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!