I could of course embark on a serious story about tertiary chalky soils and chemical reactions of carbohydroxides but I fear that the average reader will then immediately surf on. Self indulgence may be most gratifying but these pages were concocted in order to get read. On the basis of my good friend and Champagne producer Jean Boubly’s experiences I will talk you through the Yearly cycle of activities in the vineyard, from the beginning to the beginning…
During the last months of the year, Jean Boubly, our Champagne producer has been working very hard, processing the harvest and getting the orders for Christmas ready. In January he sets out to have a look at his vineyards and, lo and behold, the whole hassle starts all over again. As is often the case during the late season in this region, around Reims, outbursts of rain have once again washed a layer of clay from the slopes. In some places you can even see the underlying chalk. Specialists call this erosion. Jean simply calls it a damn nuisance.
Because of the wire contraptions that support the branches in summer Jean cannot possibly shovel up the clay by means of a big tractor and drive up hill to get things back in order. What’s more, the preceding year the vines have been cut back till just above ground level but are also still there. The roots of the vines are several meters deep absorbing the water from the porous chalky soil. This makes them grow upwards and downwards. The plants that have been in place for some twenty years are called “old vines”. But our friend, being a a Frenchman, talks about “Vieilles Vignes” which I must honestly say, sounds a lot better.
So just like his ancestors Jean goes on his way armed with a shovel and a wheelbarrow and happily digs up the clay, trundles up the slopes and puts it back in place. He could have used a horse of course but what do you think. Jean considers himself a modern producer: “Horses are old-fashioned;’so let’s do it by hand…’
The seasonal workers that helped Jean with the harvest in the past month of September are either having a ball on the ski slopes or are collecting grapes in Australia or New Zealand, so every day Jean, all alone, finds himself buggering about with sticky sludge on the dank hills. From day to day his temper goes from bad to worse. The more since he has to fertilize his vineyard with cow dung by hand. He often thinks “why on earth did I choose this shitty job”.
The family soil
The truth is that he did not really have a choice. His father, grandfather and great grandfather were also champagne producers by tradition. His heritage wasn’t a big heap of money but a big heap of clay and an old dilapidated house. Of course he could have sold the business and have pocketed 1 million euro per hectare. But what to do with all that money. He does not have a clue what to do with shares, he does not want to live in a city, and living with all that money in a village of champagne farmers who do not understand why he sold his soul is not an option either. In Jean’s family there were several children. So the handsome piece of land that papa Boubly left after his death had to be divided into smaller portions. Jean again has two children so when he dies his land will also be divided in two pieces.
So you would expect that throughout four centuries the Champagne region would look like a patchwork quilt of small vineyards. Fortunately however, economy as well as fate lends a helping hand and so it is not all that bad. The owner of a small patch of land cannot possibly exploit it economically. He will go bust. The bigger champagne producers are more than willing to buy pieces of land from small farmers and thus a larger entity is being formed again...
It is a peculiarity of the region that the patches of land are not necessarily connected. On the hill above the village where Jean lives you will find a piece of 30 by 30 meters belonging to Jean and another one measuring 10 by 30 meters belonging to Dominique and next to that one another 10 by 30 meter field that is Jean’s.. The vineyards carry no name so Jean has put out little flags to indicate which fields are his. Jean is not the first or the only one to do so. So if you wonder what sort of festival is going on, the sea of flags is just for showing “which is whom’s”.
The big boys in the business also own big unbroken pieces of land. They bought out many a small farmer and are now enjoying the phenomenon of “economy by scale”. Triumphantly a big kind of headstone engraved with the big boy’s name and logo adorns the large vineyard. The first time I motored through the region I really thought that the Veuve Clicquot had been buried in her own vineyard. After having encountered her “headstone” in twenty different places I arrived at a more logical explanation.
Anyway, back to Jean
In March the pruned vines start to grow again and Jean is traipsing through his vineyards with a smile on his face. With the finesse of a Japanese bonsai artist he happily clips his vines in order to precisely determine their shape. He knows after all that the vines should neither grow too high nor stay too low. In summer the layers of chalk underlying the hill are being warmed up by the temperature in the ground and to a lesser degree,also by the sun. The roots of the vines reach a depth of some twenty meters. So the vines grow mainly because of their warm feet and only to a small degree because of the sun on their little heads.
