feel strongly about nature and see so many things changing incredibly quickly over a week or so.

I love how there Irises are just there. All of a sudden.

I love the geometry of the first spring green in the vineyard.

'Drinking while walking right in it' is a huge favorite. For some of us. It's difficult to restrain myself. But I've yet to give in.

It's amazing how rain is omnipresent. It's either here, or we're waiting for it. That's as 'May' as it will get.

I wonder about the grasses. Can oats really be growing already ? Grasses are something I associate so much with fall.

I love the feeling of 'this is the South'. This is the South because of the small huts, because of the vineyards. Because of the smells. Because of the ever changing sky. Because of the birds and the cicadas.

We love playing 'where is the 45 kg doggy ?'.

How lovely is seeing the sky after the day spent in front of the computer...

watching my mother fall asleep over a book,

finishing a child's sweater ?

But nothing is as funny as seeing what Akbar left for the cat after a raid on the cat food. Really, that's my absolute favorite.

We're off to London for a trade fair next week. Cross all your fingers and toes so that we'll find an importer.
I hope I'll find a moment to post. Because I'll meet a very special person I've never met before. My first blog friend meeting ever. I'm incredibly excited. Janet, I'm on my way for cake, coffee and London ! And a no-boy day.

water everywhere

If you think the boys are muddy, you should have seen the puppies. There was no way I was going to get near enough to one of them to get a picture, but take my word for it: Wind (the black and white one) was brown. Muddy brown. And everything she touched, maybe even everything she even thought of, was brown, too. Including my pants.
What the boys were doing ? Searching for gold, of course. Or maybe it was water. Yes, it must have been water. They were looking for the tubes our water comes and goes in.
How we lost them ? Don't ask. We never even knew where they were. Something to do with very old houses and DIY plumbing.

It has been raining for four days now. Rivulets of water are running over the winery, I can hear the sounds of a real stream when I open the bathroom window. A stream that doesn't exist on sunny days.

All this mud makes me crave clean things. Things that smell good, and wet puppies assuredly don't fall into that category.
So this weekend I tried my hand at soap making. I have wanted to do this for more than a year now but something always came up (running when the weather is fair, for example. Something I haven't done in ages, if I even remember right.). Please don't ask what I made the white chocolate with.  I know it doesn't really look like any soap you've ever seen, but it smells good. Really.

In the attempt to make the house feel more like a home, which is a difficult task if you see mud creeping in from beneath the door, I bought some tulips. Tulips feel so very much like spring. And by magic I don't do willingly, I took a photo of them that even looks like spring.
I wish I could perform the same trick in my head.

one of my all-time evergreens

Two trade fairs down, one to go. Mister Serious up there and I are very much hoping to have found an importer for Belgium.
The fair at Rotterdam in the Netherlands was pure horror for me because I had the migraine of my life. Poor Vincent had to stand up alone all the time while I tried to move as little as possible with the sugary sweetest smile plastered on my face (I tried. It probably didn't work).
Nevertheless these occasions usually have their funny moments. One of my favorite evergreens is when someone male comes to the stand and starts telling me what kind of wine women like.
I tell you, one never stops learning.
For example Rose Wines. After all I've heard I must believe that Roses are typically women's wines and cannot be consumed by any self-respecting man.
Also, Roses are for those who are indecisive (concerning the what-shall-I-drink-red-or-white question) and don't know a lot about wine. Obviously we're talking about women. Because all men are wine connoisseurs.
This is the moment I cough a little. Because it's either coughing or laughing and I can't very well laugh in the face of a potential client.

The topic of Roses exhausted, the client will then usually move on to Reds, growing a little in height, because THAT'S what men drink. Because red wine is the real thing.

Ah well. I just wonder where the notion that drinking red wine is something to boast with came from.
And I do wonder why they think they need to tell wine makers or wine sellers all this, especially when they're women. Taste is something so very personal and everyone has the right to like or not like something. Personally I wouldn't mind a cup of tea right now. It's freezing cold in Rotterdam.

what the boys got

In pretty winery bags,

because I had no time to sew the gift wrappings I wanted to sew.

I had a calendar printed for them. The ultimate La Grange winery calendar.

With some of the most beautiful photos of this year's harvest.

So now, even when they're at home they have to look at each other. I can't decide whether or not that's vicious of me, but they looked happy when they browsed through the images, reliving some of the funniest moments of harvest.

The calendar was printed by Lulu. Really quick, too. I'm rather happy to have managed a Christmas present before Christmas. Usually I hand them in later, during January or so.

As you can see, my brilliant organization hasn't reached the point where I would photograph today's advent calendar gift during daytime. It would be too much, probably.

Yesterday's gift goes to you, Nicole of ikkinlala, if you would send me an email with your address.

it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be

 

When I woke up this morning I thought I'd go right back to sleep, so tired was I. You know those mornings, of course. After having slept badly you wake up and think that this will surely be a day of failures. And an early night.

The good thing about those days is that when you expect nothing good, every positive thing weighs double. You notice them more.
Thinking back I could hardly tell you what I did today. It seems like a succession of unrelated events and work procedures. But I never felt overwhelmed or bad about the things I did. I know that much.
Oh wait. I did feel bad when I saw my dog Orion limping because he had been in a dog fight. But male dogs are another story at our house lately. Male and jealous. Not a good combination.

