Le Couvent Diary

 

Yesterday we picked the white grapes. We don't have the right equipment to make white wine - you need a method of chilling the grapes quickly and as we have so few it simply isn't worth the outlay.




So we picked our Muscat petit grain, along with a few black and white eating grapes,  just for juice.  Ali & I were joined by four of our lovely guests; Nicolette, Frances, Kristin & Justin. (For one moment this morning we had Justin Gosling and Justin Swan in the house.)

 

 The pre-squish footwash

 

 De-stemming the grapes

 

Waiting to squish

 

 Treading the grapes

 

 The pre-sieved gloop

 

 Bottled

After removing the stems and treading the grapes we ended up with about 50 litres of juice which we gave to our B&B guests at breakfast and to any of our pals who'd take some. It's absolutely delicious, but only lasts a few days in the fridge before it would start to ferment. So we glug it merrily while it's around. Last night we had it with champagne. Nicky named the cocktail a Le Couvent Grappellini.

 

I haven't blogged for ages because there's been an elephant in the room. How could I have written and not mentioned the awful weather? It's been the worst June for forty years, but I could hardly have told you that. You'd have cancelled in droves! However, everyone has survived and had a good time visiting the lovely Languedoc's wildest places instead of lolling by the pool.

But THE SUN's BACK. That's the forecast at 9.07 this morning. So now we look forward to the return of the cicadas and their heat-driven whistle.

We've been battling with vine-spraying between showers. A mixture of heat, rain then plunging overnight temperatures has meant that the vines have been very susceptible to a number of conditions such as powdery mildew and shatter - the latter producing poor fruit set. But now I'm hoping we can hang on to as much of the good-looking berries as possible and that we have a long hot period from now until harvest. We need sun-soaked guests and grapes.

I'm about to have a rant, so look away if you're not up for it on a fine June day. Four days ago I received an e-mail from a guest who'd booked to stay for four days with her parents who were coming all the way from Rio de Janeiro. She wrote to say how much she was looking forward to cycling through lavender fields here in Provence. PROVENCE, LAVENDER FIELDS? Eeek. I wrote immediately to say that she did realise that Le Couvent is in Languedoc surrounded by vineyards, didn't she? She didn't and could I show her on a map when they got here?

They duly arrived two nights ago and were clearly bemused by where they'd pitched up. No lavender fields and no castle. CASTLE? What castle? Our lovely Brazilian then went off to find the picture she'd cut from a magazine three years ago and had been carrying in her pocket and her dreams ever since. At this point it all came clear.

In 2007 we had an e-mail from a journalist from Elle Spain who asked us to send photos of Le Couvent as she wanted to write an article. We sent photos and expected her to turn up. She didn't, but the article was published and I found it online. To my horror I saw that she'd said Le Couvent was in the lavender fields of Provence and at the top of the article was a Photoshopped stock image of Senanque Abbey sitting in a field of lavender. I wrote to the journalist immediately and pointed out her mistake and told her that I was furious that she could be so misleading. She told me I was worrying unnecessarily and that it didn't matter.

Lots of people contacted us to book and we told all of them the truth. Some of them came to stay anyway and we all had a lovely time. Some really wanted the lavender - just as our lovely guest who's here at the moment. So yesterday I suggested that we find them somewhere in Provence and I've now booked them in to a B&B that looks lovely and definitely has lavender there right now.

But lazy journalism has cost us about 400 euros and our lovely guests the loss of two days of their long-awaited holiday. Sure, they've made the best of it and have had their heads turned towards the delights of the Languedoc, but that's not the point. In the eight years that we've been open as a B&B there have been many articles that mention us. We have never sought it, though we've been grateful more often than not. However, only one journalist - the lovely Louise Hurren - has ever bothered to actually visit us. Pretty poor show eh? So don't believe everything you read in the papers - good or bad.

