Ronnie Scissorhands
July 5th 2008, by GQ
Our new rogneuse arrived this week, complete with numerous spinning blades. New to us, that is, after one careful owner and just twelve months on the road, allegedly. It is immediately being put to good use, trimming the rows of vines after a team of mostly seasonal workers, or saisonniers, have lifted all the vines up through the training wires. Our old machine could just about cope but it’s seen better days, not least during our first full season in 2000 when we bought it brand new. (It should have lasted longer but the both the manufacturer and the distributor have closed down, so it’s tricky to get it fixed each time it goes wrong.) We still have the really old, lethal one that we inherited but we can’t show it here because the inspecteurs de travail would close us down if they knew we still had it. Even visitors to the vineyard exclaim ‘oh my god, what’s that?’ when they peer inside the tractor shed (all part of the longer, more exciting tour), but head boy Daniel is quite attached to it and, besides, he never throws anything away. I should get him on to eBay.
Using the rogneuse (pronounced ron-years, in case you wanted to point one out on your next vineyard tour in France) is a highly skilled job, carried out this week by Hafid while Daniel works on one of the other tractors. By far and away the most labour-intensive aspect though is the work by the saisonniers, lifting the branches of the vines up through the training wires, taking care not to damage the newly formed bunches at knee level.
14,565 New Vines Planted
May 31st 2008, by GQ
Last week we planted a single parcel of nearly 3 hectares, or 7.5 acres, with a zillion new sauvignon blanc vines, just behind the winery (or chai) at Château Bauduc. A specialist team of 14 people did the whole job in a few days, from tracing out the block, knocking in the small supporting posts, digging the holes and planting the baby vines.
We had ripped the old vines after the 2006 harvest, and then worked hard to get the terrain in the right condition for the new plants. The plan was to plant earlier in the spring but it has been so wet it’s been difficult to prepare the ground properly. It turns out that this has worked in our favour, in that several growers have had problems with vines going in too early and having problems with too much rain or late frosts in April.