The Olive Harvest (The Olive Series Book 3) Read online

  ‘Then I must inform Marseille and Nice that we foresee no harvest.’

  ‘But a barren olive farm will not be granted an AOC ticket.’

  My male companions help themselves to more dates and glug water from their bottles and we fall silent, chewing over the dilemma.

  ‘Mmm, what’s that perfume?’

  Etruscan honeysuckle is in blossom in amongst the wilderness that is our neighbour’s plot. Its nectareous scent wafts our way.

  ‘I wonder if the Hunter’s trees are bearing fruit.’

  We gaze sadly upon the rows of olive trees beyond our fence. They are being strangled within a thicket of twine, white flowering bindweed and woody confusion. It breaks my heart to see such neglect. We have been attempting to buy that parcel of ground for some time, to rescue those throttled immortals and, once the terrain were cleared, to plant another dozen or so oliviers, but the proprietor, who lives in a village close by, chooses to hold tight to his tenure. In spite of the incendiary dangers, which are profoundly worrying, he prefers to leave the land wild because he dedicates this expanse to hunting.

  Cleverly hidden within the tangles of 10-metre high unruliness are his crooked huts, which he has cobbled together out of wonky old planks, cuts of plastic tablecloths, frayed curtains and dusty rags. These are where he hangs out in wait for his prey, predominantly birds and rabbits. I usually know when he’s in situ because I see his ill-kept estate car parked on the grassy bank overlooking the valley across from our lane. He doesn’t like me or, more accurately, I made myself his enemy.

  In the early days of our life here, before we had any fences, he was in the habit of hunting on our land, too. The proof was that when we first began to hack our way through our own scrub we unearthed, in the thick underbrush, several of his hideouts. Inside, they were cluttered with old sardine tins, fag ends, a single boot or sock, stinking blankets, a crumbling bone or two, boxes of matches warped by age and humidity and buzzing flies. On several occasions during these illicit escapades of his I bumped into him, or the dogs alerted me to his presence and I would hare about the grounds until I found him, rifle slung over his shoulder, game bag hanging from his arm, cigarette glued to his lower lip, striding and stalking from one terrace to the next, scowling and spitting at our barking hounds as though they were the intruders. When I politely requested that he extinguish his cigarette because it was a fire risk, he scoffed, and when I insisted he leave our grounds immediately, warning him that he was trespassing on private property, he replied with an expression and in a tone that was, to say the least, uncivil.

  I was incensed and, in response to his manners, I nailed up planks of wood everywhere which stated in bold white lettering, clumsily painted by me: ‘CHASSE INTERDITE’ – hunting forbidden.

  Looking back, I see that I was rather overzealous in my stance because I fastened several of my white-painted, plywood messages to trunks of trees that, I later learned, belonged to his frontage, not ours. He’d tear them down, of course, and, days later, when I found them jettisoned in the maquis, I’d gather them up and bang them furiously back in place. I was resolute, on the warpath, but he paid not the slightest bit of attention to me, the mad, irritating Anglaise on the hill, and blithely went about his trapping affairs, whistling merrily whenever he caught sight of me.

  ‘These locals have been hunting these hills for donkey’s years,’ Michel would warn me. ‘It’s part of their ancestral tradition and their kitchen. This is not fox-hunting. It is not merely a blood sport. They kill to eat. You won’t stop them, and you don’t have the right to, either.’

  How those distant rifle shots used to drive me crazy!

  ‘I will on our land,’ I’d retort with sweeping arrogance. Michel and I were newly in love and he would not argue the point further. He indulged me, or perhaps he was blind to my blindnesses.

  Even today, I stumble upon rusty blue and red cartridges scattered about our terraces. The dogs must scavenge them and bring them back, or they were dropped long ago, because this rural monsieur, nicknamed by us the Hunter on the Hill, doesn’t trespass on our patch any more. At least, I’m reasonably convinced of it, though sometimes the cartridges appear to be disturbingly recent. These days I am in less furious opposition to his ways or, rather, I have made a pact with myself to let him be and, as long as he shoots nothing that draws breath on our territory, I avoid confrontation, though I remain opposed to the principle of hunting. Unfortunately, he continues to harbour a grudge. Michel contends I cooked our goose with him long ago and that even were I the last woman left in Provence he would burn his plot to the ground before he’d sell one square centimetre of olive trunk to us. So the Hunter on the Hill’s trees battle on, neglected and unloved. Still, and here René’s tale of ’56 gives me heart, although they are in need of drastic pruning, they are surviving with olive-tree tenacity.

  The men at my side rise, reaching for their protection glasses, which remind me of racers’ goggles, ready to return to the land clearance. I gather up the remains of our makeshift picnic and blow a parting kiss to Michel as I begin my descent, still gazing at the irritating jungle beyond the fence. It looks like a tract of impenetrable rainforest.

