Cellar hygiene über alles

The latest instalment of Hannah's adventures in the Ardeche finds her developing a strange relationship with a pneumatic press. And realising that the hardest work at harvest was not in the vineyard, after all.

I used to think it was the vendangers who had it hardest at harvest. Last year, punching eight hours a day picking chez Cousin, I regarded the handsome boys who worked in the cellar enviously. They surely had it easier because they got to work in the cool with straight backs. Their work was brain work, 9-5 alchemy while we danced around the clock on hands and knees.

The dark under my eyes spells ‘stupid’. Yes it’s cool in the cellar, even cold, at 1 a.m. when we finish and 6 a.m. when we start. And yes my back is straight - it needs to be when lifting 20kg caisse  - unless it’s not, as when shovelling three tonnes of grapes out of a cuve, naked feet shifting down a dune of slimy marbles in CO₂-saturated jungle humidity as opposed to air, or when filling it: stomach surviving on bread and paté balanced over the lip, knees flirting with the last ladder rung stretched at its steepest kayaking against the rapids of grapes cascading in. But this isn't about who, winemaker or grapepicker, is…