I had a great weekend. Having worked in the garden at Le Couvent all week, my treat for the weekend was to work in the vineyard. No honest, that does feel like a treat to me. It's beautiful, I can see for miles and the birds sing their socks off. I've worked out a new watering system that I think might see the vegetable garden through the summer without killing me in the process.

But the strangest thing happened there too. On Saturday I was weeding in the potager when both the dogs started barking madly. I looked up to see three completely white gowned figures coming towards us from the top of the vineyard. They were not 50 metres away, and for a moment I thought I was hallucinating until I recognised them as three nuns from the presbytery in Mougeres, just outside Roujan. The dogs were decidedly wary, but the nuns and I had a brief chat and they skipped on their way down through the vineyard, with one shouting back "Christ is risen, Christ is risen".

At moments like that you can feel as though you're going mad. With no witnesses it feels as though one could have dreamt it. But no, the dogs were still yelling in their shock.

But that's not all. Yesterday I was again in the vineyard, feeding the trees in the orchard. Once again the dogs started barking and looking across the amphitheatre vines at a lone nun who was just standing there, looking across at us, for a good minute. I waved, but she didn't wave back. I, for some reason, thought she might have been saying a prayer over the vines. After a short while she left and I heard other voices going off up the hill, behind the trees so I assume she was with the other nuns. The dogs were spooked, but I like to think the wine from Le Couvent might have been blessed this year.

 

 

 

Phew, that's the excitement over for a while. We had a spiffing Christmas, with all the Gosling family together for the first time in donkey's years. My mother came to stay for a month and slithered back to Suffolk just before the heaviest snows fell. We had the best time while she was here and I'm sure she thinks we do nothing but party, so frequently flowed the invitations.

 

 

Ali hasn't had such a good time of it. First she snapped a front crown clean off on Christmas Eve. Mercifully our lovely dentist took pity on her and welded in a temporary one to stop her looking looking like a witch for Christmas. Now she finds herself stuck in snow-bound London, having popped over to Oxford for lunch a week ago. I'm very much hoping she makes it back on her revised flight tomorrow, otherwise I shall begin to suspect that she's avoiding the follow-up dental appointments and the pruning.

 

 

 

 

Having spent so much time frolicking about with my mother, December passed with barely a vine pruned, so now we are severely behind. We've also decided to burn all the off-cuts as we go (to save tripping over them all summer) so it's a painfully slow process. But the new pram-burner, Hot Pegasus, has worked like a dream. Coupled with the new, second-hand super-warm jacket I bought on Pezenas market last Saturday, I was sweltering today. Nevertheless, I was eventually driven home by sleet, yes, SLEET, in the vineyard. Ridiculous. This is the south of France so it is supposed to be sunbathing weather all the time, right?

 

 

 

The only irritating event over the past month has been the theft of my carefully devised plumbing system in the vineyard. So I'm about to replace it and I'm going to super-glue it in place, then dust it with that stuff that stains thieves hands. I'll then sit at the bar in the village and try to spot the miscreant. With a bit of luck I'll catch him/her red-handed.

And finally. Flynn won't go anywhere without his leather bone at the moment.  Here he is in the van, on the way back from a walk.

 

 

Happy New Year to you and yours. xxx

It's been a long time since the last post. August has been our busiest month of the season - not only choc-a-bloc with B&B guests, but also with our grape harvest and wine-making. After the heavy rains in April we had a diminished number of tiny grape florets, already reduced by the after effects of the terrible hail storm last September. This summer has also been officially heatwave hot, so the result for us has been a tiny harvest of very early ripening grapes. We ended up with just three trailer loads like this. A ridiculously small harvest from 2.5 hectares.

 

 

We picked during the third week of August - at least a fortnight early. Since then we have moved our wine-making operation to Le Couvent, where we now have a miniature cave, complete with fermentation tanks and all the paraphernalia you need to make wine.

