THE VINTAGE AND THE VINTAGERS.
So much, then, for preliminary information. Let us now proceed to the
joyous ingathering of the fruits of the earth--the great yearly festival
and jubilee of the property and the labour of Medoc. October, the "wine
month," is approaching. For weeks, every cloud in the sky has been
watched--every cold night breeze felt with nervous apprehension. Upon
the last bright weeks in summer, the savour and the bouquet of the wine
depend. Warmed by the blaze of an unclouded sun, fanned by the mild
breezes of the west, and moistened by morning and evening dews, the
grapes by slow degrees attain their perfect ripeness and their
culminating point of flavour. Then the vintage implements begin to be
sought out, cleaned, repaired, and scoured and sweetened with hot
brandy. Coopers work as if their lives depended upon their industry; and
all the anomalous tribe of lookers-out for chance jobs in town and
country pack up their bag and baggage, and from scores of miles around
pour in ragged regiments into Medoc.
There have long existed pleasing, and in some sort poetical,
associations connected with the task of securing for human use the
fruits of the earth; and to no species of crop do these picturesque
associations apply with greater force than to the ingathering of the
ancient harvest of the vine. From time immemorial, the season has
typified epochs of plenty and mirthful-heartedness--of good fare and of
good-will. The ancient types and figures descriptive of the vintage are
still literally true. The march of agricultural improvement seems never
to have set foot amid the vines. As it was with the patriarchs in the
East, so it is with the modern children of men. The goaded ox still
bears home the high-pressed grape-tub, and the feet of the treader are
still red in the purple juice which maketh glad the heart of man. The
scene is at once full of beauty, and of tender and even sacred
associations. The songs of the vintagers, frequently chorussed from one
part of the field to the other, ring blithely into the bright summer
air, pealing out above the rough jokes and hearty peals of laughter
shouted hither and thither. All the green jungle is alive with the
moving figures of men and women, stooping among the vines or bearing
pails and basketfuls of grapes out to the grass-grown crossroads, along
which the labouring oxen drag the rough vintage carts, groaning and
cracking as they stagger along beneath their weight of purple tubs
heaped high with the tumbling masses of luscious fruit. The congregation
of every age and both sexes, and the careless variety of costume, add
additional features of picturesqueness to the scene. The white-haired
old man labours with shaking hands to fill the basket which his
black-eyed imp of a grandchild carries rejoicingly away. Quaint
broad-brimmed straw and felt hats--handkerchiefs twisted like turbans
over straggling elf locks--swarthy skins tanned to an olive-brown--black
flashing eyes--and hands and feet stained in the abounding juices of the
precious fruit--all these southern peculiarities of costume and
appearance supply the vintage with its pleasant characteristics. The
clatter of tongues is incessant. A fire of jokes and jeers, of saucy
questions, and more saucy retorts--of what, in fact, in the humble and
unpoetic but expressive vernacular, is called "chaff,"--is kept up with
a vigour which seldom flags, except now and then, when the butt-end of a
song, or the twanging close of a chorus strikes the general fancy, and
procures for the _morceau_ a lusty _encore_. Meantime, the master
wine-grower moves observingly from rank to rank. No neglected bunch of
fruit escapes his watchful eye. No careless vintager shakes the precious
berries rudely upon the soil, but he is promptly reminded of his
slovenly work. Sometimes the tubs attract the careful superintendent. He
turns up the clusters to ascertain that no leaves nor useless length of
tendril are entombed in the juicy masses, and anon directs his steps to
the pressing-trough, anxious to find that the lusty treaders are
persevering manfully in their long-continued dance.
