Picking Grapes in Alsace

I went to a book party last night and drank too much chardonnay, so I'm showing my grape picking ventures today...

October harvest in Riquewihr, Alsace, is one of the most beautiful anywhere. I got to stand on a hill and sling a pair of shears for few hours. My 'payment' - to sit at the long vineyard table and share a huge luscious lunch. Alsatian grape picking is a family affair. Every member shows up to help with les vendanges.

At Regaleali Vineyard in Sicily I just watched. The pickers sang, chatted, smoked, picked grapes in the most leisurely fashion. You can take cooking lessons here with Countess Anna Tasca-Lanza.

Tuscan vineyards are almost as beautiful as Alsace.

Napa Valley grape pickers don't walk.They race to get the job done.

In Burgundy they used to carry straw baskets/paniers on their backs. You'll find these at Fr. ebay. You'll find all kinds of wine-related goodies on ebay.fr. I should know. I used to spend hours and $ looking for still life objects and I've got a closet full of taste-vins to prove it!

19th century Bordeaux pickers...

Figures are more fun to draw than grapes...

I'm better at wielding a paintbrush than grape shears/secateurs. Some passerby on the Bordeaux La Route du vin insisted on taking my picture back in the day when I haunted the vineyards.

Lordie...

Grands Crus de Bordeaux

Last Friday afternoon I got to attend a special event. It only comes round once a year - the Grand Crus de Bordeaux tasting - time for the new 2007 vintage. I admit I made a bee line to the back wall to my favorite, the Sauternes - they have a tendency to run out quickly from past experience. First look at the wine's color in the glass before tasting - it should be a golden yellow that will become progressively darker as it ages. Then the all important "nosing" of the wine to enhale it's aromas - dried pineapple, apricot, caramel, vanilla, honey, peach - miam Then the sip and swill it around inside your mouth so it hits all areas... Ah...very important. Take down thoughtful notes in the little book provided. Then you spit into the sipttoons, so you can go on tasting unfettered, but I have a hard time spitting Sauternes... After each taste/ slug of wine you rinse your glass with water and cleanse your palete with a plain cracker and a bite of fromage. This taster is well armed.

You are given one glass to taste all the wines as you enter - always an Austrian Riedel glass, only the best at the Bordeaux tastings.

The Marriott ballroom was jammed packed with serious trade wine tasters dashing about to get their slug of Bordeaux best wines served up by the chateau owners - a rare treat.

After 2 hours all that's left are the empties. I was ready to say,

au revoir till next year's Grand Crus tasting.

Which brings me to a book I'm waiting for, by cutting edge winewriter Michael Steinberger, Au Revoir To All That. Have you heard? Steinberger thinks French food has gone downhill in the past 25 years. French cuisine is in a rut, ruined by the invasion of le fast food (France is McDo's second biggest market), stringently high VAT charges, strict labor laws, the stifling dominance of the Michelin guides etc.

"The result is a sharp and funny book that will give Francophiles everywhere an entirely new perspective—political, economic, personal, and cultural—on the crisis in the country and food they love."
You can catch Michael Steinberger's wine columns at Slate.

Or hear him at NPR.

I passed Chateau Beaumont's table at the tasting, and remembered my stay at there toute seule for a few very hot July days while on a painting jaunt. 

I wasn't really alone - thousands of Bordelaise buzzing bugs kept me company at night - no AC or screens in a medieval turret. I was happy to bid au revoir Ch. Beaumont a few days early.

I spent last weekend recovering from too many sips of Sauternes.

BONJOUR BORDEAUX!

Fete de la Fleur, Bordeaux

Every 2 years a huge international wine exposition takes place in Bordeaux

VINEXPO

The crowning event at the end of the expo is a grande soiree,
La Fete de la Fleur

Only the creme de la creme in the wine trade attend:

chateau owners, distributors, celebrities etc.

