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
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