Le Couvent Diary

I've just come back from collecting the morning bread, cakes and fruit. Here's the list:

One watermelon, one yellow melon, one green melon, 5 apples,  5 slices of ham from the bone, 5 croissant nature, 4 croissant beurre, 3 croissant abricot, 3 noix de pecan, 2 pain au raisin, 2 pain au chocolat, 1 pain au lin, 1 pain complet & 1 festivale brune.

I already had peaches, oranges, bananas, nectarines, salami and cheeses. The hens have laid enough eggs for me to offer all 9 guests boiled eggs too this morning. It's now 8am and the table is complete. I just have to wait for guests to come down to breakfast.

It's jumper time at 6.30 when I trot off to the village. There's suddenly an autumnal nip in the air. Worry not, if you're still to have your hols here, it warms up wonderfully during the day, but pack a jumper eh? We close in a couple of weeks' time and I love the change to autumn. After the languid summer heat which is just ennervating, I adore the re-found energy that comes with cooler days.

And I'm longing to get going on the vineyards, to help them recover from their hideous hail-bashing of last week. If you're interested in seeing how the wine is going you'll need to nip over to our sister site at Chateau Mal Au Dos . I've copied all the wine-related entries over there and will be continuing the wine story there.

Meanwhile I think I hear footsteps, so I'm off to boil eggs - for exactly 3 minutes 20 seconds. With no food-miles to count, our hens eggs are nest-fresh and take less time to cook to perfection.

Today's my birthday and my brother's bought me a special rake for whacking the grapes down into the juice. Sometimes the best present is the thing you need right now. The vat of grapes is singing. The yeast is bubbling away and it sounds like a massive bowl of Rice Crispies.

Ten of us went to Meze for a lunch of heaps of shellfish. We had to wait long enough for the restaurant to go fishing before we eventually ate, but it was good, and thankfully no-one was in a hurry.

All in all it's been one of those times when our friends have absolutely come up trumps. Thank you so much Teddy, Nicola, Erzsi, Kathy, Richard, Clare, Rachel, Alex M, Alex C, Greg, Kate, Jenny, Jackie, Josh, Freddie, Michelle, Henny, Simon, Hans and Christa. You are complete stars. And to all the other people who were lined up to help with the harvest, can we please book you for next year?

As soon as we saw the damage and realised we had just a few grapes we could rescue if we did it immediately, we started ringing round our team. Within one hour of seeing the damage we had thirteen pals and all the equipment in the vineyard. What fantastic friends. We hit the remaining grapes like demons possessed in that thundery heat that threatens another storm. To the chorus of endless yells of 'BUCKET' meaning 'this ones full and I need another' - a signal for the porters to hurry over bringing empty buckets and lugging off the full ones, we cleared the surviving grapes in less than three hours.

As you can see, the grapes are not pretty. The hail has smashed them open, but they might just be usable if we're quick.

There's so little that we have decided to use them to make some wine for ourselves, so we take them to our new cuves at my brother, Justin's, house.

The grapes come up to the 750 litre mark on the cuve, but that includes stalks and skins so we'll have precious little when all that gets taken off eventually.

As if the day hasn't already been difficult enough, the cuve containing the grapes decides to lurch into a jaunty angle thanks to a rather-too-soft floor. There's only one thing for it, we have to move all of the grapes into the second tank. And there's only one way to do it - by getting into the tank with the grapes.

Here's Michelle, my sister-in-law, getting down and dirty with the grapes.

Now, you have to understand that we are wine-making virgins and all this has come upon us with a rush. So a hurried phone call to the charming and helpful winemaker, Simon Coulshaw , gave us these instructions.

And those led to a rather inexpert approach to measuring out the stabiliser and yeast.

After the addition of the stabiliser and yeast we got our mate Kate to say a few fine words to encourage the mass to turn to ruby nectar.

Now it's up to Bacchus and a fair wind.

Thanks to Peter and Esther the wine cuves arrived last week. You can see that two of them took the whole van, but P&E were kind and charming and got them here safely and at a reasonable price. Thank you both.

Now we just have to figure out how to get the floating lids on before we begin picking the syrah.

I'm in love. Yep, with a man called Peter whom I've never met. He just rang to say his lovely haulage company P&E International will pick up our wine vats next Wednesday and have them here for Thursday. He has a part load coming from England - by chance.

Ain't life grand? Just as I begin to despair, after six weeks of hopeless phone calls and visits to delivery companies, St Peter and All Angels, patron saint of stranded vats, turns up like the caped crusader. Thank you. We'll have the wine chilling.