According to Jean the best grapes from the Champagne regions are the ones that grow close to the ground. So harvest time is most beneficial to the “lumbagodocter”. Well so be it. In warmer wine regions like in South Africa or the south of France where the sunshine is a lot more intense the vines are tied higher to the stakes in order to get the maximum benefit from the sun. So the “lumbagodokter's” income is a lot less handsome there.
Even in the month of May considerable frost is not uncommon in the Champagne region. The branches on the vines are already sprouting and the buds are very vulnerable. If nothing would be done the harvest could very well be “nipped in the bud”. So a remedy was found in encouraging the global warming effect by putting burning open air stoves in the fields. During this period Jean’s noble task lies in filling up the stoves.
Jean’s brother is a lazy monkey. He takes an easier way out and sprays the vines with water which converts the vineyard into a poetic sort of ice sculpture that would put those in Haren and Harbin to shame. It does work though. The ice forms an isolating layer on the buds and prevents them from reaching a temperature below minus four degrees Centigrade. Still not ideal but not really disastrous to the vines.
Boubly watches the branches grow happily and ties them once again to the wires that have been strung between stakes. The labour has become a bit monotonous and Jean muses on the good old days when the vines grew helter skelter on the mountain and he zigzagged over the hill, cheerfully singing while enjoying a bottle of his own produce of four years ago. Nowadays, month after month he is obliged to tie the branches to the wire, row after row.
French rules and regulations
Jean’s ancestors apparently took a course in Marketing and supply-chain optimalisation and came to the conclusion that harvesting a maximum amount of grapes per hectare and per person might be a good idea. An optimalisation philosophy that these days is also applied in business circles and does not work there either. The quality of the final product suffered as a result of this new philosophy and hé presto, the customers from abroad spontaneously began to drink their own local products and believe it or not even delivered their stuff to the traditional Champagne export markets.”Nom de Dieu” and “Par Bleu” exclaimed the “Comité Interprofssionel du Vignoble Champagne” (the society of Wise Old Champagne Men with Red Noses).
In France problems are often solved by issuing strict rules and regulations. I think that such is caused by the fact that instead of being actually active the average Frenchman rather talks about activities. That France has become the most bureaucratic country in the EEG certainly has a reason.
Life in the Champagne therefore is rife with all kinds of rules. Sticklers for quality have, amongst others, thought up for Jean how to tie his branches. Entire books were published, telling how farmers, on which hills, for which types of grapes, should string their wires between how many stakes. Some people took even took a “degree” on the subject distance between stakes’. In the event of meeting these people on a party, don’t ever ask the stupid question: “what about the wires?”
So Jean was told it would not do him any good to listen to his forebears and was forbidden to produce more than approximately 14.000 kilo’s of grapes per hectare. If he harvests more than is permitted he will lose his bureaucratic listing in no time and will find himself forced to make very expensive grape juice instead of Champagne. Now Jean is a Frenchman so not entirely daft and sufficiently inventive. The vines are neatly on a fixed distance from each other and from April till June Jean cheerfully keeps pruning the branches just to take care that he does not have too many of them and (at any rate,according to his typical French bookkeeping) precisely 13.999 kilo’s of grapes per hectare can be harvested.
Touristseason
Summer is on its way and summer is an exciting period for Jean. For the weather in the Champagne is as predictable as a woman’s periods. Anything might happen. If the weather is too warm his branches will grow too fast which will make him exceed his bookkeeping limit. If it is too cold he might have cut too enthusiastically and due to economic reasons can permit himself no more than a nine weekholiday in the next year.
Fortunately there is sufficient distraction. Via the Route Touristique tourists are visiting Jean in order to try his products from previous years. Jean enjoys telling about his products and continuously performs quality checks. So just to be sure he drinks a glass or two with his visitors. Every day some ten people will visit Jean in summer so you will understand that these are not Jean’s most productive months.