Thither we will follow. The wine-press, or _cuvier de pressoir_,
consists, in the majority of cases, of a massive shallow tub, varying in
size from four square feet to as many square yards. It is placed either
upon wooden trestles or on a regularly-built platform of mason-work
under the huge rafters of a substantial outhouse. Close to it stands a
range of great butts, their number more or less, according to the size
of the vineyard. The grapes are flung by tub and caskfuls into the
cuvier. The treaders stamp diligently amid the masses, and the expressed
juice pours plentifully out of a hole level with the bottom of the
trough into a sieve of iron or wickerwork, which stops the passage of
the skins, and from thence drains into tubs below. Suppose, at the
moment of our arrival, the cuvier for a brief space empty. The
treaders--big, perspiring men, in shirts and tucked-up
trowsers--spattered to the eyes with splatches of purple juice, lean
upon their wooden spades, and wipe their foreheads. But their respite is
short. The creak of another cart-load of tubs is heard, and immediately
the waggon is backed up to the broad open window, or rather hole in the
wall, above the trough. A minute suffices to wrench out tub after tub,
and to tilt their already half-mashed clusters splash into the reeking
_pressoir_. Then to work again. Jumping with a sort of spiteful
eagerness into the mountain of yielding quivering fruit, the treaders
sink almost to the knees, stamping and jumping and rioting in the masses
of grapes, as fountains of juice spurt about their feet, and rush
bubbling and gurgling away. Presently, having, as it were, drawn the
first sweet blood of the new cargo, the eager trampling subsides into a
sort of quiet, measured dance, which the treaders continue, while, with
their wooden spades, they turn the pulpy remnants of the fruit hither
and thither, so as to expose the half-squeezed berries in every possible
way to the muscular action of the incessantly moving feet. All this
time, the juice is flowing in a continuous stream into the tubs beneath.
When the jet begins to slacken, the heap is well tumbled with the wooden
spades, and, as though a new force had been applied, the juice-jet
immediately breaks out afresh. It takes, perhaps, half or three-quarters
of an hour thoroughly to squeeze the contents of a good-sized cuvier,
sufficiently manned. When at length, however, no further exertion
appears to be attended with corresponding results, the tubfuls of
expressed juice are carried by means of ladders to the edges of the
vats, and their contents tilted in; while the men in the trough,
setting-to with their spades, fling the masses of dripping grape-skins
in along with the juice. The vats sufficiently full, the fermentation is
allowed to commence. In the great cellars in which the juice is stored,
the listener at the door--he cannot brave the carbonic acid gas to enter
further--may hear, solemnly echoing in the cool shade of the great
darkened hall, the bubblings and seethings of the working liquid--the
inarticulate accents and indistinct rumblings which proclaim that a
great metempsychosis is taking place--that a natural substance is rising
higher in the eternal scale of things, and that the contents of these
great giants of vats are becoming changed from floods of mere mawkish,
sweetish fluid to noble wine--to a liquid honoured and esteemed in all
ages--to a medicine exercising a strange and potent effect upon body and
soul--great for good and evil. Is there not something fanciful and
poetic in the notion of this change taking place mysteriously in the
darkness, when all the doors are locked and barred--for the atmosphere
about the vats is death--as if Nature would suffer no idle prying into
her mystic operations, and as if the grand transmutation and projection
from juice to wine had in it something of a secret and solemn and awful
nature--fenced round, as it were, and protected from vulgar curiosity by
the invisible halo of stifling gas? I saw the vats in the Chateau
Margaux cellars the day after the grape-juice had been flung in.
Fermentation had not as yet properly commenced, so access to the place
was possible; still, however, there was a strong vinous smell loading
the atmosphere, sharp and subtle in its influence on the nostrils;
while, putting my ear, on the recommendation of my conductor, to the
vats, I heard, deep down, perhaps eight feet down in the juice, a
seething, gushing sound, as if currents and eddies were beginning to
flow, in obedience to the influence of the working Spirit, and now and
then a hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot about to boil.
Within twenty-four hours, the cellar would be unapproachable.
Of course, it is quite foreign to my plan to enter upon anything like a
detailed account of wine-making. I may only add, that the refuse-skins,
stalks, and so forth, which settle into the bottom of the fermentation
vats, are taken out again after the wine has been drawn off and
subjected to a new squeezing--in a press, however, and not by the
foot--the products being a small quantity of fiery, ill-flavoured wine,
full of the bitter taste of the seeds and stalks of the grape, and
possessing no aroma or bouquet. The Bordeaux press for this purpose is
rather ingeniously constructed. It consists of a sort of a skeleton of a
cask, strips of daylight shining through from top to bottom between the
staves. In the centre works a strong perpendicular iron screw. The
_rape_, as the refuse of the treading is called, is piled beneath it;
the screw is manned capstan fashion, and the unhappy seeds, skins, and
stalks, undergo a most dismal squeezing. Nor do their trials end there.
