Last Full Week as the Intern

A sad realization hit this week when I was chatting my mother… I have less than 8 days left here in France!!! While I am very excited to return home I am for sure going to miss this place incredibly much and I now know why Annarose Hart, the girl who first told me about this trip, misses this country so much. I will be doing my sob story wrap up at a later time but I had a lot of new activity this week. Not a whole lot of pictures were taken though since I try not to bring my camera out in the vineyard very often in case it gets broken.

            This week I have spent a lot of time inside doing more things for the winery than the vineyard. I helped once again to do a racking this week of regular Chablis wine and this time it was just Romain, the other intern, and myself. A lot of pressure was on and Nathalie and Gilles were just right by in their office if we had any questions. We successfully got the right mixture of wine in the tanks and I went off to clean the tanks we had just removed wine from while Romain cleaned out barrels. My time cleaning barrels was not as smooth this go round since a nice layer of tartar buildup had accumulated from the yeast in one of the tanks I was cleaning. Even with a pressure washer with water near boiling I struggled to get all of it off. This wasn’t helped by the fact that I had to stop every 2-3 minutes because breathing had become impossible due to the amount of steam inside my tank. Eventually I went to ask Gilles and Nathalie what to do about it and they told me that I should have come sooner because they had a chemical that if it does not come off easily they use instead. Lesson learned I went on to clean the others for the day.

            During that same day, in the middle of my tartar buildup battle, an importer from the U.S. arrived. Nathalie and Gilles told me that I was welcome to meet him and Romain and I would be tasting wines with him and his family that day. Sopping wet I introduced myself to Mr. DC Flynt, his wife, two sons who are currently attending LSU and their guide. This guide is special and I don’t know his title but he basically goes around with Mr. Flynt in his French travels and helps with the selections for wine as well as helps with the translation. The Flynt family is from Louisiana and 5 minutes off the coast. Nathalie and Gilles both joked that they could hear their accents and they talked much slower than I did. The sons were really nice guys. One was going to be a senior and was a marketing major. He travels around with his dad quite a bit since he will be taking over after graduation. The other is a going to be a sophomore and is a software programming major. He, like me, isn’t really sure what he wants to do after graduation. Both are in Kappa Sigma and it is funny because they used to be neighbors with AGR at LSU. AGR has since moved since they were needing a bigger house. We at KSU used to be neighbors with Kappa Sig until they got kicked out of their house. I thought it was an interesting parallel. They were staying for 10 days in France doing wine tastings all over the Burgundy for him to decide what wines to import back to the States and begin to sell.

The coolest thing for me about the families visit was getting to talk with them and remember how to make full sentences in English. No joke, for the past 2.5 weeks since I have been here I bet I haven’t had 1 full conversation in English. Instead I mostly resort to the elementary French I know and play a game of charades with my co-workers and use English and French to varying degrees with my host family. Having just a full conversation was super nice and I don’t know how to describe the feeling it gave me.

You see, before they arrived I was ready to go home for a few days and just be back among the familiar. I think they helped fill up my need for the familiar and let me be more at ease. It is weird but I think just the knowledge that I can still speak English was reassuring!

What is odd about that timing is that the day after that I was helping with the labeling off bottles. When labeling I am the one who puts the bottles on the line initially so I have to count how many we need. When it’s a large order I go for quite some time before my partner on the other end tells me how many more. The first time this happened they yelled trente-deux, 32, and I started counting in French without even thinking about English. Around 18 I caught myself doing it and I couldn’t help but laugh. My numbers have started to become not English but French in my head #signsIhavebeeninFrance

In the vineyard we have started the pruning process. As for a description here is what I have learned.

·      Pruning

o   This is done to allow vines to grow for grapes rather than expansion of the plant itself

o   When pruning older vines the goal is to look for and cut off what will not be needed two years from now

§  Branches with grapes on them are kept as are a courson and baguette

·      Courson is a taller straight up piece that provides more support

·      Baguette is a long piece that extends along the wire that provides the numerous branches that you get most of your grapes from

o   Less than 2 years old vines are done as such

§  You stick with what has developed above a certain level and remove everything else

§  You don’t worry about 2 years down the road, instead you are trying to get the vine to grow up, will worry about horizontal later

We use a smaller machete type tool to make sure that all the green part of the plant is gone as well as to aid us if we have difficult branches. This also is a very meticulous process, made all the worse by having to bend over at each vine. This makes for very sore backs and very sore thighs. But our breaks on these are longer in between rows and I have made progress. Within 2 days of doing it, I was quick enough to do 2 rows at once, like everyone else, instead of just 1.