A long time ago I read the feeling neutral or unmoved was a good thing. Probably when I read about Buddhism. Back then I didn't entirely understand how feeling neutral could be positive. It seems a contradiction in terms. And waking up expecting the day to be at least a tired, if not a bad one isn't exactly what one might call neutral. But getting through a day without major disturbances or big outbreaks of emotion is definitely positive at this busy time of year.

How about you ? Does your workload increase before Christmas ? I sometimes wonder if everybody works more before Christmas or if that's a phenomenon happening in some lines of work only.
Have you all your presents ?

Yesterday's Advent present goes to Tracy. Which is much more positive than neutral. But as neutral is positive...

tenthousand things to remember

The lovely raincloud in this picture came from the little green frog in Canada, and shows what we had all day: Rain. It rained when we woke up this morning and it's still raining as I write this.
Which means that the clothes I put on freshly this morning will need to be washed tomorrow morning because I have paw prints everywhere. Muddy paw prints.
Rainy days also deprive me of the ever so fascinating details of winery life that I could tell you about on this blog. Today I have no brilliant story about the winery. Harvest is long over, and sometimes I can read in your comments that you are wondering what on earth one does during the rest of the year, if one lives on a winery. Well, unfortunately, there is work on a place like this all year long. If anyone ever tells you that you'll have spare time making wine, don't believe a word.
There are always a thousand things to be done. Christian is in the cellar right now, caring for the new wines we made in 2008. He will put parts of the wine into oak barrels, take them out again, survey and analyze each wine we made. Did you know that wines go through two fermentations ? Putting them onto a bottle before they have undergone the second one would be very perilous. The wines could start fermenting again, blowing out all the corks and ruining the bottles forever.
Much of the paperwork needs to be done now. If you produce an alcoholic product you'll have ten thousand papers to fill out for customs and at least ten other organizations that influence the life of a winery. We have to document every movement for each wine, and be it just from one barrel to the next.
We have to note in advance how much of this or that wine we think we'll produce. We have to tell exactly how many hectoliters of each wine we really did end up with. Both customs and the village we live in need to be informed of that.
We also need to sell our products. Our first year here was mainly spent organizing the winery and the vineyard. But we can't produce without selling. So I'm designing leaflets that describe the winery, informative sheets for each wine. Letterheads, business cards, a website, posters, postcards, price lists, Vincent and I go to the retailers, leave a bottle or two to taste and some information, call back two weeks later. We are compiling lists of retailers in cities we'll go to, Paris, Rotterdam, Bruxelles. We organize trade shows for next year, try to be in all the books about this region, every tourist guide imaginable. We'll send bottles to every contest and award and we listen to the day to day banter of the people we work with. That's the best part. The people we really care about.

All of these things that need to be done require a lot of lists (I will write 'hang up the laundry' on mine, just so that I can cross it out ten minutes later. It makes me feel good.). Many things to remember. That's why I made this pegboard last night. I still need to mount it one a board for stability and hanging on a wall, but it looks satisfactorily decorative already. If Vincent thinks it to be alright, I'll hang it right beside the door so everyone can leave a note and see what the others have left on it when they come in.
Maybe that will help keep things organized here.
Sara in Canada, you won yesterday's gift. Would you mind telling me your address, again ? I think we already went through the formalities last year, but I didn't keep the list of addresses.

two and some news of the boys

Do you miss the wine making boys now that harvest is over ? I actually do, sometimes. They're out in the vineyard, cutting back the vines now. Some days it's very cold out, the Tramontane wind blowing, and they will be out there until the beginning of April, if they go as fast as they intended.

I see them all once a week, on Wednesday, when we eat together.
Last week's conversation was about boys and girls. Most of them have at least one child and those who have kids have either boys only, or girls only.
François, a boy-only father, would very much have liked a girl. Pierre-Yves, who has one daughter, would 'have it this way, if it were to be done all over'. Benoît, who has one boy, added, after some reflection, 'you're right. Girls must be much easier. Boys will eventually come asking for a car. But give a girl rubber gloves to do the dishes and she'll be as happy as can be.'
...Maybe I don't miss them, after all.
If any of you finds a pair of rubber gloves in a really big size, please purchase them for me. I'll pay you for the gloves and shipping via Paypal. I think Benoît might need a special Christmas present this year. 

Yesterday's advent gift goes to Hanna. No family preferences intended.

And thank you all for participating. I didn't think it would be so exciting to do this game again, but it is. I felt like a child yesterday when your comments started to pour in.

glowing

Europe turned the clock to wintertime this weekend and it changes everything.

At seven pm it's dark outside. All of a sudden.

As though winter had already arrived. Without giving notice.

Only during the day do I notice it's still autumn. Nights are getting colder. If I may say so, living in the South of France.

But daytime brings light. Golden light that floods everything and seems to live inside everything it touches, making things glow.

Even fruit flies. Because even if I have to end this post on a lesser romantic note: We were infested. It's the wine and the very end of harvest season. It's normal, and sometimes it's even pretty, but mostly it's a pest.

Nota bene: Even pests can be pretty. Which makes me think of siblings. Whom I'll be seeing pretty soon.