The wine-makers are terrible hands for getting at the very last
get-at-able drop. To this end, somewhat on the principle of rinsing an
exhausted spirit bottle, so as, as it were, to catch the very flavour
still clinging to the glass, they plunge the doubly-squeezed _rape_ into
water, let it lie there for a short time, and then attack it with the
press again. The result is a horrible stuff called _piquette_, which, in
a wine country, bears the same resemblance to wine as the very dirtiest,
most wishy-washy, and most contemptible of swipes bears to honest porter
or ale. Piquette, in fact, may be defined as the ghost of wine!--wine
minus its bones, its flesh, and its soul!--a liquid shadow!--a fluid
nothing!--an utter negation of all comfortable things and associations!
Nevertheless, however, the peasants swill it down in astounding
quantities, and apparently with sufficient satisfaction.
And now a word as to wine-treading. The process is universal in France,
with the exception of the cases of the sparkling wines of the Rhone and
Champagne, the grapes for which are squeezed by mechanical means, not by
the human foot. Now, very venerable and decidedly picturesque as is the
process of wine-treading, it is unquestionably rather a filthy one; and
the spectacle of great brown horny feet, not a whit too clean, splashing
and sprawling in the bubbling juice, conveys at first sight a qualmy
species of feeling, which, however, seems only to be entertained by
those to whom the sight is new. I looked dreadfully askance at the
operation when I first came across it; and when I was invited--by a
lady, too--to taste the juice, of which she caught up a glassful, a
certain uncomfortable feeling of the inward man warred terribly against
politeness. But nobody around seemed to be in the least squeamish. Often
and often did I see one of the heroes of the tub walk quietly over a
dunghill, and then jump--barefooted, of course, as he was--into the
juice; and even a vigilant proprietor, who was particularly careful that
no bad grapes went into the tub, made no objection. When I asked why a
press was not used, as more handy, cleaner, and more convenient, I was
everywhere assured that all efforts had failed to construct a wine-press
capable of performing the work with the perfection attained by the
action of the human foot. No mechanical squeezing, I was informed, would
so nicely express that peculiar proportion of the whole moisture of the
grape which forms the highest flavoured wine. The manner in which the
fruit was tossed about was pointed out to me, and I was asked to
observe that the grapes were, as it were, squeezed in every possible
fashion and from every possible side, worked and churned and mashed
hither and thither by the ever-moving toes and muscles of the foot. As
far as any impurity went, the argument was, that the fermentation flung,
as scum to the surface, every atom of foreign matter held in suspension
in the wine, and that the liquid ultimately obtained was as exquisitely
pure as if human flesh had never touched it.
In the collection of these and such like particulars, I sauntered for
days among the vineyards around; and, utterly unknown and unfriended as
I was, I met everywhere the most cordial and pleasant receptions. I
would lounge, for example, to the door of a wine-treading shed, to watch
the movements of the people. Presently the proprietor, most likely
attired in a broad-brimmed straw hat, a strange faded outer garment,
half shooting-coat half dressing gown, would come up courteously to the
stranger, and, learning that I was an English visitor to the vintage,
would busy himself with the most graceful kindness, to make intelligible
the _rationale_ of all the operations. Often I was invited into the
chateau or farm-house, as the case might be; a bottle of an old vintage
produced and comfortably discussed in the coolness of the darkened,
thinly-furnished room, with its old-fashioned walnut-tree escrutoires,
and beauffets, its quaintly-pannelled walls, and its polished floors,
gleaming like mirrors and slippery as ice. On these occasions, the
conversation would often turn upon the general rejection, by England, of
French wines--a sore point with the growers of all save the first-class
vintages, and in which I had, as may be conceived, very little to say in
defence either of our taste or our policy. In the evenings, which were
getting chill and cold, I occasionally abandoned my room with
illustrations from the _Tour de Nesle_ for the general kitchen and
parlour of Madame Cadillac, and, ensconcing myself in the chimney
corner--a fine old-fashioned ingle, crackling and blazing with hard wood
logs--listened to the chat of the people of the village; they were
nearly all coopers and vine-dressers, who resorted there after the day's
work was over to enjoy an exceedingly modest modicum of very thin wine.
