Its easy to take for granted the continuous hum of the harvesters amongst the vines, the little tractors towing their trailer load of grapes along the long tree-lined roads, followed by a gaggle of slow vehicles all waiting their turn to pass. Its not so easy though to ignore the loud crashing and banging of the neighbours' tractors and their empty trailers passing the window at 6am! But these are the sounds of the vendage - the annual grape picking season in the Languedoc. This year the weather has been beautiful; brilliant sunny days with no threat of rain to interfere with the picking. When I woke this morning the first scent that passed my nostrils was the aroma of wine - fermenting grapes wafting around in the breeze, no doubt from the nearby Cooperative.
When driving behind a tractor and trailer last Sunday, we watching it squeeze along a narrow street, and saw the gutter flowing with red grape juice as the trailer tilted. There are clumps of dark red grapes dropped at intersections and roundabouts where the roads are sticky with grape juice. The whole process is impossible to ignore ..... such is the bliss of living in the Languedoc, and we haven't even started to sample the finished product yet!
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