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Fruits of Labor
Photography by
Katie Bernstein
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A commonly heard phrase tossed about by those in the know goes something like this: “The best way to make a small fortune in the wine business is to start out with a larger one.” Here in Provence, the southern province of France, known for Van Gogh’s sunny landscapes, fresh and herbaceous cuisine, and Mediterranean holidays frequented by the rich and fortunate, viniculture is big. Though often dwarfed by the bold, robust Pinots of Burgundy up north, the finicky vines of the Côtes du Rhône thrive here in the craggy limestone earth, but not without toil.
Tim Smith is an American who knows something about this. He is a retired investment banker blessed with an unbridled enthusiasm for good wine, good food, and good friends. His wife Phyllis is an affable project director at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Two years ago, they started French Country Wines, a winery and import company shipping small-batch, vineyard manufactured wines to their shop in Houston, hoping to share with others what they love about the wine and culture of the Côtes du Luberon and in the Rhône Valley. This year, I’ve come along to Provence with Phyllis and Tim to try the new vintages that are finally ready after a yearlong wait.
We arrive at Domaine Faverot, which sits in the foothills of the Luberon Mountains. This will be our home base for the next few days as we trek from hilltop towns to valley villages tasting wines, meeting the vignerons (winegrowers), and hearing about all the decisions involved in being the proprietor of a small-parcel vineyard, growing and hand-working the grapes to produce your own wine. This profession entails a complex blend of farming, chemistry, elbow grease, and magic, as far as I can tell.
We are soon introduced to our hosts, the charming François Faverot de Kerbrech, a half-French, half-English winemaker and our would-be tour guide, and his lovely wife, Sally, who runs the inn where we are staying. The winery and four sweet gites (country cottages) have been converted from an 18th-century farmhouse. The cottages, each delightfully decorated and cozy enough that you never want to leave, can be rented by the week.
Each morning, we walk across the open courtyard to François and Sally’s house, which sits above the wine cellar and chai where the wine is produced and stored. We have breakfast in the couple’s inviting country kitchen, where Sally prepares a sumptuous spread of the morning’s selection of flaky croissants and pastries from the bakery down the road, soft-boiled farm-fresh eggs, creamy yogurt, and rich dark French press coffee. After breakfast, we move into the winery’s officeturned-classroom, where François, a master sommelier and winemaker, educates us about everything from the pruning of the plants in the vineyard to the chemistry of what goes on in the cuves and barrels. The Faverot wines are hand-harvested and de-stemmed at the winery, an incredibly labor-intensive process.
After class, we climb into a Volkswagen van and head out. Each day we explore the region to get a taste—and a few sips—of the culture, which is very much about food and wine. We visit a farmers’ market in the quaint neighboring village of Coustellet, where tanned and wrinkled farmers proudly display their prettiest carrots and fattest asparagus. We wander through a flea market in L’Isle sur-la-Sorgue, where vendors camped on narrow cobbled streets offer bushels of salty green olives, square bottles of golden olive oil, locally made cheeses, and even cardboard boxes of CD s by country singer Alan Jackson.
One afternoon, we stop in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, which is arguably the most famous winemaking region in the south of France, where we meet Jean-Marc Espinasse, a handsome man with kind eyes who played a notable role in the start-up of French Country Wines.
Phyllis, like many American Francophiles, was a fan of a blog called “French Word a Day,” in which an American woman living in France copes with a French husband, French children, and the lovable, if at times pesky French culture that permeates into every nook and cranny of her life. The woman is Kristin Espinasse, Jean-Marc’s beautiful blond American wife, who has blogged the lost translations, frustrations, and poignant vignettes of their life together. Through the blog one is privy to the family’s most recent, and perhaps most challenging, endeavor—a move from a settled life by the Mediterranean to an old farmhouse surrounded by nothing but gnarly old vines in Ste. Cécile- Les-Vignes. The farmhouse has become their home and the vines their livelihood by way of their start-up organic and biodynamic winery, Rouge-Bleu. Tim in the meantime stumbled upon Jean-Marc’s neighboring blog, naturally titled “French Wine a Day,” and found he liked all the wines Jean-Marc recommended, so he contacted Jean-Marc to discuss the venture. We settle in with a glass of Jean-Marc’s first Rouge-Bleu vintage, which is earthy and well balanced—seemingly similar to the winemaker himself.
Tim describes his livelihood in realistic terms. “I don’t know anybody making riches out of this business,” he laughs. “We all do it because we have a passion for doing it. For the vineyard owners, there’s something very elemental about growing something and turning it into something else.” Acquiring the land is only the first hurdle. The physical toil it takes to keep the vines happy and healthy, the intensive harvest rush to pick all the grapes at just the right moment, sleepless nights accrued during the fermentation of the grapes, and the final outcome, when the market’s reception to the year’s vintage is revealed—all of this is, to say the least, a labor of love. Any vigneron in this part of the world would echo Tim’s sentiments: it’s not about getting rich.
Each day we travel to meet a new vigneron with something new to teach us, a new blend for us to try, and a different and “better” way to tend the vines or make wine. The tall, cheery vigneron of Berthet-Rayne shows us an example of something we learned about in class—a ruby red wax-covered American rootstock that is grafted to all European vines because of its resistance to a nasty pest called Phylloxera that threatened to wipe out all of the Continent’s vines in the 19th century. We pop by Robasse Charvin, and watch the bottling process, as the big industrial machines fill, cork, and label the prized plum liquid. Some of the smaller companies, like Domaine de Banneret in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, which produces only 500 cases a year, apply the labels by hand with a brush and paste.
On our last day, we see the most magical of all the vineyards that we’ve visited, complete with a 17th-century château. The stylish young vigneron, Nathalie Margan runs the Château La Canorgue with her father, Jean-Pierre. The landscape is movie-set-worthy—literally. Ridley Scott made Peter Mayle’s novel, A Good Year, into a film starring Russell Crowe here in 2006.
As the trip winds down, my heart sinks a bit to realize I’ll be returning to my modern world. Here, I feel as if time has stopped. Even new houses are built mimicking the architectural style of the ancient ones, and they are built to last.
I expect that some people spend their whole lives discovering what the French have always known about living. I see inklings that we in the States are catching on, bit by bit. The farmers’ markets that have been the only source of produce in villages for hundreds of years are revolutionizing the way Americans eat across the country. Thousands of Americans are taking strides toward becoming “localvores,” preferring anything made locally when possible.
As for me, I leave inspired about how to eat and how to live and what to wear and what to read. I return home with a bottle of handpicked and grower-produced wine clinking in my suitcase and scrawled recipes tucked between the pages of my notebook. More important, I’ve got a new outlook on living and a handful of friends to visit when I return.