I never benefitted very much, however, by these listenings. It was my
bad luck to hear recounted neither tale nor legend--to pick up, at the
hands of my _compotatores_, neither local trait nor anecdote. The
conversation was as small as the wine. The gossip of the place--the
prospects of the vintage--elaborate comparisons of it with other
vintages--births, marriages, and deaths--a minute list of scandal, more
or less intelligible when conveyed in hints and allusions--were the
staple topics, mixed up, however, once or twice with general
denunciations of the niggardly conduct of certain neighbouring
proprietors to their vintagers--giving them for breakfast nothing but
coarse bread, lard, and not even piquette to wash it down with, and for
dinner not much more tempting dishes.
In Medoc, there are two classes of vintagers--the fixed and the floating
population; and the latter, which makes an annual inroad into the
district just as the Irish harvesters do into England and Scotland,
comprising a goodly proportion of very dubious and suspicious-looking
characters. The _gen-d'armerie_ have a busy time of it when these gentry
are collected in numbers in the district. Poultry disappear with the
most miraculous promptitude; small linen articles hung out to dry have
no more chance than if Falstaff's regiment were marching by; and
garden-fruit and vegetables, of course, share the results produced by a
rigid application of the maxim that _la propriété c'est le vol_. Where
these people come from is a puzzle. There will be vagrants and strollers
among them from all parts of France--from the Pyrenees and the
Alps--from the pine-woods of the Landes and the moors of Brittany. They
unite in bands of a dozen or a score men and women, appointing a chief,
who bargains with the vine-proprietor for the services of the company,
and keeps up some degree of order and subordination, principally by
means of the unconstitutional application of a good thick stick. I
frequently encountered these bands, making their way from one district
to another, and better samples of "the dangerous classes" were never
collected. They looked vicious and abandoned, as well as miserably poor.
The women, in particular, were as brazen-faced a set of slatterns as
could be conceived; and the majority of the men--tattered,
strapping-looking fellows, with torn slouched hats, and tremendous
cudgels--were exactly the sort of persons a nervous gentleman would have
scruples about meeting at dusk in a long lane. It is when thus on the
tramp that the petty pilfering and picking and stealing to which I have
alluded to goes on. When actually at work, they have no time for
picking up unconsidered trifles. Sometimes these people pass the
night--all together, of course--in out-houses or barns, when the _chef_
can strike a good bargain; at other times they bivouac on the lee-side
of a wood or wall, in genuine gipsy fashion. You may often see their
watchfires glimmering in the night; and be sure that where you do, there
are twisted necks and vacant nests in many a neighbouring hen-roost. One
evening I was sauntering along the beach at Paulliac--a little town on
the river's bank, about a dozen of miles from the mouth of the Gironde,
and holding precisely the same relation to Bordeaux as Gravesend does to
London--when a band of vintagers, men, women, and children, came up.
They were bound to some village on the opposite side of the Gironde, and
wanted to get ferried across. A long parley accordingly ensued between
the chief and a group of boatmen. The commander of the vintage forces
offered four sous per head as the passage-money. The bargemen would hear
of nothing under five; and after a tremendous verbal battle, the
vintagers announced that they were not going to be cheated, and that if
they could not cross the water, they could stay where they were.
