Junior Year Abroad: The Grape Harvest

At the start of her junior year abroad from Tulane, Texan Kim Sotman discovers vast differences between Texas ranches and Champagne vineyards.

By Kim Sotman

I’m not sure what I expected of my first weekend in France. To have a croissant and confiture on a Sunday morning? To while away the day beneath the Eiffel Tower? Instead I spent my first weekend in France at my host family’s country home in the town of Vertus, a two-hour drive outside of Paris, in the Champagne region, where my host father grew up. The occasion for the trip was the festival of the Vendange, the grape harvest.

Now, where I’m from in Texas, one can privately own acres upon acres of land for ranches, farms, homes, but here, my host family explained to me, only the largest Champage houses own large vineyards. Most of the rest are shared among families in the small town.

When we drove up the dusty dirt road, directly into the vineyard, you could see that this was definitely a family affair. There was no corporate feel to the harvesting of the vines—simply family and friends out to help each other at this time as they do every year. As we pulled up, they were sharing a small lunch and some eating the grapes straight off the vine. My host sister, who is ten years old, had invited a friend from school, so I wasn’t the only one experiencing all of this for the first time.

After the short break, everyone return to work, picking up pails and tools. I was handed my own pail and a pair of what looked like wire cutters, and was sent off to follow the rest of the group. I don’t even know whose section of the vineyard we were in, whether it was my host family’s or not. That wasn’t the point. The point was that everyone was here together, helping each other out, and enjoying each other’s company. They talked across the vines to the worker on the other side and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying being out in the sunshine on a warm September day, even if they were hunched over a grape vine. My host father showed me how to pick the grapes, first pulling away the leaves to reveal the tiny grapes in large bunches, and then clipping the stem and watching the grapes fall into the pail. After only a matter of minutes, it seemed the pail was full and needed to be emptied into the large barrels that would later be transported to the presses.

We worked and talked and laughed in the sun, our hands getting sticky from the sugar. After the sun started to get low in the sky, they called out that this would be the last pail of the day. The chatting stopped until finally our pail was heaping. We dumped the final pail into the barrel now full of grapes and my host father noticed that I was wiping my sticky hands on my jeans.

He took me over to the grape vines and showed me one of the most fascinating tricks I’ve ever seen. He picked a bunch of the tiny grapes that were too green and hard to be picked and told me to crush them in my hands. I did, and afterward my fingers ceased to stick together, feeling clean and good as new—it was like magic! He told me that the younger, undeveloped grapes don’t have sugar in them, so when you crush them in your hands it’s the same consistency as water! Sticky-free hands that smell like grapes! That’s a win-win situation for me!

Driving back into town from the vineyards, he asked me if I would like to see one of the Champagne production facilities. We went to the town’s local Co-op where all the family vineyards take their grapes to be processed. Since my host father worked here as a young boy, he seemed to know everyone we ran into. He showed me the older presses, large wooden vats that look much like those in the “I Love Lucy” episode where she dances on the grapes to make them into wine. Alas, you no longer get to dance on the grapes, instead there is a metal press that slowly pushes them down, squeezing all the juice out of them where it then runs down into troughs that are in the basement to sit for a while until the impurities can be taken out.

In the end, I was delighted that I had gotten to experience and learn something that is so integral a part of daily life in the French countryside. I was able to become a part of the time old tradition of harvesting the grapes, working alongside the townspeople who are more than happy to spend their day out in the vineyard, under the sun, chatting and harvesting. And hey, a bottle of Champagne isn’t a bad trade-off for a hard day’s work!

Kim Sotman is a junior at Tulane University who is studying in Paris for the 2009-2010 school year. She is from Fort Worth, Texas.