“There exists a timeless tradition of
volunteer grape-harvesting—as ancient,
perhaps, as wine itself,” said Ann Mah
in The New York Times. Even today,
many small winemakers in France rely
on unpaid help during les vendanges —
the harvest days of late summer.
Earlier this year, I emailed three such
wineries, offering to pitch in with the
hand picking, and all three extended
invitations. In the end, I chose the type
of wine I like best, and wound up at
AR Lenoble, a family-run vineyard in
Damery, Champagne. I worked long,
hard hours for my meals and earned
no pay. But it was also a perfect wine
enthusiast’s vacation. “The camaraderie,
breathtaking vineyard views, and rare
glimpses of French culture can almost make
the backaches disappear. The free-flowing
Champagne doesn’t hurt, either.”
Grasping one-handed pruning clippers, I
knelt beside a tangled vine, parting leaves
“crisp as newspaper.” The challenge, I
learned, was finding the right stem to snip
to make a grape bunch fall heavily into
my outstretched hand. And then to do it
again and again, because the rows of vines
stretched “as far as I could see, lushly verdant,
laden with fruit.” All volunteers gathered
for lunch, a four-course meal served
at a long kitchen table, and then we were
back at it. Even my Spartan dormitory
room looked enticing by quitting
time, and the next morning came
early, “heralded first by church bells
and then by the insistent thwack of the
pressoirs, or grape presses.”
Before arriving, I had wondered:
“Could long days of physical labor
feel at all relaxing?” I got my answer
during my last afternoon in the vineyard,
when the rain clouds parted
and the “sudden, hothouse warmth”
inspired us to peel off the raincoats
we’d worn for days. As I worked, my
hands stained dark with tannins, I
fell into “an almost meditative state,”
admiring “the bright flash of a ladybug
moving across a green leaf,” the soft violet
of the clustered grapes, and “the faint
striated pattern of vineyard rows running
toward the village below.”
World Wide Opportunities on Organic
Farms (wwoof.net) connects volunteers
with winemakers.
