Scènes de la saison

There aren't many apples on the trees around the hamlet and vineyard this year, but there are a few. Maybe I should pick these before they fall and get lost in the high grasses and weeds. That's part of the vineyard in the background, with our house on the right. The harvesting of grapes is ongoing, by the way.

Yesterday was a foretaste of winter. We expected rain, but all we got was a fine mist that turned into a soft drizzle every now and then. This morning it's 10 degrees F warmer than it has been for the past week or so at this hour.

Here's a closer shot of the house seen through the weeds around the pond out back. The image above is a close-up of the plant I was looking through when I took the photo below. You can also see the garden shed and back gate, below.

And finally, tall artichokes. Obviously, we haven't had a lot of wind lately or they would have blown over. All that fluff would have blown away. Those are apple trees and a hazelnut hedge behind them, and then the woods on the north side of the yard.

Yesterday we had teriyaki-glazed parsnips and sausages for lunch. Today it will be chicken creole, using the some of the bell peppers I picked a couple of days ago and some of the tomatoes too. I'm hungry already and it's not even 7 a.m. yet.

Les dernières tomates

I woke up this morning to the sound of radiators popping and cracking as they heated up and expanded. In other words, it's cold outside. Yesterday when I went out in the vineyard there was a fairly heavy frost in places that weren't sheltered by trees. I was wearing two fleece jackets, a hat, and gloves. I should have put on long underwear, but I hadn't thought to.

When I got back home, I decided to go pick the rest of the tomatoes and peppers out in the garden. There were quite a few fully ripe tomatoes to be gathered, and a lot of tomatoes that were just starting to turn pale pink. I picked them all. The pink ones will continue ripening. I also gathered up half a dozen bell peppers that are partly green and partly red..

Now the weather is supposed to turn rainy, and warm up. The kale plants will enjoy that. On dry days, we'll go pull out the tomato plants and get rid of them. Maybe we'll bring in some green tomatoes and see what we can do with them. We'll also gather up the winter squashes and pumpkins and store them somewhere. Let's hope that the rain isn't too constant and that we'll have decent working conditions.

Forbidden fruit

C'est-à-dire « cépages interdits ». According to an article I just read, there are six grapes varietals that are "outlawed" in French wine-making. Apparently, the grapes can be grown but they can't be made into wine. It's not really clear why. The ban dates back to 1935.

One day years ago I was talking to a neighbor who has about 15 acres of vines up behind our house. I don't know if I brought up the subject of outlawed varietals, or if he did. Either way, he told me that one of his fellow vignerons had a row of such grapes planted among his "legal" vines. He treated the news like a big secret, but he told me more or less where the banned grapes were planted.

Walt located them a while back, once they had grapes on them. I'd never noticed them. I see two signs that they are the ones the neighbor told me about. First, they are planted in a short row on the edge of a plot of white-wine grapes, but half the grapes in the row in question are red. Also, the white grapes in the forbidden row are different from the white grapes planted next to them, and they haven't yet been harvested, while the grapes in the rest of the parcel have been.

Why are these varietals — clinton, noah, jacquez, herbemont, othello, isabelle — unfit to be turned into wine? People whisper that the wine made from them would drive people crazy, the way it was rumored that absinthe did. Others says wine made from them just wouldn't taste good. There is some evidence that the ban might date back to the 19th-century importation of vines from North America that brought the phylloxera scourge to French vineyards and nearly killed the wine-making business here.

I don't know what the grapes in my photos here are, but they are the ones. I've tasted a grape of each color and I don't feel any crazier than I did before. Here's a link to the article (in French) that I read this morning.

Left behind

Harvesting continues in the vineyard. Les vendanges continuent. Now the Renaudie guys seem to be working not just mornings but also afternoons to bring the rest of the grapes in. The weather is supposed to turn rainy in a day or two, and the rains will continue next week. That's normal for the second half of October.

I went out with the dog yesterday morning and I was admiring the grapes all around us as we walked. Walt went out in the afternoon and said two big plots just on the north side of our yard have now been stripped of their fruit.

I took these photos farther out in the vineyard, about half a mile (nearly a kilometer) from our house. I don't know what this thing is called that is left behind when the grapes are harvested by machine. I heard or read the word last week, but now I can't remember it and I don't know where I saw or heard it.

One thing I read about machine-harvesting as compared to hand-harvesting is that when bunches of grapes are cut by hand, the woody structure at the center of a bunch goes with the grapes. It can impart a flavor to the grape juice and resulting wine that is not necessarily desirable. So chalk one up for machine-harvesting.