Sad to have the realization that I am coming home soon and as excited I am to see all of you I know that I will for sure miss this summer of a lifetime here among the French cheese, bread, vines and wine!

“I wish there was a way to know you were in the good ole days before they become the good ole days.”- Quote from the series finale of The Office

Bastille Day Weekend

I ended my last blog talking about food and I am sorry everyone but that is what this blog is going to be entirely about! Food is pretty much synonymous with French culture and I have been loving every minute of it!

            Normally Romain, the other intern, and myself have Friday afternoon off due to our contracts with Purpan saying that we are only allowed to work 35 hours a week. But because Sunday was Bastille Day, or French Independence Day, they were anticipating us not wanting to be up early on Monday morning because of the villages party. I agreed with this arrangement and worked Friday afternoon so I could have Monday off.

            Friday night began the weekend off strong as my family took me into Chablis for the arts festival and a wine tasting. Even thought the arts festival wasn’t all that exciting and my host father even called it a bust the rest of the evening was super eventful. The wine tasting was absolutely incredible to begin a weekend. We had 5 white wines paired with 5 cheeses from the same area. Now before when I have done wine tasting, such as at Purpan and at different vineyards I had ended up spitting out a small portion of the wine, since that is what I was taught I was supposed to do. Nope! Not with my host family! They believe very strongly in drinking every last bit and enjoying it all! The wines we had were very good and there were definitely some I liked better than others. There was one that had a very oxidized flavor due to its extreme aging in barrels and we had Gewürztraminer, which is a white that retains a little bit of its sugar. All very interesting and the cheeses also very interesting, some much better than others.

This is what the table setting looked like for our tasting that evening.

The other neat thing about that place was the owner and the building itself that the tasting took place in. The owner had formally been a wine exporter from Chablis to the U.S. and around the world and because of his often very extended time in the U.S. he spoke very clear and fluent English with me. In all honesty I was actually in shock and didn’t know what to say back when he started asking me questions! It has been so long since I have had a full conversation with someone just speaking that I just kinda froze up. This may sound odd but when everyone around you just speaks French all the time and when they talk to you it is only for a few sentences or two it gets to a point where I almost don’t remember how to talk!

The building itself was also a really neat feature. From all the buildings I have seen here in Europe this may have been the most modern, clean, fresh building I have seen yet. Very clean cut white walls with perfect wood and metal accents that set everything off perfectly. I was very impressed with the place and really enjoyed it.

On Saturday, it was a day of rest and laundry, something I needed to do bad! Up until that evening, my family had kept it secret from me that we were planning on going to a restaurant that night. Soon thought they told me to get changed into something nicer and be ready for a surprise! They drove me out about 35 minutes from the house and we arrived at a restaurant. It was a classic Burgundy style restaurant with the servers wearing very unique clothes, men wearing white shirts with suspenders holding up black pants and women wearing what I can only compare to jumpers worn by the girls at my small Catholic private school I attended, Holy Trinity. But we ate outdoors and every single dish was perfect!

For an appetizer that came complementary we had a blended asparagus and cream soup that contained bacon bits, served cold. That went along with our first bottle of white wine.

The second appetizer was one that I got to order myself. I didn’t catch names of everything I ate but this is what I do know and I will do my best to describe it all! Think large egg roll stuffed with snails, cream, and andouillette. Andouillette is a sausage with a casing made of intestine then stuffed with more intestine. Surprisingly folks this dish was incredible! On the side was a nice little salad that served as a refreshing side for the very creamy and intense stuffed roll.

The main course was a classic Burgundy style dish for me, Oeufs en meurette, aka Eggs in Meurette sauce. What this meant is that I had eggs that were poached in red wine and vinegar and then laid in this heavenly sauce made from reduced red wine, beef stock, onions and mushrooms. Literally heaven people, I could have drank the sauce straight from the bowl and my co-workers joke that it is so good that they actually do at home! This was served with a half potato and crisped piece of bread to make my own croutons. For side dishes we had mushrooms and creamed broccoli for the whole table. The flavors of both I won’t soon forget! We also had a nice red wine with that dish.

