from Vacquieres, France: fields of dreams

Sunday Afternoon

So I had to ask Jean-Benoit Cavalier, winemaker, proprietor of Chateau de Lascaux – what do you like best about this life of a vintner? Is the work in the fields? The mixing, blending? The harvest?

We were walking through the mixed forests, the garrigues, just north of his village of Vacquieres and every so often we would come across a field of vines. It is the nature of winemaking here: these woods are part of the terroir. And each vine-planted plot has a story – an age, an expectation, a purpose.





I already know Jean-Benoit loves his work. He told me so. And really, it is obvious.

He tells me now how deeply satisfying it is to reflect about the entirety – putting together the whole story of a wine, from the planting to the final bottle placed in the cave. Watching it unfold, shaping the outcome.

The harvest is one important part of that entirety. Jean-Benoit leaves the vacation home up north, in the mountains, two weeks before the end of August.

I come back to the village and I think about how to run the harvest that year. It requires all my concentration and so I like to be alone then.

And there are other elements of pride – I can see that. There’s his family, sure. And his village, Vacquieres. His wife, Isabelle, is a fan of it as well.

Just the right size, she says to me. Three hundred people. No more. At this size we all look after each other, there is a sense of community. It is quite wonderful.

Aren’t all villages like this here, in the south of France? I think of Pierrerue – my June retreat this year, also with about three hundred. And with people who believed it was special, unique. Or maybe I have just visited the only two special and unique villages. These are it! They are the beloved ones, the savage babes (another term I hear about Pierrerue and now Vacquieres – sauvage, untamed by the outside world)!

Jean-Benoit pauses at a field of vines that is already harvested. Organically grown grapes, because they are better that way. The leaves are starting to turn. In a few weeks it will have to be a fiery red blaze of color.





It is my first planting of a new field. The soil is terrible – layers of deep stone…
So why would you choose to plant in this spot?
Because I like coming here. Look, you can see the village, just so.









…There are trees on all sides. I can show you something else – bee hives. I have someone tend to the bees here.

I look closely. Why do I think a photo of a bee is well worth the encounter of a close kind? Maybe to remember the moment.








And sure enough, a bee gets tangled in my hair. I remember childhood summers in the Polish countryside, with my grandparents. At least once each year a bee would dovetail right into my hair. There is a choice: endure a bite to the scalp or fish the bee out with your hand, knowing that you will get stung. I fish, I get stung.

I will remember the moment.

Back in the car, we drive up through a dense fragrant forest. The rain has really intensified the scent.

Rosemary? I ask, but I know the answer. The herb is everywhere, growing in the wild, adding its distinct essence to the forest floor.




See this? It is a capitelle, a hut, a shelter, from sheepherding days. It is probably two thousand years old.





We crawl inside. Jean-Benoit touches the roof, nicely layered into a conical shape.

It’s fine work, isn’t it?

He could be talking about the hut, he could be talking about winemaking.

Earlier in the afternoon, we had stopped at the garage/cave of his friend, Christophe. It was after the Sunday meal. Family members were gathered to help with the press. Christophe is a writer, a vintner (Domaine Beau Thorey), a man of several trades. He presses his grapes by hand.





We like Americans because they gave us this model of a hand press. It is a California invention!
We like the French because you gave us your wines.

The men push, with great breaks in between. There are no pauses in the laughter.

We linger until the pressing is finished and the residue is carted away in wheelbarrows.





One spot you have to see. Jean-Benoit knows the roads well. I am lost, but then I am always lost when a local person keeps track of the turns.

Before us, in the gray light of a misty, drizzly day I see a vineyard, stretching toward the hills. At the end of it there is a church, standing alone, unprotected by village houses.





If you want a memorable wedding, this would be the scene. The feeling of your place in the scheme of things is tremendous. You get the sense that life is about your backbreaking work in your (chosen) field and the passion that drives you forward. Or is it I’ve been hanging around Jean-Benoit Cavalier and the Chateau de Lascaux too long...

Is there such a thing as a perfect moment? A perfect cluster of grapes? A perfect wine? …village? …host? Perfection, defined not only by the result, but also by the beauty of the effort that went into it? Do you need me to answer that?

from Vacquieres, France: maman, papa, three daughters and tante Madelaine. and me.

Sunday Midday

Since when did I become a permanent fixture at the large kitchen table of the Cavalier family? Since Friday. Three times a day. I am hopeless when it comes to the family meal, especially when it is prepared by Isabelle.

I love to cook – for two, for four, for ten – all of it. But I love to be cooked for even more. Especially here in France.

