Not-So-Easy Pickings

A day--or a life--at a Quebec vineyard is not without its challenges

Story by Benjamin Pomerance

"You don't have any clippers?"

Pierre-Paul Jodoin stands in front of me, a wry smile canvassing his face. I am standing in front of Vignoble Clos Saint Croix, Jodoin's five-year-old vineyard in the heart of Quebec's Eastern Townships. Nearly seventy friends of Monsieur Jodoin are on hand to assist with the annual task of harvesting his red grapes, enough pieces of fruit to produce 3,000-4,000 bottles of wine.

When it comes to grape harvesting, I am greener than a bottle of Portuguese vino verde. No clippers, no experience and no clue whatsoever what to do. Thankfully, the vineyard proprietor is a patient man. A very patient man. Producing clippers, he proceeds to answer all questions about grape-picking as calmly as he can. "It's like picking any other kind of food out of your garden," he explains. "Just go out there and clip the grapes off the vines."
Just clip the grapes off the vines. Right. How hard can it be? For Jodoin, it's one of the easiest parts of his job, an occupation that puts a new meaning to the phrase "time-consuming." In 1991, Jodoin and his wife began preparing the 23-acre field behind their Dunham, Quebec, home for grape vines.

Seven years later, his vines were mature enough to pick his first grapes. Finally, in the fall of 2002 — eleven years after beginning his new business — Vignoble Clos Saint Croix opened its doors to the wine drinkers of the world.

"It's not a fast process," Jodoin says, delivering what seems like the understatement of the century. "Working with wine is a science, and a good scientific process takes time. But if you really study your craft and try to keep getting better, the amount of time you spend on this work is absolutely worth it."

With this in mind, I head out to start picking in a field of Marechal Foch, a hybrid red grape developed in France around 1910 and introduced to Quebec approximately 25 years ago. According to Jodoin, this grape has achieved a place in the upper tier of red wines around the world. "We wanted to use a known quantity when we started up," Jodoin explains. "A new vineyard with unknown grapes would not have been a good combination. This way, we selected two hybrids (Saint Croix being the other) that are known and respected in the wine world, so people knew the grapes even if they didn't know us."

Of course, Jodoin is hardly taking the easy way out. Producing red wine at all in the Eastern Townships is anything but simple. Frost constantly play havoc with the tender red crops, making Jodoin cross his fingers every spring and early fall. Plus, having only a three-person staff in a rapidly growing operation provides constant challenges for the owner and his family. Jodoin tosses aside mention of on-the-job stress like a sour grape. "We all enjoy what we're doing," he says with a smile. "Otherwise, we'd find something else to do."

In the middle of a row of Marechal Foch, I'm enjoying what I am doing also. Grape harvesting is surprisingly fun, once you get the hang of it. Unfortunately, it's also going surprisingly slow. Those grapes have a knack for hanging in nice, large bunches right near the wire, an annoyingly difficult location for cutting purposes. My bucket is only half-full when the call comes to move to another field. With nearly seventy people lending their helping hands, the vines are cleared at a remarkable rate of speed.

The group moves on now to a vast expanse of Saint Croix, another respected red hybrid and the namesake of this particular vineyard. Jodoin appears to have a definite affection for the soft, somewhat fruity wine from this grape, which he says is best enjoyed with cheese, pasta and well-cooked meats with gravy or sauce. "You can have a well-matured Marechal Foch (a "well-bodied wine with character, best for accompanying steak and other grilled meats" according to Jodoin) and enjoy a really nice wine," Jodoin said. "But if you open a bottle of, say, ten-year-old Saint Croix, you're really in for a special experience. If you give a Saint Croix generous time to mature, it really pays you back."

Just as fine wine improves with age, fine grape-picking appears to improve with experience. Quick-moving clippers flash in the afternoon sunlight as bunches of grapes fall from the vine and find a new home in the bucket. Before long, my bucket is filled with fruit. Then comes another, and another, and another as a dozen buckets are carried off to the press. Victory!

"If you want to own a vineyard, you have to dedicate yourself to grape growing and wine making every day of the year."

My enthusiasm turns to shock when I learn that the public won't taste wine from these grapes until 2010. Like everything else in this business, the transformation from vine to wine is anything but fast. After picking, the grapes are crushed in the pressing room, then stored in large vats for the juice to soak and ferment. After two weeks of storage, the grape skins are removed, pressed again, and returned to the storage vats, where the fermenting juices will remain for the next two years. The wine from the grapes we pick today will be bottled in 2009, and will be given at least a year to mature before they are made available for public consumption.

"Our vineyard uses only natural maturation processes," Jodoin says proudly. "No oak, no artificial methods of any kind. Time is our only agent."

Time — lots of time — appears to be the primary agent of anything to do with running a vineyard. Simply pulling bunches of grapes off the vine requires a whole afternoon for seventy people to complete. As the afternoon draws to a close, our little band of harvesters hasn't minded one bit. Grape juice has turned our hands redder than Jack the Ripper's after a midnight rampage, and our knees feel the effects of constantly bending down to pick the low-hanging bunches, but no wine ever tasted sweeter than our premiere wine picking triumph. As we finish our final buckets, I can't help wondering why more people don't do this for a living. Good wine, good weather, good friends…what could be wrong with this job?

"It's like golf — the more you play, and the better you know your game, the better you get."

Then comes the answer. "If you want to own a vineyard, you have to dedicate yourself to grape growing and wine making every day of the year," Jodoin chuckles. "It's a continuous process, and you can't lose even a single weekend of maintenance and care. You have to cut the vines in the spring, and again in June, and again in July, and then you have to pick them in the early fall," He smiles, noticing my obvious wincing at this around-the-clock schedule. "Of course, that still doesn't guarantee success. You're confronted with weeds, frost, insects — everything. It's a constant challenge."

Okay…so owning a vineyard is certainly not in my future. Yet this begs the question: If this line of work is so demanding, uncertain and time consuming, why would anybody want to do it?

"Fun," Jodoin answers without as much as a second thought. "It's a good hobby, a deep hobby. It's like golf — the more you play, and the better you know your game, the better you get." He pauses, gesturing toward the huge tent where, in just a couple of hours, he will entertain his volunteer workers in a lively wine harvesting feast. "And then you have days like today, where the weather is nice and you can work out in the fields with friends and feel like you really accomplished something. Some days — most days — it feels like there is no more interesting job in the world."

Have you ever been on a wine tour?