For dessert I still am not sure what I had, since I had the family order something for me, but whatever it was, was like heaven on a plate. It was a piece of cake as a base layer with a sweet caramel sauce drizzled on the plate. On top was Chantilly or sweet whipped cream and pieces of fruit such as orange, kiwi, and apples. IT WAS SO GOOD!!!

The next day was Bastille Day. To start the morning off I sat and watched the military parade on TV that was occurring in France. Gilles, host father, served in the military and was very proud to point out to me the difficulty at which some of the maneuvers were performed. He was especially proud to point out to me his particular unit as they paraded past the president. We then had a lunch filled with small snacking stuff. What they consider snacky type foods here people is not stuff many of us would want to eat. Foods like blood sausage and andouillette were both included. We also had cold salmon pieces, cantaloupe, multiple forms of pate and lots of bread and cheese! After lunch we all settled down for the pre-party nap, or at least they told me that is what it was! After the nap time to watch a little Tour de France. Seriously it is like a 3-week long Super Bowl for them here. We are constantly checking the leaders and who passed who and when on what day. It is crazy.

We finally headed to the party and it wasn’t quite the usual Ryckert 4^th of July party I was used to but it came pretty darn close. 130 people showed up, which according to Gilles and Nathalie was 90% of the village, so I got to know almost all my neighbors which was cool. It was potluck, so trying all kinds of new foods was for sure mandatory. What was funny to me is that they treated it kinda like 1 big meal with courses in the traditional French fashion. Outside was our starters like pretzels, crackers, and olives. These were all present while games for little kids, 12-18 year olds and yes even the adults had a game. It was darts at a half-man/half-woman scarecrow. Turns out I am just as bad at darts in France as I am in the U.S.

My beautiful/handsome target

After the games and talking concluded everyone moved indoors to start the meal. Roast beef and roast turkey with a huge amount of sides all provided by the families. All once again super delicious and it was super cute, every family brought their own utensils to eat out of in a woven basket!

After that course it was the cheese course. They brought out these large buckets which were basically a bland, white cheese that hadn’t fully hardened yet, meant to put sugar or salt and spices depending on where you are from. I chose sugar. No regrets there. This was also the time that one of the city councilman, that Nathalie sits on the board with, chose to try and send me a very clear message. His daughter, who I was sitting 2 spots from was single and my age and his wife was not to be touched. Everyone died laughing and I, as expected, went super red and laughed right along with. And to everyone who was wondering she wasn’t quite my type and there is something known as a language barrier that prevents a lot of me trying to talk to anyone here!

Next the kids announced that they were ready for fireworks. Which to me was odd, all the kids were the ones who lit off all the fireworks though and had a nice small little show for all the adults. Once the fireworks were all lit off the announcement was made that dessert was ready. This meant that cakes and pies were galore and I couldn’t not try a majority of them. I think my host family is now surprised/impressed with the amount of food I can put away if I choose to. After the food another round of wine, then coffee, then alcohol. #wooftown

In all honesty my Bastille Day experience is one I wouldn’t have traded for the world. What sucked is that after that experience, I think it made me miss home more than anything else I have done here. It isn’t quite the same going to a celebration where you don’t know anyone, and something even more different when you can’t talk to anyone there either. All in all I am truly grateful for this experience, just somedays, like Bastille Day, it makes you realize the comforts of home! 

The Great Mushroom Hunt

So when I ended my last blog I said something to the effect of “I am excited to see what new adventure tomorrow brings.” Well I didn’t have to wait till the next day to have one crazy adventure!

            The day I wrote that blog Romain and I got off work early since we finished our part of the vine tying and Gilles wanted to reward the interns.

-insert note here Roman in all my previous blogs is actually spelled Romain. Sorry Romain if you ever end up reading this blog. I didn’t know how to actually spell your name.

            Anyway, I had just finished writing when Martin and Romain came to get me from my room and told me to “jump in the car we are going mushroom hunting.” First off, I didn’t actually understand what they were saying at first because I am just now learning the difference between hot and cold in French, and yet they think I could understand that? But they re-said it in English and told me to hurry up. So I promptly ran downstairs and off we went.

            We ended up mushroom hunting in a piece of woods maybe 5 minutes from Fontenay (where I live) and we had a few of our co-workers joining us. Brigitte(for who I also have been misspelling), her husband, Samuel, Martin, Romain, and Romain’s girlfriend Lea. We set off into the woods and continued to make our way until Brigitte found some to show all of us newbies what they looked like. In Kansas, whenever I have been mushroom hunting before we were looking for morels. Here we were looking for cantrelles (sp?). They were yellow and to me looked like a daylily flower that was filled in in the middle. We looked for about 2 hours and in that time I found quite a few and was actually pretty proud of myself.

