We live in the wine region of Languedoc-Roussillon, and we regularly enjoy its products. Very regularly!
We’ve had the good fortune to meet some of the producers of our favorite wines. Wine tastes that much better when you know where and who it comes from. You’ve probably heard of the term terroir. It means the interwoven sum of the climate, soil, and topography from which the grapes grow. It also means the human part of growing grape vines, harvesting them, and making the wine, a huge amount of knowledge, tradition, exploration, and creativity. And personality.
Our friends Jennifer Buck and Didier Ferrier are Colline de l’Hirondelle winery in Douzens, not far from Carcassonne. (Colline de l’Hirondelle means the Hill of the Swallow. Nice image!) They are full of personality and passion and joie de vivre. You can taste that in their wines. No, really!
Which brings us to Vendange. This is the French term for the grape harvest. The word, and of course the practice, goes back at least to Roman times. Latin words fused together and evolved to today’s vendange: vinum for grape cluster and later wine, and demere, for to take away or gather.
There’s a lovely and necessary tradition of mutual aid among neighbors, relatives, and fellow farmers, especially at harvest times, called l’entraide. Or donner un coup de main aux vendanges: lend a hand with the harvest. Traditionally, the harvest created a moment of practical rural solidarity. Grapes need to be picked within a relatively short window once ripe, so a grower could call on family, neighbors, and other local growers. Help was often reciprocal: today people harvest your vines; later, you help with theirs. ※
Jennifer and Didier asked us to join some of their friends and fellow vintners with this year’s harvest. How cool is that!
So, we are delighted to share a little photo and video recounting of our first vendange experience. We expect that this won’t be our last.
The vendange started early, a bit before dawn. A beautiful way to start it all.
And the setting was pretty good too.
Everyone gets a bucket and a pair of clippers. Jennifer is on the left in this photo. She was master at assigning rows to each of us, as well as keeping the conversation going. It turns out that wine makers and enthusiasts are a gregarious lot.
Work your way down the row.
Simple: hold the grape cluster in one hand and snip its stem (and not your fingers) with the other.
Once your bucket starts to fill, one of the porteurs comes around to collect.
They, in turn, head over to the trailer to unload piles of grapes.
We harvested morvedre and grenache noire grapes on our day. You can see that they are ingredients in some of Colline de l’Hirondelle’s wines.
You may have heard that the summer of 2026 was exceptionally hot and dry in much of Europe, including in our region.
We “enjoyed” at least five canicules in 2026; canicule is the local term for a heat wave of at least three days in which even the nights don’t cool off. Each summer since we moved to France has gotten hotter with more canicule days. 2026 had about 6 times as many canicule days as the summers just 10 years earlier, and the average highs were about 3 degrees C or 5.4 degrees F more.
We expected that Jennifer would tell us that the grape vines had suffered. We’d heard that grape harvests in the Champagne region were half of previous years. But she said, no, their location on the gentle hills and last winter’s copious rains worked to their benefit. We saw it first hand with the huge plump grenache noir bunches.
We worked for about 90 minutes, and then it was time for breakfast – vendange style. A folding table appeared and was immediately covered with spreads of cured meats and sausages and local cheeses and, of course, great bread. Even some bottles of wine (we weren’t quite ready for that yet).
A couple energetic dogs tried to help us with grape picking, but they were particularly attentive when we were eating a ham and butter sandwich.
After some more picking, we had filled the tractor trailer.
Time to head back to the winery to unload the grapes.
In a magic machine, the grapes are separated from the stems and leaves.
The grapes and their juice are pumped across the winery floor into a big stainless steel tank.
The process to go from a tank full of grapes — skin, seeds, flesh, juice — to bottles full of crisp elegant wine will take at least a year.
After our morning’s work, of course there was more food: A lovely fresh spread of salads, bread, and barbecued sausage. (Merci Jennifer et Didier.) With wine, of course. Though, honestly, after a bit of work on a hot day, fresh food and bread and water hit the spot.
We did take home some bottles to enjoy with dinner, though.
September 2026