 

 

Thanks to help from several unsuspecting, yet willing, guests and friends we got our meagre harvest picked in record time, over three early mornings, before the temperatures began to soar.

 

 

Since then we have completed the initial fermentation on two of our three cuvées and will work on the third today. After that it's just a question of regular checking that all is OK until the spring, when a secondary fermentation should take place.

 

The good news is that people seem to really like the wine from last year's fated harvest - L'Orage, a blend made on the hoof while we were picking, Syrah, Cinsault & Grenache. But the truth will be known when our lovely Master of Wine pal, Rosemary George , tastes it on Sunday evening. I'm nervous.

With just over three weeks to go before the end of our season, and a fully booked B&B, I'd be lying if I said Ali and I weren't a bit tired. But reserves get tapped at this time of the year, and we have such lovely guests that it's easy to rise to the occasion. We seem to have laughed our way through the summer thanks to some very funny people, especially all the jolly Americans and Canadians who've pitched up at Le Couvent. Thank you all!

 

Well, at 4.30 I went to inspect the vines and am happy to say that they looked OK. The skies were charcoal and lightning cracked over the hills. Kit the labrador was scared witless and Flynn the husky thought it all rather a good jape.

On the way home the hail fell once more, but I'm hoping it all holds together. This is a photo of the vine buds.

 

 

 

 

Around lunchtime I wandered across the bridge and took some photos around the Le Couvent garden. Everything is in the fullest flower and looking absolutely gorgeous.

 

 

 

 

But just 40 minutes later the sky darkened and down came a waterfall of rain and hail.

 

 

 

 

Now rain is one thing, but regular readers will know that hail is the very thing us wine-makers hate. At the moment our white grapes are at the stage where the tiniest pre-bunches are just about to start coming into flower. For every future individual grape there is a flower. Hail is nothing but a bully, smashing anything as tender as a grape bud to smithereens. No flowers, no grapes. I haven't been up to the vineyards to check yet, but I'm uncharacteristically pessimistic after the loss of last year's crop to hail the night before the harvest.

I'll let you know. Of course the sun is shining again now, as if nothing ever happened. Harrumph.

The forecast has been dreadful for the past few days, but the heavy rains just haven't come - yet. So this week we have taken up 450 vines that were on a slope too steep to manage. We're wimps really, the old boy who used to own our vines did it all by himself with the aid of a mule. Having nearly lost Queenie the Quad on an escarpment we gave up on the Cinsault vines at the top of the amphitheatre. So they've been pulled up.

But today was bright, hot and sunny so, albeit too late in the Spring, I planted two plum trees, one more cherry and three peaches. If the forecast rains come the trees will get a decent start. If it just turns hot I may lose them, but they were cheap so I'm giving them a whirl.

Around here they say if you can see snow on the Pyrrenees it's going to rain within three days. This photo was taken this morning at Rochelongue by my good friend Chris Kemp. Looks like the trees may get their chance.

 

 

Wow, it seems ages since I last wrote a post. Meanwhile Ali's been to Western Australia to see her family - and I took the opportunity to organise a couple of surprises for her return. We have a friend who says I move the house three inches when Ali's away, but this time I managed 4 metres. Yep, the bridge between the convent and the garden has finally been constructed, some three years after we first thought about it. It is just wonderful to be able to walk from our apartment straight to the garden. We're both thrilled. Huge thanks to the Welder-Beast and Teddy.

 

 

The second surprise has been installed in the vineyard and is a real treat. Whenever we have a bit of time during the closed season Ali and I camp in the mazet (Chateau Malaudos ). But, to be frank, sleeping on a stone slab has quickly lost its appeal. So I've bought an ancient caravan to keep hidden in amongst the olive trees. She's 25 years old - at least - and we've painted her the colour of the surrounding foliage and soil. So now she's called Olive. Best of all she has comfortable beds and a gas cooker. I love having the open fire beside the mazet, but it's a fag to light a big fire when all you need is a quick coffee whilst working on the vines.