During the summer Jean also makes a study of the differences in cultures in the EEC. He found out that it comes in handy to pretend not be home when he spots a particular car entering his yard. Meaning a vehicle with a yellow-black numberplate and carrying orange folding chairs on the roof. He had his experiences with the Jansens from the Low Countries. They want to try every variety Jean has in his cellar and initially Jean made the mistake to open four new bottles for tasting. Jansen however is only passing through on his way to warmer holiday places and does not feel like spending a substantial part of his budget on Champagne. Punters motoring through the Champagne region on the way back are even worse. The family’s budgeteer already knows that this holiday was more expensive than last year’s and that the money is at its end. The car, or even worse the caravan, is filled to the brim with all kinds of useful local products like sombreros or cartons of wine from other regions. It really is not exceptional for poor Jean to hear them uttering the typical Dutch catchphrase: “that was nice Jean. We’ll have half a bottle of that Champagne”. No, Jean is thoroughly fed up with the ‘cheeseheads’. From now on he will only open his doors for his own people, his northern neighbours and those islanders with a pronounced English accent. These folks will taste some wines and just ask Jean to send them six boxes of this and another four of that, without even talking about a volume discount. Now that is more like it!
The harvest
Come August and Jean starts suffering from harvest-itch. The Wise Men with the Big Red Noses who never set eyes on a speed running track nevertheless are adamant to fire the starting shot for the harvest to begin. Imagine those farmers to start harvesting too early! So we’re dealing with another typical French phenomenon. All through summer they take it easy and then all of a sudden everybody starts running around in order to get the harvesting done within three or four weeks. For there is always the threat of rain of course. Being a level-headed Dutchman I would say; “Don’t wait so long before starting to collect”. But apparently the word logic does not exist in the French language.I am quite fond of circus so during harvest time I love to go to the Champagne region. Together with Jean I went through the phases of the process for about a quarter of an hour and came to the conclusion that writing about it is a lot less tiring.
During the harvest season a whole army of youngsters, gypsies and other jolly folks descends like locusts on the Champagne region to help harvesting the grapes. The funny thing is that France is on the opposite side of New Zealand and Australia. So when it is harvest time in the Champagne the harvesters from down under happen to have nothing on their hands. So during the harvest the Champagne region is teeming with Aussies and New Zealanders. They sleep in cars, caravans and the cheaper B&B’s. The hotels are full up with harvest watchers, agricultural officers, rules and regulations inspectors and pseudo experts. So if you consider going there in harvest time You would have to book far in advance or be prepared to take an expensive hotel in Reims or even further away.
As for the process of harvesting, this is hardly an ultra modern procedure: one simply squats down, one takes a pair of scissors, one cuts the bunch of grapes and one throws the latter in a bucket. When full one throws the bucket to the chief bucket carrier and one quickly ducks to avoid the empty bucket that is thrown back. The chief grape thrower throws the grapes in a 50 kg. crate and the exciting cycle starts all over again.
When three crates are full Jean’s wheel barrow is put into action and a local equilibrist walks some 500 meters through the vineyard pushing a cart loaded with three crates (150 kg of grapes).Subsequently he empties the crates on pallets in the van, puts the empty crates back on the wheel barrow and starts his tightrope act all over again.
INTERMEZZO:
A few things caught my attention while being present at the vendange (harvest). It so happens that I managed a few projects in France. Time and again the Union busybodies told me to heed all kinds of rules and regulations concerning the number of hours our French fellow human beings are allowed to work per day and per week (or at any rate are allowed to be present at the boss’s expense). In Paris it was downright impossible to let staff make more than 10 hours of overtime. Apparently during the harvest in the Champagne region there are no such rules. The union of Champagne workers evidently adopted certain South East European traits. The fact that in the morning people immediately started to work struck me as another charming phenomenon. No lengthy kissing sessions, no elaborate chatting and coffee drinking or more of those typical French activities that I was confronted with in Paris. We did have the typical French lunch though. Not like in my country, with a ham or a cheese bun and a mug of milk. On the contrary, a leisurely sitting down 3 course lunch, with a glass of Champagne for starters, a glass of wine with the food and a cup of coffee to crown a pleasant meal.