  Later in the afternoon, sequestered within the shuttered tranquillity of my den, arms aching and scratched from hacking at the overshot bougainvillaea on the upper verandah, I return to my perusal of the local magazines while listening to the reassuring hum of strimming machines high on the hill above me. I have a little plan hatching. I am toying with suggesting to Michel that we slip off for a day or two. My film-producer husband has recently completed delivery of a demanding, eight-part documentary series; he is mentally worn out, I can see that. A short break would do him the world of good. I am contracted to an independent LA-based company to adapt a Brazilian short story for the screen, but I do not have any pressing deadline so we could steal away, set aside time for us, which we haven’t done in a while. I had hoped that we’d find leisure hours together here at the farm but returning to chaos and fruitlessness means there are unforeseen chores and complications to address and, once we get stuck into everything, we will be lucky to have any private life at all.

  Better to dedicate a few days now. Attendance at one or two of the local harvests I have been reading about might be fun or we could find ourselves other early-summer fêtes or simply venture further afield to discover parts of Provence we have never explored before. I am eager to extend and deepen my impressions of these southern provinces, to enrich my knowledge of the original language, and Michel is usually up for a jaunt so why not, once the land has been cut back and before farming commitments engulf us?

  I flick casually through pages until a feature catches my eye. Some way north of us in the southern Rhône region of Vaucluse sits the renowned village of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Its name dates from the era of dual papacy and its reputation as a wine-growing district is the oldest and most revered in Provence, I read. Their earliest vineyards were planted in the fourteenth century on papal land. Today, thirteen different varieties of grape are cultivated on their hills, producing some of the most celebrated wines in the Rhône valley.

  We might make a short tour to some of those esteemed wine domains to learn a thing or two about their farming techniques. Since all our well-laid plans to host beehives on our farm have fallen through, we have been discussing the possibility of restoring the small vineyard that flourished, in bygone years, on several acres of the southern section of the Appassionata estate, before we became the proprietors of what, these days, is a much-reduced holding.

  A string of festivals marking the passage of the grape’s development are on offer in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. The Fête de Saint Marc, the patron saint of wine-growers, vignerons, is held on his feast day, 25 April. Unfortunately, we are too late this year to raise a glass to Saint Mark. The next round of revels is the Fête de la Véraison. This takes place during the first weekend of August so doesn’t fit any imminent escape schedule, but what an inspiring notio
n, to gather together to toast the ripening colours of a fruit! Later still, the Fête des Vendanges is the busiest and reputedly best of all their summer parties. This one is held in mid-September and honours the harvest kick-off. Still, although it is a spirited jamboree, it is not exclusive to Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Many of the wine-growing regions of France get out on the streets to cheer the prelude to grape-picking; the birth of that year’s ‘vintage’. I sigh and toss my magazine on to the table.

  Reading about Châteauneuf-du-Pape has evoked doubts about our AOC and I ask myself, not for the first time, whether we will ever be granted this ticket of excellence for our olive oil. I think that deep down Michel and I are both beginning to lose faith in this elusive acknowledgement coming our way, though we have worked hard to meet the mandatory standards. An AOC for olive oil is a relatively new concept in France, little more than a decade old, and the olive industry along this coastal strip around Nice is only the fourth area in the country deemed to possess conditions conducive to the production of oil that warrants such an accreditation. Obviously the recency of the business will have created teething problems for the various offices of bureaucracy but, even so, I would never have dreamed that it would prove to be so darned long-winded.

  The concept for such a quality control originated, interestingly, in Châteauneuf-du-Pape in 1923 when a local vigneron, Baron Le Roy, compiled a set of rules that laid the foundations for production of first-class wines from his region. This prompted the establishment of an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée. Today, it is regarded as a French benchmark for top-quality comestible produce. Châteauneuf-du-Pape became a certified vintage in 1929 and over the years has become world-renowned for its full-bodied red wines, which lay claim to the highest alcohol content in France with a minimum strength of 12.5 per cent. A simple calculation shows me that it took six years from the birth of the Baron’s idea for it to be implemented and, counting on fingers, I realise that our wait is soon to rival that span of time.

  I am browsing again, greedily gleaning facts, darting about the columns in an attempt to find articles reporting events due to take place in mid- to late June: any day now. I turn to the penultimate page of one of these curiously informative little magazines and see that it is dedicated to les petites annonces, the personal columns. In the vague hope of finding us a vinekeeper or a replacement beekeeper for the one who never showed up to put his hives on our hill, I momentarily change tack and begin to scan these boxes. My eye is caught by a three-line message that could well be of great use to us in the establishment of our vineyard, if not, alas, with our long-sought-after bees. I flick to the front cover of the paper where the date reveals that this particular issue is five weeks old. Never mind. I pick up the phone and punch out the numbers recorded in the advert. The bell rings without response and I am on the point of replacing the handset when a wheezing, reedy voice barks, ‘Allô?’ I am not immediately sure whether it is male or female.