On Sunday afternoon, though, the routines change. Out come the better clothes (I forgot my time and place, so the image of the grungy American will stay firmly rooted in the French consciousness after my visit here). Out come the relatives (the aunt, who lives just across the street). Out come the better dishes, the dining room table cloth placed at the dining room table.

We eat at midday and were it not for the fact that in the evening, Isabelle will serve a supper of pureed vegetable soup and omelets packed with wild girolles (mushrooms much like the chanterelles), I would probably throw down my napkin and retire from eating after that Sunday meal. Perhaps not. This is, after all, the south of France.

First come the mussels, straight from the Mediterranean sea.








Then the eggplant and tomatoes, the salad, the cheeses and the chocolate gateau. The Cavalier daughters hover and help, maman serves, tante comes with freshly baked cake. And with the most fascinating conversational contributions you could imagine. Passion for all that is great and wonderful runs high in this family.

Oh, the Languedoc Sunday family dejeuner! I leave it with such a feeling of warmth and contentment! It’s not just that there are plates of foods that stir all senses. It is the understood sentiment that now is the time to put away all baggage and sit down and exhale. For a long while. Because the week ends well if there is shared food, wine and casual observation with people you care about.

I am so relaxed at the mere recollection that I will write no more. I’ll leave you with photos of la famille Cavalier of Vacquieres, France.



aunt Madelaine, nephew Jean-Benoit



oldest daughter



middle daughter



mother Isabelle and youngest daughter, beneath an old family portrait



the mirror, creating a new family portrait

from Vacquieres, France: in the still of the barrel

A machine may pick well. It can, for the whites and rosés, sort out the leaves and stems.




It can mash, crush, move things from one bin to another.

And then there is quiet. The wines rest in their barrels. Twelve months for the Chateau de Lascaux les Pierres d'Argent, the whites. But early after the harvest, you need the human hand to open each barrel, plunge down a stick with a chain and stir up the residue. It's called la battonage. Daily, at this stage.




And if you put your ear to the opening, you can hear the process of fermentation.

The world is never completely silent. You just have to pop a few corks sometimes to hear movement, that’s all.

from Vacquieres, France: fast running, heavy rains, slow snails and lively rosés

Sunday Morning

La Premiere Foulee des Vendanges! – reads the poster. A race to honor the wine stompers of the past.

I think the local jogging club simply wants to promote their sport, but that’s okay. Jogging is good. Grape stomping is (was) good. I am all for watching and supporting le local sport on a Sunday morning in the neighboring winemaking village of Corconne.

Only you have to feel sorry for the 47 who have chosen to participate in this thirteen kilometer mini-marathon through the vineyards. Sometime at night the rains came and their occasional pause hardly lasts the length of time needed to gulp down a café crème.

Still, it is a happening and so my host at the Chateau Lascaux, Jean-Benoit, takes time off from picking and pressing to drive me to the village where it all begins.

The race starts and ends outside the Wine Cooperative and the band is there to put some oomph into the day.








The runners are off. We follow their progress across rocky soils and paved paths. Volunteers wave road traffic to the side and provide sustenance. Are those real fruit pates I see? That would just throw me off, were I running. I’d get out of the race and concentrate on selecting the cassis over the kiwi, despite the encouraging cries of “courage!, courage!” from the sidelines.





Up village streets (they have run over to our village now!), past painted doors and Jean-Benoit’s caves…








Onto the finish line. I am a poor observer of the human condition when the rains come down. I worry about my camera. I go inside the Cooperative and sample rosés that are freely being poured. I miss who came in first or last. I taste, I purchase.





A farmer of snails has set up his table at the Cooperative as well. He sells escargots in jars or as a snack, roasted on the spot, served in a baguette. I buy those as well. Your guess as to which – the jars to take back, or roasted in a baguette?








Sunday morning in the Languedoc. No one appears to mind the pause in the vandange (grape harvest). They all have read the reports. The sun comes out tomorrow. Today’s wet skies means that you can take time off, guilt free. Sort of like a snow day back in Wisconsin.

from Vacquieres, France: dusting off past harvests

Saturday Evening

Nina, we have visitors from a winery in New Zealand and I’m going to do a tasting for them. Come join us. Jean-Benoit calls up to the office where I am, as usual, frowning over Ocean text and photos.

So this Midwesterner who looks for opportunities to taste good wines and who has, for years, loved to listen to vintners discuss the particularities of terroir is supposed to say no?

A busman’s holiday! The New Zealander tells me. We are visiting wineries and having a good time as well.

