Notre vigne

In our village, virtually everyone owns some vines and takes the grapes to the cave cooperative -- the life of the village revolves around wine. When we moved here, we wanted our own little plot of land, if only to be able to say that our house wine had our own grapes in it. As foreigners, buying a vigne was an exploit in itself, involving a man in a hat and dark glasses, much pastis, and a secret visit to the notaire. It's a tiny plot -- 27 ares and about 600 individual vines.

For various administrative reasons we can't officially cultivate it ourselves, so we rent it to J-L, who combines being a fonctionnaire with being a viticulteur. When we bought it, it was planted with carignan vines which were older than we were -- planted in the 1950s. In the first year, Steve pruned them himself, after lessons from F (électricien/viticulteur), who showed him how to make the right number of cuts in the right places. "But don't worry," reassured F; "taille comme tu veux, ça donnera jamais des figues." (Prune how you like, you'll never get figs).

The night before the harvest, Steve crept out armed with a bag of figs, some fishing line, and a head torch. Imagine F's surprise when he was picking grapes the next day and came across a row of vines laden with figs -- an event immortalised in the local paper. In those days half a dozen of us could finish the harvest in a morning, leaving the afternoon free for a copious and well-lubricated lunch.

In 2010, for reasons of profitability and desire for "improving" grape varieties, J-L pulled up the vines and replaced them with grenache, planted further apart to facilitate the passage of the tractor (and ultimately, no doubt, a grape-harvesting machine). We were sad to lose our old vines, even though they were no longer very productive.

So for the last two years there's been no harvest. The tiny vines are looking healthy though; they are planted en espalier, but this stubby little number at the end of a row seems to have decided to stay close to the ground.