After much anticipation, the vendange finally began this week. While it has been fun being photographed wrapping corks and cleaning barrels by Chinese tourists – although I feel that I somewhat spoilt the rustic atmosphere they were looking for by wearing my Palace shirt and blasting out Arctic Monkeys on my headphones as I did it – it couldn’t have come sooner.
I've been to a few parties throughout my teenage years but before now have only worked at one; I was the photographer at my friend’s Mum’s 50th. However no amount of taking pictures of middle aged couples dancing to Kool & The Gang could have prepared me for working at the Ban des Vendanges. Everything was on a grander scale; at the former I would photograph couples as they arrived a few minutes apart while at the latter I was directing throngs of cars into parking spaces in broken French with such urgency that I had no time to worry about so many people driving to a wine dinner. This time, instead of nicking the odd glass of Sainsbury’s Chablis, I was skimming the top off bottles of La Mission Haut Brion to “check they weren’t corked” before being sent out to the 1000 guests who attended the event.
When most 18 year olds set off on their gap year, the first port of call is typically Thailand in which they will tell you they hope to find themselves by embarking on a trip of sexual discovery, casual drug use and perhaps getting a tattoo that says "hope" in Thai as a manifestation of their multicultural experience and thus development as a person. Indeed, the first thing I did on my gap year is called effeuillage and a quick Google search will tell you that it’s the French for striptease. However, in oenological terms it is also the name for the much less salacious process of leaf removal. So instead of deflowering, I was instead deleafing which allows sunlight to reach the grapes on the many vines of Domaine de Chevalier. I was told that this is the worst job of the vendage, partly due to the diminutive size of the Chevalier vines. Our group spent the entire 9 hour day going from row to row with a short break in between each one that conveniently, for those who smoked (apparently everyone in France), lasted exactly the length of a cigarette. The next day, I woke up at 7am to begin my second day of work with an aching back and tired eyes. As we drank our coffees, my roommate Damien taught me a French phrase I have gotten a lot of use out of already: “J’ai la flemme”, which wordreference.com tells me translates as “I can’t be arsed”.
