good cateress newsletter Oct 07

good cateress newsletter Oct 07


The first time my friend Cathy took me to her house in Mattituck out on the North Fork of Long Island. I was reminded of a late summer in France some years ago as we drove on the country roads and lanes, I could only marvel at the grape vines growing so high off the ground. In comparison to the vines I had picked years earlier for Beaujolais and Moulin a Vent, these were twice as high and I instinctively knew that they had to be relatively easy to pick. No aching back and legs for these pickers, but probably not as much fun either.

Angela and I had decided that we would head down to the Burgundy area, make some good money picking grapes and then head South to the Coast on the off chance of crewing on a yacht heading to the Caribbean for the winter. Sue, had decided to join us for the Vendarge part of the adventure. We all had a wonderful ‘romantic’ notion of what the vendarge would be. Sunshine, fun and good looking men. Of course we knew we would work too, but we had no idea how hard.

We all met in Victoria station in London for the night train to Paris; this was before the Chanel Tunnel, so it involved changing trains at the ferry. As we changed on to the ferry at Dover, there was definitely a gale starting to blow quite hard. It was surely the precursor to the lousy weather that would follow us.

My friends Peter and Carrie has picked the vendage some years earlier and recommended we try Monsieur Rollet in Beaujolais. In fact a few years earlier when I was working in the Dordogne Pete and Carrie had come and seen me in Tamnies on their way to St. Georges. Carrie always had great stories about the vendage, so I wrote to M. Rollet and had been sent the day and time to arrive.

Breakfast in the Gare d’Lyon of coffee and delicious croque monsieur, we had a few hours to wait for our train but I would not leave the station as I had promised myself I would only see Paris with the man I loved. We changed trains a couple of times, each time to an increasingly smaller train, and we did get lost as we were relying on my French, which was never that good, although everyone was surprised by my heavy Dordogne accent. But we did finally arrive at St. Georges and there was a gnomish looking M. Rollet waiting for us.

All three of us had traveled on the cheap, worked doing a variety of different things and were not expecting any kind of luxury housing but we were greatly saddened by the lack of showers. It turned out later that we were the fortunate one’s as we had a proper toilet; the other dorms only had what the French call Turkish toilets and what the English call French toilets.

At dinner which was around a huge farmhouse dining table, we met most of the other pickers. A group made up of young French, Brits, Irish and a couple from Australia. Conversation was easy as we all exchanged travel stories and experiences. Dinner was good and hot, as it was still cold and drizzly, and of course there was a lot of wine.

Pascalle, M. Rollets, daughter woke us at 6.30 the next morning. It was still dark when we stumbled into the kitchen and were delighted to have huge bowls of coffee; bread and jam. By then it was light, but still drizzling with rain and it was beginning to dawn on us that the shorts and bikinis were not going to be part of our attire this trip. We were given waterproof trousers and small curved blade knives and were shown how to pick the bunches of grapes; by hooking the knife behind the branch holding the bunch to the vine and then cut it. Large gray buckets for the grapes, and when they were full we called “Jallow” and Jerry would come and empty the bucket of grapes.

We were shown the first rows of grapes, they were quite short, but the vines were very low and after picking the first two I realized that I would barely be able to walk the next day. And it was HARD work, the hardest I would ever do!

As we worked we all chatted, found our level of work, and who worked at similar pace. By late morning the sun finally came out, the morning fog was burnt off and we could see what beautiful country we were in. Vines in every direction, rows small and large, the colour of pickers clothes among the vines. A village in either direction, church spires among the houses.

When we first arrived we had noticed to our horror that everyone had black teeth. As the day wore on and we ate more delicious juicy grapes; Angela grinned at me joking about our now black teeth.

The first day we had good food; pate, bifteak with petits pois, salad, cheese and bread; wine drank from mustard glasses. Dinner was soup/stew potatoes, we all ate heartily.

However, the following couple of days of food were a disaster for me, Miss finicky. Lunch was tongue in tomato sauce, smelt lovely, looked extraordinary, mum would have loved it. Dinner that night was chicken giblet stew, which I cannot even describe, I know some people would have loved it, but not any of us. So I was eating bread, salad and cheese. Lunch the next day was Tete de Veau, again it smelt great, but I could barely even look at it, and I swore the fat winked at me, as it slithered across the platter. We were working so hard and we truly needed the energy of good solid food, but some of us were not eating enough.

Each evening a group of us had been walking to one of the villages, to sit and drink coffee and calvados. We decided we would eat some food this night, ordered a pizza, it was tiny but filled us up.

One of the days a huge storm came in, as opposed to the intermittent sunshine and showers. We all climbed on the truck and drove to the distillery to see what was happening to our grapes. Here we saw the 2000 Beaujolais Villages beginning its journey from grape to wine. It was huge and modern but fascinating.

Back at the farmhouse M. Rollet asked us all to come down to his Caveaux. Different artists had painted murals on the walls, the most prominent was one of M. Rollet playing chess with St. Peter with wine glasses and bottles as the chess pieces. Some of the murals were fading or disintegrating with the damp. Someone lit a fire in the fireplace, we were all handed home made cherries in brandy; home made Calvados or some really good wine.

The following days the weather cleared up, we finished picking M. Rollets grapes and moved to another vineyard. We were in mixed dorms, but there were showers and it was heaven. Now we were picking Moulin a Vent. The landscape had changed too, it was hillier, harder work, but we were used to that.

At our final vineyard we were working with a group of Poles. They had taken their vacation time to come and work the Vendage, then they would go to Paris for a week on the money they had earned from picking. This was the year of the strikes in Gdansk and Solidarnosc. Interestingly reading back in my diary, these Poles were not optimistic for change in Poland. Angela and I, Sue had headed back to England, learnt to work as a team with the Poles. The group were made up of various ages from 20’s up to 50’s, so the young men who were the fastest workers would go back and pick the slower older women's rows, so that everyone worked at a similar pace. They asked Angela and I not to work so fast, which we were happy to oblige with.

Gaston and Jacqueline who owned the final vineyard also pressed their own grapes, the old fashioned way. In fact when we arrived we found them stomping the grapes in the pit. They were younger, the food was so much better. With our breaks we had hot coffee and chocolate, although the Poles were much faster than us at getting to the chocolate, so there was inevitably a square or two for us.

Angela and I had talked about going west to Bergerac and the Bordeaux. But also wanted to see some sun so we hitched down to Marseilles, Villefranche and St. Tropez. We did not find a yacht to crew on, and I was relieved to find myself back on a train heading North and home.

We love the Fall foods, hearty soups and stews.