These were the mushrooms we were looking for in the forest

            While we were looking for mushrooms, Samuel and Brigitte pointed out signs and tracks of wild boar in the forest. They are both avid hunters and were able to show me from the size of the track about how big it was. We also stumbled upon a salt lick for the hogs that had been put up by some other hunters. The salt lick area was cleared out and was a pretty active spot for the hogs according to Samuel. This was really cool for me and even though we didn’t see one I thought it was cool how everything seemed very similar to U.S. and French sport hunting.

Here is the salt lick pit that is put up for the wild boars in the forest. There is a pit of mud right underneath actually that they roll in. The area is actually pretty clear as well since it is a pretty common spot for the pigs to be.

            The next day we did indeed get to work in the cellars. By cellars I mean the almost laboratory type feeling of massive stainless steel tanks containing fermenting wine with a few barrels in the corner. For Chablis wine not very much is actually fermented in barrels. Gilles and Nathalie, my host parents, don’t think that very much of that flavor is good for the wine. However, some is necessary and they think a good blend demonstrates how a small amount can make a big difference. One of the neat things for me is that Gilles and Nathalie both believe that the winemaking process is only a small part of what makes good wine. For them, “beautiful grapes make beautiful wine.”

Earlier I mentioned how the grapes here grow in really harsh soil. This is what I mean people! This is what the grapes have to cope with! 

            When grapes come into the press they are done parcel-by-parcel and fermented in tanks separately. This allows Gilles and Nathalie to taste each one individually to figure out what blends they should try to make the best wine possible. Some is also put in barrels. This imparts an oaky, vanilla taste to the wine that for Chablis shouldn’t dominate as flavors but instead be small compliments.

            Our job that day was to help blend 3 different types of wine from a variety of different tanks and barrels into 3 final large tanks. All of the wine at this stage has finished with alcoholic fermentation and is starting to do an aging process. How this is done is a mechanized pump creates suction from hoses and pushes the wine from one tank/barrel into the other. Because there is suction and pressure being done, the overall biggest most important rule I learned for the day is to always make sure the chimneys of the tanks are open before beginning anything. Without them open air cannot get in and vacuums are created and bends the steel. For most we took wine from the barrels Nathalie indicated and put them into the tank first. Then we poured SO2 into the wine mixture to help with aging process. After that we took wine from the tanks and put it into the barrel mixture. Once it got low enough we could open the door one of my roles was to stir the yeast that had fallen to the bottom. Yeast is desired at this stage of the process because it imparts a more round flavor into the wine, according to Gilles.

            Once the tank is done we turn off the suction and move into our next mixture. Now this was pretty fun and exciting getting to run around moving hoses and making sure we were getting the right amount of wine from the right tanks and barrels. But there is a second part to any fun thing. Clean-up. Yep cleaning each and every tank and barrel so that way they are ready for the next crop of grapes to be put into them and so that way the steel is maintained. The inside of each tank is oftentimes caked with remaining yeast that has hardened into a crust and must be cleaned completely off so as to not impart a harsh flavor for next year. This meant making sure every surface inside and out was clean. And yes that also meant climbing inside to make sure that it was done completely. So does climbing inside a hole just barely big enough for a human to go to clean stainless steel from weeks of hardened yeast sound exciting? Then winemaking may be the profession for you!

A picture of me inside the tanks for cleaning!

            In all honesty, it wasn’t that bad and actually got to be pretty fun, except for when I forgot which way the nozzle faced and got a big ol’ faceful of water, a couple times. But alternating between hot and cold water allowed us to get the caked on yeast completely gone and it is actually what I have been working on the past two days. We still have a few more barrels to clean but after that Brigitte said that we will do a little packaging so I can see what that process is like.

            My French is continuing to improve, well at least my vocabulary is expanding, which I consider improvement! Also I am now proud to say that I can count to 100 in 3 different languages! So I am starting to get really good at numbers here and am actually able to catch them most of the time when people talk about them.

