Originally, our schedule said to meet at the bus stop at (aka around 8:45). Our head teacher lady came to us the day before and said "So I know the schedule says 8:45, but we need to meet a bit earlier…7:15." Now, when someone says a little earlier in France I would expect like a half hour or maybe 45 minutes, not a full hour and a half. Not only did that massive time change throw us off, but the length of the drive was mind-blowing. I thought it might be an hour, maybe an hour and a half drive. Do you know what it was? 3 hours!!! The last hour and a half through windy roads. One person was on the verge of getting car sick, and if you know me, that is NOT ok (I was sitting right in front of him).
3 hours later, we finally arrive at a winery in a very pretty mountainous area. The air was cool, crisp and especially refreshing after 3 hours cooped up in a bus with 30 plus people and no AC in the rear (where I sat). The day was planned out to have an hour in the vineyard and an hour in the cellar, bottling. I started in the vineyard learning about this particular region.
So here is a little lesson on viticulture. Where we were there used to be a lot of vineyards but after WWII the wine quality was so low that most people tore out their vineyards for other things. This area is 500 meters above sea level and has cool nights but warm days. I can vouch for that statement too. We got there a little after 10 and it was cool, then once we walked up to the vineyard I was sweating and felt the sun was beaming into my cells giving me cancer. I don't remember if the altitude had to do with that but the sun being strong up in the area was a benefit for the vines. Now that we are way past WWII people are thinking to start up this area as a new place for wine growing. They will focus on low yield rootstocks in low fertility soils with small spacing to stress the vines even more. This way, in theory, there will be less leaf growth on the vine so the focus can be on the clusters. Then things won't be too crowded on the vine, if it was crowded different diseases and mildews and Botrytis could form easier. Though there are precautions taken to avoid disease and such, they still have a lot of Downey Mildew, Powdery Mildew and Botrytis. Downey Mildew chills on the leaves but can also go to the berry and kill in around June or July, causing some shot berries. Powdery Mildew can cause grapes to crack since it interferes with the grape's cell reproduction and when it starts to plump up then the skin won't grow with it and it cracks which leads to Botrytis. What a great cycle of disease, eh? |
| Berries affected by Downey Mildew |
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| Downey Mildew spores on the back of the leaf |
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| Powdery Mildew on the front of the leaf |
Next was the winery where we were just used for free manual labor, yet again. We had a mini bottling line: filling, corking, foiling, labeling and boxing. I have hand harvested twice and now bottled. It is good learning and I actually do enjoy working with my peers, but it is more fun to complain.
After all this learning we had a great lunch made by a local farmer who made his own sausage and grew his own veggies. Twas scrumptious!
Next, another 3 hour drive in a bus with no AC (in the back half). Being as smart as I am, I decided to sit in the back though I knew it was hot as hell. an hour into the drive we realized that we were not going to survive without water. We begged to stop for hydration…success. Then we still had 2 hours left of bus ride and people were not sleeping as much as the morning bus ride because 1. it was hot and 2. it was not the butt crack of dawn. It made me remember all my bus rides traveling with People to People. But for some reason I could not think of what we did to entertain ourselves. We all ended up doing origami and playing adolescent games which sounds meh, but I had a lot of fun.
One positive part to this long sauna of a bus ride was we went over the tallest bridge in France that my parents told me about, Millau Viaduct. It is not as pretty as the Golden Gate Bridge, but I mean now I have some sort of bragging rights.
And we were on TV!! Click on the October 2nd news link and then go to 16:40
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