The grape harvest in France's Loire Valley • FRANCE 24 English

Every year, at the end of the summer, it's the same unchanging ritual. On the slopes of the Loire, the grapes are almost ripe. This shale-rich land, ideal for dry white wines, has been awaiting some very special visitors. The grape pickers. Don't take this one, because it has mildew on it. Jérôme, who's in charge of the vines, gives his instructions. On this estate, grapes are picked only by hand. But not all at the same time. The grapes ripen at different rates. In some places, we might leave 30% of the harvest on the vines and come back a week or ten days later. The wine will depend on the picker's standard of work, so Jérôme keeps close watch. When you have a bunch like this, rather than scrape this off, it's better to cut the healthy part off and get rid of the bad part. Just keep the part that's good. The rest you leave on the ground, OK? We make sure they work in pairs, to put an experienced person with an inexperienced person, so that everyone has the same work rate. Among the 15 seasonal pickers, there are some newcomers, like 22-year-old student Alex, who's working the vines for the very first time. I haven't got too many cuts, but my nails are suffering, and I'm aching all over. Backache, handache, but we're happy at the end of the day. There are also those with 20 to 30 years' experience of grape picking, and they're still as motivated as ever. It's fun, and with this sunshine, it's cool. Of course, it rains sometimes, but there's a good atmosphere here. Experienced or newcomer, everybody is paid the same rate, the French minimum wage of 11 euros an hour. And they have to sweat for it. We carry up to 50 kilos, which is a strain on the legs. Naturally, it's harder going up than going down. Yesterday and the day before, we spent all day carrying 10 kilo crates. We must have carried at least a thousand of them. And there are only three porters, so it works out at just over three tons each. Like in all wine-producing regions, a good harvest depends on the previous seasons. This year was a harsh spring. Part of the Loire Valley vines suffered from frost. This was followed by a particularly wet summer, exposing them to disease. With this year's weather, we've had quite a lot of mildew. Fortunately, not on the grapes themselves, but mainly on the leaves, as you can see here. These are old mildew stains that have dried. This estate stretches across 30 hectares and seven different soil types. You need to go down there and then go up seven or eight rows further on to see if there's a real difference. Each lot has its own geography, geology and character. They're good. Luc acquired this vineyard in 2019. A local lad, he's trying to apply natural wine-growing methods. We've become emotionally linked to these vines. It's very moving. We often visit them to check for traces of disease or deficiencies. We find things here and there like attacks by insects and nutritional deficiencies. We record everything we see and we try to correct them so that slowly but surely the vines can develop more natural defences. Despite the whims of this year's weather, Luc is pretty confident about the harvest. We think that for the red wines, we're going to have an exceptional year in terms of quality. And for the white wines, I don't want to jump the gun, we're pretty much on the right track. Once picked, the grapes need to be transformed. The precious loads head to the winery, the heart of the estate, for the next step, the winemaking. We take the crates to the sorting table and then into the stemmer. The stemmer removes all the grapes from the stalks and pushes them onto the conveyor belt, which in turn tips them into the vats where they're macerated and start turning into red wine. It's time for machines to take over. And the kingpin is this brand new press designed to extract the pick of the crop. This is the Rolls-Royce of presses, and the pressing accounts for 15 to 20 percent of the final quality of the wine. The chief interest in the new presses is obtaining the grape juice very quickly, so that it can be chilled to prevent it oxidizing. In a few months' time, this vatful will reveal all its magic and reward a whole year's hard work. Work combined with the land, passionate wine growers, and the indefatigable grape pickers.