In this golden month of October the grape pickers are busy in the Charente, and another year's supply of cognac is in the making. The grapes hang heavy from the vine. One variety, Le Colombar, forms a stubby, two-pronged cluster. The other grape used in making cognac, called locally Le Saint-Emilion, is also known under the name of Trebbiano and Ugni Blanc. Its bunches are long and closely packed, golden-green and dripping with juice. The vines groan under their weight. There formerly was a third variety, Folic Blanche, but its use has practically died out.
All of the local population, from children to aged grand'mères, spend hours in the vineyards, clipping the bunches and filling baskets with them. The brimming baskets are dumped into hoppers, or holla, harnessed to the backs of the huskier young men of the village. The hopper weighs about 150 pounds when full. The young men carry it to a wooden art at the edge of the vineyard, climb a ladder and dump their load into one of two huge wooden tubs. Soon a lumbering (cam of oxen is pulling the tubs off to the wine press in a farm courtyard. No time is lost. By evening the juice has been pressed from the grapes, and is already in vats. The process of fermentation has already begun, the vats are gurgling, and all's right with the world.
It is a gay moment, and the vineyards resound with laughter and badinage. Almost all of the women wear a traditional, tightly drawn bonnet with projecting flaps to protect themselves from the sun. The bonnet is called a “quichenotte” and it protects them from other things as well, including the advances of bold young men. Centuries ago, when England was master of the Charente, her soldiers came up against the complexities of these sunbonnets and called them “kiss-nots,” a name which still clings to them in phonetic French.
An unwritten law allows the pickers to eat as many grapes as they wish, but the temptation is easily resisted. The grapes aren't very good to eat, despite their lustrous yellow beauty. Everyone is preserving an appetite for the festive day when the last grape is picked. Then the owner of the vineyard offers “la gerbaude,” a monumental banquet, to all his personnel. The handsomest geese in the barnyard are sacrificed for the occasion. The new wine flows freely, along with plenty of song-and the quichenottesare conspicuously absent.
These festivities are a yearly occurrence in the lives of the 23, 000 farmers who produce cognac, most of them carrying on a tradition which dates back in their families for centuries—a privilege which they guard with jealous zeal.And few agricultural pursuits lead to more headstrong individualism. This trait shows up even in the Charente farmhouse itself, half concealed among its vines and oaks. It is securely hidden behind high walls, and almost windowless to a passer-by, like a Gallo-Roman villa. Once beyond the wide central gate and into the courtyard, however, the picture is more friendly.The master's two-story house dominates the enclosure. Adjoining it are stables, lodging for the personnel, a long low shed where the cognac is stored, a wine press, and, of course, a furnace and distillery. In the middle of the court are a few trees, and perhaps an old fountain. In one corner, adjoining the furnace, is an immense pile of black blocks, each about the size of four shoe boxes. These arc briquets of pressed coal to keep the distillery going twenty-four hours a day, and they cost the farmer a pretty package of French francs.
Things buzz around the Charente farmhouse for the next fortnight. The grape juice simmers and seethes as the process of fermentation runs its course. Then one day the tanks are silent, and the grape juice has become wine. The farmer wastes no time after his wine is made. It is ready for distillation at once. The first heating turns the alcohol in the wine, as well as the nonalcoholic substances (including that cloudy suspended matter),into vapor, which emerges from the water-cooled copper serpentine coils as a clear liquid, measuring about 28 per cent alcohol, tasting very indifferent indeed, and bearing the untranslatable name of brouillis. It is by re-distilling this liquid that cognac is obtained, and here the farmer has to be on his toes. The first thin stream of liquid which emerges is too strong, and is set aside. Then comes la bonne chauffe, the good heating, and this goes directly into the cask of Limousin oak in a steady stream about the width of a baby's finger. At just the right moment, after considerable sniffing and tasting, the farmer stops the flow and draws the remainder, which is too weak, into another container. These fag ends of the process, the too-strong beginning and the too-feeble ending, are distilled once again, and come out beautifully. Residing in the casks is a lively colorless liquid whose over-all alcohol content is about 70 per cent. At this point the farmer seals his casks, lays them in long rows in his warehouse, and lets time do the rest. The aging of cognac is a mysterious process which has puzzled scientists, and the farmer doesn't try to understand it too fully. He goes about his business, aided by quite a large crew, with dispatch and confidence, using the ancient alembic still and the simple methods of his ancestors.
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