The vendange

The Grape Harvest Experience weekend represents a celebration of a year’s work and we will enjoy lots of opportunity for tasting and feasting, in addition to learning about wines of this region.

September is the busiest and prettiest time of the year in both the vineyards and the cellars. The colours are at their autumnal best with the leaves a myriad of shades from greens to amber and russet reds. This is the most colourful and exciting time to see at first hand the viticulture and wine-making styles of each individual producer and what’s more, to participate yourself. You will see first hand how wine is made, the choices the vigneron must make and the role and influence of their individual terroirs.

We welcome you here on a Friday afternoon and begin with a discussion of our itinerary, details of which are at the mercy of ‘Mother Nature’ who determines the start of the harvest (’la vendange’, as it is called in France).

Over the following couple of days we will visit winemakers in different appellations, watching them in action; sorting and pressing the grapes, starting the fermentation, and its vinification. Seeing the grape harvest in full swing and witnessing the picking by hand and machine, with a chance to join in ourselves (should you wish!).

We will lunch at local restaurants or picnic at scenic spots and in the evening feast en famille at the House where we will enjoy matching the wines we have chosen from the day with our freshly prepared supper.

“The amount of work, much of it manual, involved in maintaining a great vinetard defies description. The initial investment is colossal. The risks of weather are beyond man’s control: too much rain, no rain at all, hailstorms, freak winds, late frosts, early frosts. Everything can be done perfectly for eleven months of the year and destroyed overnight. I can never open a bottle again without thinking of the effort and skill and patience that have gone into it, and what a bargain it is.”
Peter Mayle 2001