Of course, it goes without saying that if you do the first then you will have the second…

Jean-Benoit uncorks a range of wines from his cave at the Chateau de Lascaux. Six bottles – two whites, four reds.





It is a trick to taste the youngest, I think, because you have to predict how it will mature. Many of the vintners I’ve met in France sell you stuff that they want you to keep hidden until the year, say 2012. That’s fine if you have invested in a cave or at the very least, in a storage place that will let the wine relax in wine-spa-like conditions, temperature and humidity-wise. Me, I keep my wines in a dark corner of the loft. It’s the best I can do. Imperfect? Oh yes.

But it is for this reason that Jean-Benoit’s words are music to my ears. I ask him about how his wines will be X years from now.

I sell them if they taste good now. It’s no use selling them for the future. People live in apartments and cannot provide great conditions for wine. It is up to us to do that. You, the customer, buy a wine and you should expect to uncork it and love it.

Jean-Benoit uncorks, we sniff, swish, sniff again, drink.

Or at least I drink. Spitting is quite the acceptable option. But wait. A vintner uncorks his best wines. He shares his knowledge, work, effort with you in that small bit poured into your glass. The aroma and flavors are wonderful. Would your natural inclination then be to spit it out?

I have spat my way up and down wineries where the product was indifferent, or when I was driving, or when I was doing the fast and furious visiting, forgetting that there is always a slow road to take out there. But now, in the caves of Chateau Lascaux, the tastings are gifts from the person who has created the wines. They are to be savored. I savor them.

A neighbor, himself a vintner, is with us, listening attentively. When Jean-Benoit speaks, it is always with something worthwhile to say. He does not indulge in random small stuff. I may have to explain the tone and tenor of Ocean when the time comes.






I join the family again for supper. I eat all meals with them – it was not in the original plan, but I have fallen into the habit of saying yes when they ask and they always ask. I would be a fool to pass on French country cooking. I don’t know if people here even know how to do it poorly.

from Vacquieres, France: a village coop

Saturday Afternoon

The village is surrounded by vines, forests and hills. I am told it creates a perfect terroir (climate, environment, culture etc etc) for grapes. I know it creates a perfect view from the tower room of the family home.





Not all vines surrounding Vacquieres belong to the Chateau de Lascaux. Indeed, quite a number of fields (including some of Jean-Benoit’s) produce grapes for the cooperative that makes wine from the two neighboring villages (Vacquieres and Corconne), oftentimes under the label of Vin de Pays d’Oc.

I drank that on my Air France flight! -- I tell the men bringing in their grapes here. One by one, they drive up and unload the day’s clusters.





The grape separator (which I am sure has a fancier name than that) is huge. Out go the stems and leaves. At the Chateau de Lascaux, this is done by hand for the reds. You cannot let a leaf remain. The fermentation is too long – there would be taste consequences!





As the winegrowers (why is the English vocabulary so imperfectly suited for wine making terms?) dump their grapes in, information about their lot is put into the computer. It’s all extremely sophisticated. I'm impressed.

These are the wines that stores and restaurants in the States love to sell. At the cooperative, I can pick them up for somewhere between 3 and 5 Euros. Fine wines,well priced here and back home.

Jean-Benoit drives me back to the Chateau. I snap a photo of the road up ahead and the two cyclists approaching our village. Le velo? I ask, showing off my brilliant command of French. I know it is no longer "le bicyclette," like in the olden days. Here, we like to ride what we call "le ve-te-te" ("velo tout terrain"). Okay, I was close.

from Vacquieres, France: the arrival of the wine taster

Saturday Afternoon

The wine expert guy, the oenologist, comes, basket in hand. There are little bottles in it and he takes samples from different bins, marking the progress of each grape as it moves from juice to wine at the Chateau de Lascaux.





I spend so much time in the cave that I feel I need to bring in an outside opinion, just to hear another perspective, Jean-Benoit (vintner and proprietor of the Chateau) tells me.

I follow the three of them – the expert, Jean-Benoit and the apprentice (happy birthday to you, you’re just eighteen years old this week, you would not be working as a winemaker’s apprentice in the U.S., but you could be in the army, happy birthday to you) – and taste from each bin, as they do.





Take a Midwesterner who is in love with the wines and Languedoc and ask her to go easy on the tasting rounds. It’s a challenge.

I listen to the comments -- an intricate analysis of how sweet the grape is, how deep in color, how aromatic it is on this day, how over time it begins to mature into something so complex that it's hard to find words to describe what has just happened, all in the space of a few weeks.