Accordingly, a bivouac was soon formed. Creeping under the lee of a row
of casks, on the shingle of the bare beach, the women were placed
leaning against the somewhat hard and large pillows in question; the
children were nestled at their feet and in their laps; and the men
formed the outermost ranks. A supply of loaves was sent for and
obtained. The chief tore the bread up into huge hunks, which he
distributed to his dependents; and upon this supper the whole party
went coolly to sleep--more coolly, indeed, than agreeably; for a keen
north wind was whistling along the sedgy banks of the river, and the red
blaze of high-piled faggots was streaming from the houses across the
black, cold, turbid waters. At length, however, some arrangement was
come to; for, on visiting the spot a couple of hours afterwards, I found
the party rather more comfortably ensconced under the ample sails of the
barge which was to bear them the next morning to their destination.
The dinner-party formed every day, when the process of stripping the
vines is going on, is, particularly in the cases in which the people are
treated well by the proprietor, frequently a very pretty and very
picturesque spectacle. It always takes place in the open air, amongst
the bushes, or under some neighbouring walnut-tree. Sometimes long
tables are spread upon tressles; but in general no such formality
is deemed requisite. The guests fling themselves in groups upon the
ground--men and women picturesquely huddled together--the former bloused
and bearded personages--the latter showy, in their bright short
petticoats of home-spun and dyed cloth, with glaring handkerchiefs
twisted like turbans round their heads--each man and woman with a deep
plate in his or her lap. Then the people of the house bustle about,
distributing huge brown loaves, which are torn asunder, and the
fragments chucked from hand to hand. Next a vast cauldron of soup,
smoking like a volcano, is painfully lifted out from the kitchen, and
dealt about in mighty ladlefuls; while the founder of the feast takes
care that the tough, thready _bouilli_--like lumps of boiled-down
hemp--shall be fairly apportioned among his guests. _Piquette_ is the
general beverage. A barrel is set abroach, and every species of mug,
glass, cup, and jug about the establishment is called in to aid in its
consumption. A short rest, devoted to chatting, or very often sleeping
in the shade, over, the signal is given, and the work recommences.
"You have seen our _salle à manger_," said one of my courteous
entertainers--he of the broad-brimmed straw hat; "and now you shall see
our _chambre à coucher_." Accordingly, he led me to a barn close to his
wine-cellars. The place was littered deep with clean, fresh straw. Here
and there rolled-up blankets were laid against the wall; while all
round, from nails stuck in between the bare bricks, hung by straps and
strings the little bundles, knapsacks, and other baggage of the
labourers. On one side, two or three swarthy young women were playfully
pushing each other aside, so as to get at a morsel of cracked mirror
stuck against the wall--their long hair hanging down in black elf-locks,
in the preliminary stage of its arrangement.
"That is the ladies' side," said my _cicerone_, pointing to the girls;
"and that"--extending his other hand--"is the gentlemen's side."
"And so they all sleep here together?"
"Every night. I find shelter and straw; any other accommodation they
must procure for themselves."
"Rather unruly, I should suppose?"
"Not a bit. They are too tired to do anything but sleep. They go off,
sir, like dormice."
"_Oh, sil plait à Mossieu!_" put in one of the damsels. "The chief of
the band does the police." (_Fait la gen-d'armerie._)
"Certainly--certainly," said the proprietor; "the gentlemen lie here,
with their heads to the wall; the ladies there; and the _chef de la
bande_ stretches himself all along between them."
"A sort of living frontier?"
"Truly; and he allows no nonsense."
"_Il est meme éxcessivement severe_," interpolated the same young lady.
"He need be," replied her employer. "He allows no loud speaking--no
joking; and as there are no candles, no light, why, they can do nothing
better than go quietly to sleep, if it were only in self-defence."
One word more about the vintage. The reader will easily conceive that it
is on the smaller properties, where the wine is intended, not so much
for commerce as for household use, that the vintage partakes most of the
festival nature. In the large and first-class vineyards the process goes
on under rigid superintendence, and is as much as possible made a cold
matter of business. He who wishes to see the vintages of books and
poems--the laughing, joking, singing festivals amid the vines, which we
are accustomed to consider the harvests of the grape--must betake him to
the multitudinous patches of peasant property, in which neighbour helps
neighbour to gather in the crop, and upon which whole families labour
merrily together, as much for the amusement of the thing, and from good
neighbourly feeling, as in consideration of francs and sous. Here, of
course, there is no tight discipline observed, nor is there any absolute
necessity for that continuous, close scrutiny into the state of the
grapes--all of them hard or rotten, going slap-dash into the
_cuvier_--which, in the case of the more precious vintages, forms no
small check upon a general state of careless jollity. Every one eats as
much fruit as he pleases, and rests when he is tired. On such occasions
it is that you hear to the best advantage the joyous songs and choruses
of the vintage--many of these last being very pretty bits of melody,
generally sung by the women and girls, in shrill treble unison, and
caught up and continued from one part of the field to another.
