Provence for All Seasons. Gordon JD Bitney
and then he got back in the 2CV and sped on up the hill.
As I started back up the ladder, Hélène sauntered over from the other side of the house. “What was all that about?”
“He’s injured his hand.” I paused and then added, “So I said I’d help out.”
“To do what?”
“Um . . . to prune his vines,” I said casually, looking away.
She turned to take a better look at me.
“Do you really want to get into that again?”
“Actually, he made it sound pretty interesting. I picked grapes last fall . . .”
“And you suffered for it!”
“I can learn what it takes to own a vineyard.” I hesitated and then continued, “I could hardly say no and leave him stuck like that.”
“He got you, didn’t he?”
“Yeah—I guess so.”
I waited for her to say something more, but she just went back to work on her roses. I was free to get back to the dead oak once more and was about to climb up the ladder when a sudden movement caught my attention. It was a cat trotting across Jean’s yard straight toward me. When it reached the fence between the properties, it stopped, bounded up the tree and hopped to the ground on my side.
“Mirteel,” I said, pronouncing her name the French way. I bent over to stroke her head and received a throaty indulgent purr for my effort. She promptly rubbed her body against my legs and butted her head into my hand.
Last year we had rescued Myrtille and her litter from a shed which she had been accidentally locked in. Then we moved the kittens into our bedroom, where Myrtille had nursed them until fall when we carried them in their wicker basket down the hill to Yvette and Gilles, Myrtille’s real owners.
I picked her up, rolled her onto her back and scratched her upturned belly, but she was too excited and pushed her way back to the ground.
“C’mon, let’s go surprise Hélène.”
Her purring turned into a throaty rumble, and she nudged against my legs as I walked toward the roses. “There’s someone here to see you.”
Hélène turned and saw Myrtille. In that moment, she stopped what she was doing, swept the cat into her arms, and they began making disgusting gushy noises at each other.
The next day I dressed warmly, found a pair of leather gloves and walked up the hill in the brisk morning air. Fidel, Pierre Luc’s dog, was curled up beside him in the sun. Next to them stood an old man I immediately recognized as a caricature of a santon, one of those miniature provençale dolls. That may sound odd, but all his clothes, from his worn and faded shirt to the frayed jacket and loose pants, appeared to hang on him as if he had shrunk inside his very clothing. From a strap over his shoulder hung a miniature wooden keg. I had heard that men once filled these kegs with wine to drink while working in the vineyards. He had the weathered appearance of someone who had lived a life outdoors.
“C’est mon oncle Jules,” Pierre Luc said, introducing us.
All the man said was “Eh bheng”—yet he stared sharply at me for a brief second before glancing away. I felt he had taken a measure of me.
By contrast, Pierre Luc couldn’t have been more open and willing to engage in conversation. And he was all smiles now. He motioned for us to follow him over to the vineyard, where he stopped beside a row of vines. One look was all it took to see the tangle of overgrown canes from several years of neglect.
“I don’t have money to buy those new power sécateurs,” Pierre Luc said. “So we do it the old way—by hand . . . maybe next year. I had to buy a truck for now—anyway, a power one would have lopped it right off.” He made a flicking motion as if something was flying from his bandaged hand. . . . With the bandage now pointed at one of the vines, he said, “The old wood with the bark on it doesn’t need pruning. But the cane has to be pruned and then tied to the wire.” He made a quick cut and winced, holding the sécateur clumsily in his bandaged hand. “Ici, commencez ici—start here. Leave three or four leaf nodes on the old cane.” Then he handed me the sécateur and said, “Vous, maintenant.” It was my turn. He put two forefingers on another cane, “Ici.”
“D’accord,” I said in agreement and cut the cane where his fingers had been.
“D’acc,” he said, clipping the extra vowel.
The work was similar to harvesting grapes last fall, but easier since I could stand erect instead of bending over to reach the grape clusters hidden below the leaves.
Pierre Luc must have felt he had done all he could, for he smiled and said he would come back later. Then he waved his bandaged hand and walked toward the house with Fidel at his side. The santon doll and I were left standing in the vineyard.
No sooner was Pierre Luc a short way off than Jules snapped, “Pas d’acc!—Ignore him. He knows nothing.” Then he began talking very quickly in a staccato delivery that ran all the words together into one hard burr. He must have seen the confusion on my face, for he stopped and with the sécateur in his hand, began to show me where and how to cut the canes. “Comme ça, et comme ça,” he said, measuring along the cane from the hard wood of the trunk and making several swift cuts. He was not nearly as generous as Pierre Luc, for he left just two nodes on each cane.
We started working just a few feet apart. He moved with a rhythmic intensity, eyeing a vine quickly then lopping off the overgrowth of cane and tying the remaining cane to the wire trellis for support. Then he moved to the next vine and repeated the process. I tried to keep up with him but lacked his discerning eye and practised skill. My hands, even with gloves, felt stiff in the cold morning air, and rubbing them together from time to time didn’t help. Every so often Jules would come back, look at my work and give advice. I was learning, although slower than I would have liked.
When I walked down the hill at the end of the day, I no longer saw any romance in wine-making. It was mind-numbing, tedious work. But also I had a weary sense of having accomplished something.
“So how did it go?” my wife asked as I opened the door and walked in.
“It will take two more days,” was all I said.
Two days later, in the mid-afternoon sun, Pierre Luc, Jules and I sat with a glass of wine on the south side of his stone house. Jules silently smoked a home-rolled cigarette that he pinched between his thumb and index finger. With the pruning done, Pierre Luc had become loquacious.
“I can relax and wait for the budbreak.”
He saw my inquiring look.
“Oh—that’s when the first growth shows up on the canes. After that the new canes shoot out, the leaves open and little clusters appear. They look like tiny grape clusters, but they’re just flower buds. The flowers open, the bees do their work and then the grapes set.” He smiled and took a sip of wine. “Spring is an expectant time of year, like the early stages of a pregnancy, when winter is behind and the growth of summer lies ahead.
“I never wanted vineyards. As a child, I watched my father lose heart when the Viognier variety of grapes he planted was a big flop. Nobody bought his wine. After his death, I just let the vineyards go. But now look at it,” he said with a sweep of his arm. “Viognier has become popular and is beginning to sell well—and I have lots of it. All I need is a good year and I can pay back the bank.
“Come, look here,” he said, standing up and motioning for me to follow. “See there at the top of the slope how the vines are smaller up there. That’s because the top drains first and the vines get less water. Down lower you can see the vines are bigger and can produce more fruit.”
He turned to look at me. “The colder air gathers at the bottom of the hill. Worse, in wet weather the roots sleep in the water and we get disease and rot. Each vine, each row is different, growing, maturing and yielding different