Jean-Benoit is completely focused on his wines. His face lights up at the sight of the dark reds, his eyes smile at the vibrant notes in the roses and he looks relieved and happy with the maturation of the oldest (almost three weeks now!) of the whites.



Jean-Benoit sniffs, the oenologist writes


His apprentice fills our bottles and glasses and talks suggestively – noting things, but not asserting yet. He is there to learn, not to educate.

The wine oenologist is brutal. He scribbles things on the board, talks of temperatures and of fermentation, and appears to want to spare no blows, indifferent to a blogger’s presence.





Except there aren’t really any blows. Jean-Benoit’s wines are performing magnificently. It must be like testing the student who does his homework and is equally creative and brilliant.

Towards the end, I am tempted to lead everyone in song and dance right there in the vineyards. Shouldn’t one celebrate the success of all that fermenting grape juice? In the alternative, a nap sounds deliciously pleasant.

I sit down to review my photos instead. I have a few minutes before Jean-Benoit takes me on the next round of visits. The rain is holding back. Terrific luck. They should hire me as a rain-staller.

from Vacquieres, France: from field to bucket or bin

Saturday Morning

Quickly, before the rain comes. Jean-Benoit has the car waiting. It isn’t exactly dark still, but it feels early.

I have helped myself to a real Languedoc morning coffee – from a large cereal-size bowl, as is the custom, along with a fresh baguette (how could it be otherwise? it is part of the table setting) and I am sitting down to the computer, wondering if I could write about a harvest if I never witness a single grape being picked this entire week-end long.





But the rain stubbornly refuses to fall.

The clouds, they are like cotton balls, wavy, I have never seen them like that, Isabelle remarks as we stare at the rapidly moving formations. I can see why they’re saying that when the rains come down, they’ll drench Languedoc good and solid. The sky looks like at any minute it will swallow you, your village and your entire field of grapes. Waves of clouds, waves of vines.






Jean-Benoit and I drive out into a field, bordered by trees, where he has tentatively set a picking truck to work. Should I continue? – shouts the driver. Can't blame him. I'd be tempted to run for cover if it were me out there, in the field, truck or no truck. Still, the drops are hanging back...





Go on, go on! Jean-Benoit turns to me and says, I got up early this morning, looked outside and noticed it wasn’t raining yet. Maybe we can get something done. But I told most of the team not to come in.

The driver works his way slowly. The grapes fall in, efficiently, until the bin is full.

A machine does the job well, but only if all the grapes are mature and good and the vines aren’t too old.
And I suppose you don’t get neighbors to come in and stomp with feet to get the juice out anymore?

Jean-Benoit smiles, not knowing that indeed, I have been asked if, when in France, I will stomp up a storm, dirty feet and all. Seems like not something that the European Union would possibly tolerate, but still, we in the States expect a certain degree of quaintness from those European types, no?

These days, no feet touch the grapes, but tomorrow the two villages – ours and Corconne are having a race in the fields. It’s called La Foulée des Vendanges, after the stompers of the past.

We visit a neighbor’s field – he has taken the chance and sent out a handful of pickers. I watch, take photos, answer questions. Though explaining Ocean to pickers whose language is neither English nor French (they are Moroccan) is a challenge.











This particular vineyard is a father and son operation. The son is assisting dad. Soon, the dad will be assisting the son. It’s how it works here, I’m told.






The sky is still holding it in. Jean-Benoit and I drive toward his own fields of aging vines. I have always loved these vieille vignes best. In contrast to the tall vines that climb high and enjoy the air and the sun and the movement of a gentle wind, these older guys are bunched together in communities of clusters, all tightly held against a thick and beautifully twisted trunk.





A vintner knows what to taste for. We’ll be picking these soon.






In another field belonging to the Chateau de Lascaux, the tall Mouverdre grapes are also almost ready.



Jean-Benoit surveys the vines...

Another day and they will be perfect. Their skin holds so much flavor even now!

What a difference a day makes. To a vintner. To me, the taste is fantastic as we speak. I’d have you picking while the going’s good. That’s why I am left to take pictures and not bottle wine. I’d probably bottle it when it is still grape juice.



...he samples, eyes each bunch critically, nods his head.


fall colors are showing up around the edges


My taste buds are about to undergo some training. That’s forthcoming. Come back in a few hours. I need to pause for a dejeuner en famille. Garlic roasted meat with crusty potatoes, salad, cheese and the very excellent red Chateau de Lascaux, Noble Pierre 2002. Oh, and flan, rhubarb compote and almond cakes for dessert.