            The food has continued to be amazing here and I think the amount of butter, cream, bread and wine I have consumed at my internship in a week and a half probably would be a good amount for a few months in the U.S. I still haven’t seen margarine anywhere, and my host family thought it would be funny to buy Heinz brand BBQ sauce and American sauce for me since I told them I love BBQ from back home. By the way, Heinz is still not as good as brands in Kansas. Also I am still not sure what American sauce is. It’s like a mixture of Thousand Island Dressing and Ketchup. It’s good though and I have eaten it on quite a few things!

            Another weird phenomena happened when we had hamburgers. 1, they called them steaks. 2, they were basically still mooing when they took them off the grill. 3, they were 100% Charolais not Angus. It never occurred to me that outside the U.S. maybe Angus wasn’t such a big deal! I asked my host family and they said that in fact, as far as they knew, the only place to get black Angus beef was at 1 restaurant in Paris, and it was super expensive. Gilles said that in France, people believe that Angus beef is way too intense of flavor and that is why people don’t like it. Still mind blowing to me but I am not complaining about any food I have had here yet!

Is it my feet or the cheese?

In all honesty I continue to ask this question almost everyday for lunch when I go into the house. For all of you who have been my roommates or played a sport with me, you probably know that my feet smell… BAD! This has been made only worse by my outdoor activity here at my internship and me working pretty hard. What I find interesting is that they are too polite to say anything about them, they don’t know the words in English, or they can’t tell between the cheese and me. I still can’t tell if it is a blessing or curse because most of the time I end up eating that cheese because they tell me I have to try it. Lets face facts host family, the foot-smelling cheeses all taste the same. Why? BECAUSE THEY ALL SMELL LIKE FEET!

Okay with that rant over let me tell you a little of what has been going on in my life as le stagiaire.

On Sunday night, Gilles, my host father, told me that I would be working with Jacques, his father, and Janeau (sp?) his uncle on Monday. He said he didn’t know the word for it and it was difficult to explain in English. So I said not to worry about it and I continued to get all the more worried. Turns out I am was not alone as the other intern, Roman, was with me. What we were doing was walking behind a tractor as it went down rows of new vines. These vines were too young and did not have strong enough roots to handle the fully automatic tiller so that is why this machine is used. Three people are behind it with blades that dig down into the dirt and can be moved from side to side. Our job was to move those blades through the dirt and avoid the posts and the new vines. If any of my ancestors who were farmers could have seen me then I think they would have been proud. I did a little bit of this on Tuesday morning as well and it still blows my mind on what type of soil they choose to plant in. This stuff has rocks as big as footballs in it and drains super quick.

Here is a good example of some of the best soil I get to work with. The rocks in here are so big and there are so many!

This Tuesday afternoon, Roman and I were given the task of tying up some of the new vines that we had just plowed with the machine so that way they were more supported. This was different than using the plastic stiches that we have been using previously as we are using a wire that is covered in a paper covering and using a special handheld tool to cut it. This ended up being pretty easy work compared to the plowing we were doing earlier. What is funny is that from now on I think that every time I hear the Great Gatsby album I am going to think back to my time in the vineyards. Intern Roman is obsessed with that album and loves those songs! He is also really good at teaching me new French words and it much easier to understand since he is actually from Toulouse, where I originally started learning.

Mom and Dad, it still is blowing my mind on how similar my host parents are to you both! Today during lunch I found out that Gilles doesn’t like going to the doctor even though, according to Nathalie, he will complain about it for days. Also Gilles likes to make jokes that Nathalie doesn’t get a first but Martin, their son, does. After she finally gets it she then proceeds to make some comment that I don’t understand because it is in French, but it sounds like the tone of voice you would use, Mom.

They told me that wheat harvest should be starting soon, normally it begins after their independence day, July 14^th, which I will be here for! I am super excited to see what happens on that day and how it compares to U.S. Independence Day.

Also, I think they have started to figure out what kinds of foods I really like back home since today for lunch they had two racks of ribs that had just got done cooking. And even though they weren’t anything like smoked ones from home, it still was enough to get my BBQ filling until I get back to the U.S.

Tomorrow they said that I would probably get to help in the cellar for a little bit so I am excited to see what new adventure tomorrow brings!

Random but I figured I would show you how they demonstrate city limits. This is how you know the city limit is ending...

I felt like this quote summed up my time behind the plow perfectly and what I was thinking about at the time.

“It is not happiness that makes you grateful; it is gratefulness that makes you happy.”- Brother David Steindl-Rast