[Illustration: RETURNING FROM THE VINTAGE.]
Yet, discipline and control it as you will, the vintage will ever be
beautiful, picturesque, and full of association. The rude wains,
creaking beneath the reeking tubs--the patient faces of the yoked
oxen--the half-naked, stalwart men, who toil to help the cart along the
ruts and furrows of the way--the handkerchief-turbaned women, their gay,
red-and-blue dresses peeping from out the greenery of the leaves--the
children dashing about as if the whole thing were a frolic, and the
grey-headed old men tottering cheerfully adown the lines of vines, with
baskets and pails of gathered grapes to fill the yawning tubs--the whole
picture is at once classic, venerable, and picturesque, not more by
association than actuality.
And now, Reader, luxuriating amid the gorgeously carven and emblazoned
fittings of a Palais Royal or Boulevard restorateur, Vefours, the
Freres, or the Café de Paris; or perhaps ensconced in our quieter and
more sober rooms--dim and dull after garish Paris, but ten times more
comfortable in their ample sofas and carpets, into which you sink as
into quagmires, but with more agreeable results,--snugly, Reader,
ensconced in either one or the other locality, after the waiter has, in
obedience to your summons, produced the _carte de vins_, and your eye
wanders down the long list of tempting nectars, Spanish and Portuguese,
and better, far better, German and French--have you ever wondered as you
read, "ST. JULLIEN, LEOVILLE, CHATEAU LA LAFITTE, CHATEAU LA ROSE, and
CHATEAU MARGAUX, what these actual vineyards, the produce of which you
know so well--what those actual chateaux, which christen such glorious
growths, resemble?" If so, listen, and I will tell you.
As you traverse the high road from Bordeaux to Pauillac, some one will
probably point out to you a dozen tiny sugar-loaf turrets, each
surmounted by a long lightning-conductor, rising from a group of noble
trees. This is the chateau St. Jullien. A little on, on the right side
of the way, rises, from the top of a tiny hill overlooking the Gironde,
a new building, with all the old crinkum-crankum ornaments of the
ancient fifteenth century country house. That is the chateau Latour.
Presently you observe that the entrance to a wide expanse of vines,
covering a series of hills and dales, tumbling down to the water's edge,
is marked by a sort of triumphal arch or ornamented gate, adorned with a
lion couchant, and a legend, setting forth that the vines behind produce
the noted wine of Leoville. The chateau Lafitte rises amid stately
groves of oak and walnut-trees, from amid the terraced walks of an
Italian garden--its white spreading wings gleaming through the trees,
and its round-roofed, slated towers rising above them. One chateau, the
most noted of all, remains. Passing along a narrow, sandy road, amid a
waste of scrubby-looking bushes, you pass beneath the branches of a
clump of noble oaks and elms, and perceive a great white structure
glimmering garishly before you. Take such a country house as you may
still find in your grandmothers' samplers, decorated with a due
allowance of doors and windows--clap before it a misplaced Grecian
portico, whitewash the whole to a state of the most glaring and dazzling
brightness, carefully close all outside shutters, painted white
likewise--and you have chateau Margaux rising before you like a wan,
ghastly spectre of a house, amid stately terraced gardens, and trimmed,
clipped, and tortured trees. But, as I have already insisted, nothing,
in any land of vines, must be judged by appearances. The first time I
saw at a distance Johannesberg, rising from its grape-clustered domains,
I thought it looked very much like a union workhouse, erected in the
midst of a field of potatoes.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: LANDES SHEPHERDS.]