(This was actaully written last week but never posted)

You can feel the air of nervous excitement all around for the last weeks.
In the cave which we can see from our terrace there has been intense and thorough cleaning, even some replastering of floors and walls. Every weed had been eliminated and the gleaming new fermenting vat has had its spotless stainless steel outside further polished and burnished.
This is going to be the first year for this vat, last years model was removed and discarded and this new, state of the art model, is threaded with wires and refrigeration units and has obviously cost the vigneron plenty.
In the fields the vignerons prowl their vines, hoping for some late but light rain to swell the grapes and for some hot sun to sweeten them.
At the co ops the large yellow signs are already in place.
“Attention Vendange” daring any of us to get in the way of the safe arrival of grapes and their transformation into wine. Outside the caves in the villages large boxes and triangles have been put up to stop people parking near them.
Everywhere there are men working on their tractors, running tests on their large grape harvesters, ((there is very little hand picking of grapes here,) and nervously picking and tasting their grapes in the fields.
There the grapes are declaring themselves ready.
Those small fists of hard green bullets, which you had to hunt for when we arrived first, as they hid behind leaves, are now much larger than their leaves and hang in large black soft sweet bunches.

We went to Chateau Coujan, near Murviel, our next-door neighbour village, yesterday to get some decent wines to tide us through the winter.
We arrived in typical heedless Irish fashion, at just after midi.
Madame was cross, it was her lunch time.
I said that I was “desolé ”, would return in the afternoon, begged her pardon (you can never be quite apologetic enough in France)
so she forgave us and brought us, past her eleventh century chapel, and her ravishing renaissance chateau to the caves proper, where she was going to perform the degustation.
This was a vast room with two lines of enormous wooden barrels making an isle in the middle down which we picked our way.
The light was dim, we couldn’t actually see any walls (“I must get some of the men to replace bulbs” murmured Madame, “it is so high”….) but there was a tasting area in the middle with a light and a dozen bottles of wine ready to go and the regulation spittoon, this one and ancient number of battered copper with a large copper funnel on top to direct the spits.
Despite the hour she determined to give us the full degustation, but was relieved when I explained that we mainly wanted to taste the reds at the €6 to €7 range.
At this price, Madame produced a stunner, called Gabrielle de Spinola, after a highly titled Italian noble woman who lived in the Chateau of Murviel 200 years ago and had bought copious quantities of their wine, Madame showed us the records.
The wine is a lovely soft (feminine, Madame said) warm wine and it ticked all of our boxes.
To Madame’s delight we ordered seven cases.
She insisted on us tasting some of the more expensive wines, pooh poohing our protestations and of course did persuade us to buy a small quantity of some of the more expensive wines and even one bottle of L’Ile de Corail (€22) for my best man Michael, who was with us, as a consolante for his 60th on Sunday.
As we left the cave we were talking to Madame about the oncoming vendange. Now firm friends (we had spent the bones of €500) Madame said that they were nervous about this year.
As we knew ourselves there had been a lot of rain during the spring (good) but a certain lack of sunshine in the early summer(not good) but she said weather forecast for the next few days was excellent (very good)

Sadly we start for home on Tuesday morning.
We will probably miss most of the vendange, Madame told us that with her it goes on for about a month.
We sat on our terrace last night drinking some Gabrielle de Spinola and seeing a bright pink sunset indicating that both the shepherds and Madame were sanguine about tomorrows sun.
Tomorrow we go to a whole ox roast in the cave cooperative in the village. Its timing makes me convinced that it is intended as a sacrifice to the gods for a good harvest.
I hope it works.