A New Adventure in France

Our time at Figeac came to an end and we decided to spend another week in one of our first, and favourite, campsites on the river at Anglars-Juillac, west of Cahors. Surprisingly, the small campsite is still well-populated but mainly with Dutch and Belgian travellers – no French to be seen. It’s as beautiful as ever and we have another lovely riverside pitch.

Another reason for heading back this way is that we had arranged to take part in a day of wine-related activities at some vineyards near here. This annual event is called ‘Festi’vendanges’ and celebrates the start of the harvesting of grapes, the work of the winemakers and their local products. We arrived at the first vineyard, Chateau Saint-Sernin, in Parnac at 8.30 a.m (our fellow campers still tucked up asleep) for a ‘casse-croûte’ to fortify us for the morning. This comprised charcuterie, cheese, bread and muffin type cake with a choice of wine or coffee to wash it down. The day was already looking promising(!) but we did sensibly opt for the coffee. We then had the choice of joining groups to do a walk around the area and village or to take part in harvesting of the grapes by hand. Joe opted for the walk and Claire for the harvesting. The harvesting was all well set up for Covid precautions with all buckets and secateurs having been disinfected, workers allocated to individual rows of vines to ensure distancing and everyone gloved and masked as required. The guidelines also recommended avoiding ‘promiscuité’ during the picking, making us wonder what kind of activity this was, but the translation of the word actually means ‘overcrowding’ – so all above board.

We worked down our allotted row of vines – Malbec grapes – filling our buckets and carrying them down the row to the waiting tractor and container. We only harvested for about an hour and a half, enough time to do a row and to get a very good sense of how hard it is on the back and legs with all the crouching down. The harvesting of the white variety grapes on this domaine had started 12 days previously and this was the first parcel of red wine grapes to be harvested. The domaine harvests its grapes with huge mechanical pickers so this parcel had been selected for the day.

We followed the tractor and its load to the building where the grapes are tipped into a hopper that strips the grapes from the stalks. The owner was also able to check at this point the likely alcohol content of the end product by capturing some of the first juice in a test tube like container and measuring with what looked like a thermometer. The result showed 12.7% which he seemed happy with so it looks like the rest of his grapes are close to being harvested.

Joe meanwhile had enjoyed a lovely 7 km walk through vineyards with panoramic views. The commentary was in French by a winemaker with a very strong southern french accent, so some of the details remain a mystery.

The two groups reunited back at base at about 11am for a tasting of the château’s wines, a range of about 6 wines. The owner is of French Polynesian decent so his wine labels were very interesting including one looking like a Maori carving or tattoo. Accompanying us for the day and providing musical accompaniment was La Bandas La Pieuvre and by 11.30 a.m. the locals were already enjoying a french style conga.

Having tasted all of the wines, we were ferried in procession through the vineyards to the next destination of the village square of Parnac, either in vintage cars from the Cahors vintage car club or in Le Petit Train, the tourist train purloined from Cahors for the day. The square was set out with tables under the plane trees in the way that the French do so well and for the next 3 hours we enjoyed an excellent 4- course lunch organised and served by the local Comité des fêtes. We ending up sitting next to another English couple who relocated to the area only 2 months, so very much finding their feet but loving it. There were probably about 7 Brits attending the day, with all the rest being French.

The procession took us next to Vinovalie, the rebranded and modernised former ‘Cave Co-operative’ of the village. Split into groups we took part in a tutored tasting, tour of the production area and time to linger in the (air-conditioned) shop – it was a hot day. The tasting included an interesting test where we were asked to guess the colour of a wine that had previously been poured into a black glass in front of us – each person having a random allocation. Most people were able to correctly identify the red or white, but the rosé proved trickier.

We were seriously flagging by this point at 5.30 p.m. but on to the next and final destination at Domaine de Dauillac, this time for a final wine tasting. We held up our end for the Brits, but didn’t linger and escaped to head back to camp. A great day, an interesting one and great to see how the winemakers let down their hair.