Each year it's held at a different grand chateau in the Medoc..
The year I went, it was at the lovely Chateau Cantenac-Brown.
I wrangled an invite by suggesting I should take photographs

for Wine Enthusiast magazine. A tradition at the Fete is the prestigious awarding of new memberships intoLe Commanderie du Bon temps du MedocNew and old members get to parade about in claret red velvet robes..

Hugh Grant was a recipient, but alas, I did not get his picture. Here are the St. Emilion Bon Temps members parading.After Champagne and hors d'oeuvre on the grounds

there's a grand dinner inside. In 1997 it was held inside a tent in case of rain. Between courses there was Cirque du Soleil-style entertainment. Performers on stilts dressed up as Bon temps members paraded.

Acrobats decked out as corks flew through the air to keep us amused.

I did this party doodle after the Fete.

The dinner menu served was quite simple - just 5 courses.
After all there were 1500 guests attending!
But I was amazed to see the cheese course/fromages served to each guest individually by special cheese servers, rather than 6 cheese chunks sitting on a plate.
The piece de resistance was of course, the wine menu shown here.
13 wines served to go with the 5 courses!
I noticed while sitting at the Wine Enthusiast table,

quite a bit of tipping of the waiter to get very large glasses refilled

with some of the world's finest wines.

Hmmmm...
Here is the sad secret that has kept me from following in Ms. P. Hilton's footsteps. My alcoholic capacity is about 2 THIMBLES FULL.

THAT IS IT!

Anymore than my quota, say 3 thimbles full

and I am known to become dangerously flagrant or fall asleep a table.

Plus I suffer massive hangovers.

So I did not get to leave the soiree drunk and disorderly.

But I did get a very nice claret red umbrella (it started to rain)

with the insignia of Le Bon Temps Commanderie on it!

And the truly amazing fact is

I still have this umbrella 10 years later!

My Wine Cards

This is about painting la vigne (vineyards) and my wine cards. Painting vineyards isn't as easy as painting a gondola which is a glorified canoe with fancy trimmings. When I painted chateaux for S-L's catalog..well most sit in a vineyard that is a mass of green. Greens can be assertive, and like a dog pulling on a leash, they want attention. They need to be tamed with a touch of red to make them behave. "Heel Green! Heel, I say!" Doing a closeup of a vineyard is a lot easier. For one thing there are some grapes to add to that annoying mass of green.And grape leaves, can be challanging and are another repetitive pattern but at least they're fun shapes to draw.I liked drawing figures (i.e. grape pickers ) before I took up with cups of hot chocolate. So I put plenty of figures in as a distraction. You get Pinot Noir grapes in Champagne too.So much for my struggles painting vineyards. You can buy a 10-pack of 5 different vineyard images, tied with a purple ribbon from me directly. The gift card pack sells for $11.95 + $2.00 shipping, totaling $13.95. ONLY U.S. sales at this time. You can contact me HERE . Merci

My Bordeaux 2

I had to find a way to sink my teeth into Bordeaux's Neoclassical architecture, or rather my ✏️ ..so I could meet the Bordeaux challenge and paint these for Sherry-Lehmann's catalog. I'd take the "grape picker's" bus up la Route du Médoc, stopping at all the vineyards to Margaux. I got out and sat by the side of the road on a folding stool, gazing up at these monster chateaux. The road is lined with chateaux on both sides. Daunting doesn't begin to describe the challenge I'd set for myself.Downing glasses of red and the occasional Sauternes, hoping and praying was not going to help. I decided to go the figurative route. If I could conquer the details of these elaborate structures, the cornices, the sculpted reliefs, etc., then I could stick these details onto a basic geometric form and back into painting them. I plunged into drawing all the bits. Another route I thought would help was to learn how to pen the Copperplate or English Round Hand calligraphy on many Bordeaux wine labels. The French call it "Anglaise." I thought taking a calligraphy class making those fluid curvilinear marks would help to get the feeling of the architecture. That's Bordeaux's famous Pont De Pierre in the sketch, that crosses the river Garonne and was commissioned by Napoleon. It's one of the most beautiful bridges in the world. Sketches of cornices and relief details. Chateau Margaux is a perfect example of Neoclassical archtecture built by Victor Louis between 1773-1780, as was Le Grand Theâtre, Bordeaux's opera house.Sometimes I draw in books...I stayed in an 18th century Château - everyone's dream. Wrong. I was toute seule, alone with a billion Bourdeaux bugs in the extreme heat of August. They had me for dinner. Petit Déjeuner was served in the morning, sent up from the gate house. Otherwise I was alone with medieval turrets & bugs 🐜 No TV, no radio, no distraction. Too creepy for me. I fled to a center city hotel after 2 nights. If you want a closer look at chateaux, visit Berry Bros website, London's fine wine shop. Click on the name of the chateau on the map that you'd like to visit and take the tour. You'll get to see some of these daunting structures I was painting. You'll also see how flat as a pancake 🥞 the landscape can be - not lots of foliage to hide one's lack of expertise with architectural drawing. More to come.