There's nothing better than breakfast in the middle of a vineyard in the warm sunshine of a March morning. Can you smell the bacon?

 

 

 

 

On Thursday we returned home to Le Couvent, the best B&B in the Languedoc (shameless plug), to find vast bag full of wild asparagus on the doorstep. Our kind neighbours over the road had been out foraging and had left them for us as a thanks for some eggs we'd left on their doorstep. Oooh, they are sooo delicious. We had lots gently steamed with a smoked salmon bake the other evening and I made a couple of Wild Asparagus and Cheddar quiches for the freezer - using our hens' wonderful eggs of course.

 

 

 

 

 

Cooking has been made even more pleasurable this week as the lovely Teddy made me a new chopping board.

 

 

 

 

I'm sure he'd make you one too if you like. Just let me know what size and I'll ask him.

In the evenings we can now hear the Scops Owl doing its impression of a car alarm and I've seen my first Hoopoe of the season. Ali and I both have agricultural tans from pottering about in the vineyard kitchen garden and the temperature hovers around 21 during the day. So Spring has definitely sprung.

Yesterday was the first day this year that Ali and I found ourselves in our vineyards with no vital work to be done. All the pruning is finished, the fruit trees have been treated and pruned, the wild bits have been mildly tamed and everywhere is looking just gorgeous. OK, there are still about five square metres of the potager to weed, but there's no hurry.

 

So we took time to relax in the glorious sunshine at the top of the amphitheatre. Our stone seat there has a new name - The Lap of the Gods. We took sunbeds and squidgy cushions and flopped out under a blue blue sky and the only sounds were a zillion birds and the drone of the occasional small plane - and me snoring. Even Kit gave up her irritating guard-bark.

 

 

A halcyon day.

 

We're now into our second week of volunteers and I thought I'd drop in a quick word between all our guest bloggers. If you'd like to see what they've been doing you'll need to have a look at their diary .

When Ali and I bought the vineyard we've named Chateau Malaudos we thought it was beautiful. Abandoned for at least three years, it looked tired and neglected, but you could see those high cheekbones and exquisite structure nevertheless. However, we had no idea what a sleeping beauty the land really was until our volunteers started work. They've lifted off the dead skin, plucked her eyebrows, removed the blemishes, pulled the hairs from her chin, moisturised and given her some beautiful earrings. She has had a stunning new haircut and, needing no clothes, has revealed the body of a goddess. I think we're all thrilled at the revelation brought about by the volunteers and their fantastic work. Ali and I certainly don't have words enough to express our thanks adequately.

Each day two of our volunteers were responsible for preparing breakfast and dinner. For many this was the first time they had cooked for more than four - we were frequently at least 12 at the table.

 

 

Someone was always responsible for ensuring the dogs didn't get too stressed. 

 

So many excellent meals demanded hefty work to burn off the calories.

 

 

 

And when the volunteers had had enough of one job there were plenty of tools ready to start the next one.

 

 

But it hasn't been all work. On Saturday afternoon we all had a go at archery. It wasn't a wild success in the scoring department, although a couple of us did finally hit the target. Everyone seemed to enjoy the experience nevertheless.

 

 

 

 

Ali and I realised a long held plan when the first week's team painted a quotation from 14th century anchorite Dame Julian of Norwich on the wall of Le Couvent. It reads 'all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well'.

We have just two more working days to go and our list has been well bitten into. Today is a day of rest and our current team has gone off to explore; some to the Mediterranean coast, others to St Guilhem le Desert, and one couple are travelling about chewing over the notion of finding a second home here. Meanwhile Ali and I catch up on e-mails, clean up our neglected apartment and plan her forthcoming trip to see her family in Australia. It's been an extraordinary two weeks.

Our first team of volunteers has arrived and we're into our second day of work. Our time is divided betwen Le Couvent, where we've started working on the garden, pruning, weeding, clearing and tidying - and Chateau Malaudos where we've been today.

