Having always lived in the suburbs of Bordeaux, I have always heard my friends talk about their summer experiences participating in the harvest at neighboring wineries, but I had never taken the step to join them.
It took 25 years for me to decide to discover this practice without spending ten days there! Thanks to the discovery day “Rendez-vous for the grape harvest in Bordeaux, Blaye and Bourg”, offered by the Bordeaux Tourist Office, I was able to make up for my shortcomings in a single day.
So we find ourselves, a good twenty apprentice winegrowers, boarding the bus that will take us to the Chateau Marquisate La Perouse in Berson, in Blayais. Small property of 10 hectares of biodynamic vines, which has specially reserved a plot for us for our initiation.
My fellow vines all come from distant backgrounds: Californians, Chinese, Italians and Austrians. Julia, the guide, explains the program to us: we will have to work… bent over backwards all day! This triggers a collective laugh that will resonate throughout the day.
The owner, Jean-Francois Levrier, his wife and children, give us a warm welcome and show us their agricultural approach to viticulture by working the soil while using herbal preparations, cow horns (yes, yes!) and a pinch of sulfur to stimulate the vectors of certain forces present in this soil, in order to obtain a good vegetative process as well as to limit the spread of parasites.
After the presentation, the owners distribute work tools (secateurs, buckets, hoods) as well as the roles that we will have to play between the rows of vines: the “cutters”, supposed to prune the bunches of grapes and dump them first in a bucket and then in a hood. They are the ones who will be bent over backwards all day! And the "carriers”, more physical, who will carry on their backs a basket where the kilos of grapes collected by the previous ones will be dumped.
Finally, as I announced at the beginning, the only echoes that we heard in the rows of vines were the laughter of joy of the participants... because yes, that is by far what I will remember from this day, a conviviality that goes beyond international borders, kindness and budding friendships. The photos bear witness to this.
And this complicity will be affirmed during the meal served by the owners, typical dishes of the Bordeaux region and I will always be surprised with amusement when people ask me what gizzards, duck breasts or beef cheeks cooked in wine are! Holy Chinese! who were not the last for the tasting, when Jean-François Levrier gave us three different vintages from his estate to enjoy, one of which was bottled 5 days before.
After this convivial lunch, the most valiant returned to the vines to pick up the few remaining bunches, the day ending with a demonstration of grape destemming and a visit to the cellars, with the gift of a bottle from the property to bring back as a souvenir.
If you want to participate in this discovery day (next year, of course, the harvest ends in September):
Chateau Marquisat La Perouse
Jean-François LEVRIER
3 The Marquisate
33390 BERSON – France
Tel: +06 40 94 85 57 XNUMX
“Rendez-vous for the grape harvest in Bordeaux, Blaye and Bourg”