My Bordeaux

Chateau Margaux, watercolor, 5 1/2" x 7 1/2"

Artist Peter Yesis left a comment today, "Thanks again for cleaning out your closets (referring to my Venice findings). I hope you have more hidden in there." Peter keeps urging me on and it's easy to find art remnants from my past lurking in that closet. I spent a good 10 years focusing on wine and Bordeaux before the Paris café and coffee cups took presidence. Michael Aaron, owner of the New York wine shop, Sherry-Lehmann pushed me into the vineyards. It’s been a surprising adventure. I had to learn how to draw architecture - chateaux 🫣 (I'd done mostly figure drawing up till then). And I had to learn about wine - one of the best kinds of tuition there is.

Chateau Prieuré-Lichine, watercolor, 4" x 6 1/2"

Michael wanted me to paint Bordeaux's Grand Cru chateaux for his quarterly wine catalog, so off I went to get first-hand experience. These chateaux tower in a quite flat landscape and are surrounded by vineyards, every centimeter grapevines right up to the road. Overwhelmed doesn't begin to describe how I felt. I knew zip about cornices, cartouches or Mansard roofs much less how to draw them, but I've never been one to pass up a challange.

Chateau Léoville-Barton, watercolor, 4 1/2" x 6 1/2"

Bordeaux is an amazingly beautiful 18thC city, not overcrowded with tourists except during VinExpo. The next VinExpo is in June '07, so you still have time to go and enjoy. Bordeaux sits on the river Garonne and is a short and scenic 3 hour TGV ride from Paris. I like to paint the changes in the landscape from the train window and the tables seem designed with watercolorists in mind IMO.

Did I mention all the lions and sphinx that hang out in chateaux country. Chateau Margaux has 2 majestic sphinx guarding their stairway. Mouton-Rothschild is fond of them. Chateau Kirwan and Leoville-Barton have gone with the lions. Funny thing, when I got back home, I kept seeing similar stone "Bordeaux-style" lions sitting around guarding Astoria's houses. Are there any stone lions in your neighborhood?

I did a series of large watercolors for the Sherry-Lehmann catalog but many small sketches to warm up to these Mansard roofs and cornices.

I wish this was a glass of real Chateau Haut-Brion, but I did get to taste many, many fine wines and even attended the very crowded VinExpo, where winemakers turn up from every place in the world=lots more tasting 

The best possible place you can get that wine tuition I mentioned is Kevin Zraly's Windows on the World Wine School. An 8-week course of tasting 8-9 glasses of the very best wines per night, often from Kevin's own cellar. Loads of fun and not your usual deadly serious intro to wine tasting. I'll never forget Kevin's rules:
1. Swirl
2. Sniff 3x so you can get the wine's "nose"
3. Then taste, but no talking for 1 minute, so you can get the wine's mouth feel and "the long finish" if there is one.
*Note the buckled paper on my notes from my wine class...
More wine to come...oh and I forgot to thank Peter for today's post idea.