Our wonderful team of Jane, Marianne, Douggie, Caroline,  Chris, Sue, Sharon, Paula - along with Ali and I - chew up the work so fast I'm hoping there will be enough work for our next team which arrives next week. 

 

 

The volunteers also take turns to prepare breakfast and supper  and they are going to contribute to this blog and the one for Chateau Malaudos. We hope you enjoy following their progress.

 

Our first volunteer blogger is Chris.

My first thought when I opened my eyes this morning was that waking up on the first day of volunteer week with a more than slight hangover probably wasn't the brightest thing to do. Ah ...the perils of staying up (very) late with Ali B and limitless red wine.

We met with  a small hiccup when Lizzie came hot footing it back from the road up to the mazet and told us that EDF had closed the road for "Le maintenence essentiel" and that we couldn't get the vehicles up there. A smart bit of sweet talking by Lizzie saved the day and they downed tools for a short while to let us pass. Fleeting thoughts of going back to bed were dashed.

By 11am were all in position. Douggie, Caroline , Paula, Marianne and Sharon were pruning and strimming the last of the vines in the amphitheatre. Sue , Jane and I were spraying the vines near the potager - I thought it best to try and avoid any sharp implements early in the day.  Ali B went roaring off on the quad to try and find another route into the mazet as the road would be completely closed tomorrow. 

After a quick lunch of yummy soup made by the lovely Debbi  we were up and at 'em again and Sue and I pruned the olives while the others hacked, sawed, raked, sprayed and sweated. Layers of clothes were fast being discarded  as the sun came out and warmed us gently.

 

 

We then all set to clearing the path around the back of the amphitheatre and I was deemed sober enough to play with the petrol strimmer. It took about two hours but it is beginning to look great. Douggie, Caroline and Sharon did a fine job recovering the stone steps up to the next level.

 

 

There were lots of hot, red faces and aching limbs by the end of the day from our exertions but also a wonderful sense of satisfaction gained from really making a difference and working in such a beautiful place. Can't wait until tomorrow. But maybe less wine for me this evening!

 

Around 30 people pitched up at Domaine Bourdic at 9.30 this bright, sunny morning. Hans & Christa, the winemakers who own the domaine, had organised a 'ballade vigneron' - a stroll through the vineyards, followed by a fab lunch outdoors.

 

 

 

 

Hans struggled to be heard over all the chit-chat of the walkers, such was the twitter going on.  Strolling through the vineyards with a wineglass in hand, ready for tastings of Le Mori and Destiny - a rich red and a grassy white, whilst standing next to the vines that inform them, is a wonderful way to spend a Sunday morning.

 

 

Chat wasn't the only sound in the air. This was the first day of the hunting season and the blokes in their camouflage fired off an arsenal in neighbouring fields. Fortunately we could see them easily, despite the camouflage, as they wear bright orange jackets on top. This is to reduce the number that shoot each other. Why the wild boar should be fooled by the camouflage and fail to notice the luminous jackets is beyond me, but there you go. Despite all this we had a wonderful walk and tasted some jolly good wines.

 

 

I didn't make the lunch as I had offered to eat at home with my lovely niece, Poppy, whilst my pals and family pass an equally enjoyable afternoon at the opera in Montpellier. However, I know it will have been wonderful - Christa's a good cook. Watch out for the next ballade at Domaine Bourdic here .

By popular request we've offered an alternative date in February 2009 to come to help at Le Couvent, Roujan. If you're up for some fun and hard work in the vineyards and here in the old house, do take a look at this page . We've had volunteers apply from several other countries, so the talk should be good and the jokes multi-lingual/cultural.

Don't hold back - this will be an extraordinarily interesting week/fortnight. You'll learn loads and get fitter into the bargain.

There's nothing like a bit of teamwork for getting things done.