Today was the second day of vintage over all and the first of harvesting on Luc’s vineyards. We left the house at 8am and drove to the other side of the valley. Down in the village, all the helpers met up in a parking lot where we formed car pools for the short drive up the mountain.
View of Luc's vineyards from the village.
We were over 20 people, so the harvest went by really fast. We were so fast and there were so many grapes that Luc couldn’t keep up with the collection and pressing of the grapes, so that we ran out of cases a couple of times. Even though we had taken our first break around 10.30am.
At noon, we were so far ahead that not only all the cases were full but also all the buckets were filled to the brim. We had lunch then and many a harvester took a nap in the shade of the vines.
I had lain down, too, but had only snoozed for a short while. I just had to make use of the new perspective, so I started taking pictures. At first lying on my back, then lying on my stomach.
That position wasn’t exactly comfortable because the ground was covered in loose rubble, but it was totally worth it.
During the harvest we had heard a donkey screech multiple times and then I finally spotted it across the valley and, of course, had to take a picture for certain people (you know who you are). Bad quality or not.
After roughly 8 hours on the vineyard, we were finally done and packed up to return to the house, where we would have stone-baked pizza.
At home, I changed into something more comfortable before making my way to Michael’s Grangeon and sitting on his terrace to get away from all the people for a while. I edited photos, read and just enjoyed the calm. When it got too chilly, I went back to the house where I spent some time finally trying to translate my blogs into French. I had talked with Clémence yesterday and shown her my blog. That motivated me to try and translate it. It’s hard work and I’ll probably have to ask her for help, which is not easy for me. But I’m here to learn French after all!
When it was already dark, we had pizza, soup and, of course, wine. The atmosphere was great and everyone had a good time. Later, there were several home-made spirits (moonshines?) offered. The first two were so strong that just smelling them could have gotten you drunk; the third and last one was, thankfully, a lot less strong and thus a good way to finish.
Michael and I talked for a long time, long after everyone else had already gone to bed. We probably could have talked a lot longer, still, but since we would harvest the next morning, we called it a day at 12.30am, to get at least a few hours of sleep.