  ‘Bonjour. I read your advertisement—’ I begin, picturing an elderly person, a man hobbling through leafy vineyards.

  ‘Listen, if you’re a car dealer …’ He speaks with a thick Provençal twang, still trying to catch his breath. His remark confuses me.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You’re referring to vine cultivation, then! You have a foreign accent, madame, are you ringing from abroad? I receive many calls from California. I’m a wine variety expert, you see.’

  ‘Yes, I realise that, monsieur. No, we live in the Alpes-Maritimes, just a few kilometres inland of Nice.’

  ‘Ah, the eastern side of Provence. Roman vineyards. Splendid. A Bellet domaine?’

  ‘Actually, we are not a vineyard at all.’

  ‘Well, if you’re not a wine producer and you’re not trying to flog me another car, what do you want?’

  His manner is disagreeable and I am tempted to put the phone down, but I press on.

  ‘We are operating a small olive farm, but in earlier decades, long before we purchased the estate, there was a vignoble on several acres of the land. We occasionally find a rogue vine, even after so many years, and these days we allow them to grow and have been pleasantly surprised when one or two have produced fruit. The grapes are always white and slightly sharp.’

  ‘Have you identified the cépage, the variety of vine?’

  ‘No, we haven’t. To be honest, it only recently occurred to us to try. But, surely, monsieur, there must be one grape variety that thrives best on the soil and intense heat hereabouts, non? Our olive groves, for example, are all of the cailletier variety. I thought perhaps you could help us with this information and supply a few plants?’

  I hear him harrumph. ‘Wine production is a more complex business than olive farming, madame. Intelligent wine-growers mix their stock, using one principal choice. There are eighty-eight different cépages in Provence alone. What’s your situation?’

  ‘Our hill is south-west facing. Most of the land, including what was the vineyard is en restanque and we are keen to replant vines on those self-same inclines.’ I choose en restanque because it is an old-fashioned Provençal term used to describe sloped land that has been ridged or terraced with drystone walls. I am attempting to create the right impression with this rather grumpy viticulturist. I would like him to perceive me as du terroir, of the soil, and not as a foreigner with ‘nincompoop’ notions, as René would have the world believe.

  ‘Mmm. Your grounds are not chalky, not in that part of the world, being so close to the sea. How many hectares are you intending to plant up?’

  His assessment is accurate. Our soil is limestone-based, but we have never ordered an expert analysis of the earth’s properties. Perhaps we should have. I skip over this point. ‘Approximately four acres. Our holding is not large. Still, our olive oil may receive AOC status so we cannot plant vines on the acreage dedicated to the olive groves. The Chambre d’Agriculture seems rather strict about this.’

  Of the countless olive inspectors who have appraised, surveyed and pored over these grounds, I cannot recall one who has tested the soil. No doubt they know the region’s attributes too well to bother.

  ‘Four acres is feasible. You will have room for close to two thousand pieds.’

  ‘Two thousand vines?’ I am astounded by this information and suddenly picture the cost of what we might be embarking upon.

  ‘Yes, we usually calculate four thousand plants per hectare. Are you considering grapes for eating as well as for wine?’

  ‘Predominantly wine.’ My response is a little less enthusiastic now. I am asking myself how many litres of wine we might produce from such a quantity, but I decide against enquiring.

  ‘I’d better visit you and examine the terrain, which sounds as though it could be quite caillouteux.’

  ‘Caillouteux?’ I have to think quickly to remember what this word means. Stony! ‘Yes, it is. Actually, it is mountain rock. Is that a problem?’

  ‘No, it can be useful. It serves to store the heat for use at night and can aid water drainage. Châteauneuf-du-Pape, for example, is well known for its stony soil and benefits admirably from such ground. But I need to cast an eye over your site before I can correctly assess what varieties might be suitable.’

  ‘I think we’d prefer to visit you at your nursery first. Where are you?’

  ‘Not far from Arles. How are you fixed for next Tuesday, early afternoon?’

  I see the excursion I am plotting for Michel and myself falling neatly into place and hurriedly jot down the details of this vigneron, who introduces himself as Guillaume Laplaige from Maillane. ‘Frédéric Mistral territory,’ he boasts. ‘The Provençal poet. Heard of him?’

  I assure him that I certainly have and that when my husband returns we will confirm the rendezvous. I replace the receiver feeling exceedingly pleased with myself. I hope Michel will agree to go. Fate seems to have taken a hand in offering us the perfect opportunity to mingle farm business with a delicious break.

  Evening falls late. We
are approaching the summer solstice; high sun, creeping hot days, which I will spend beneath the whirring fan in my den until, exhausted, I step gratefully out of doors to irrigate the terracotta pots around the swimming pool and the flowerbeds, where this evening I discover self-seeded white Naples garlic and electric-blue tassel hyacinths in amongst the roses and lavender. I ought to weed them out, but for tonight I leave them be. We need new watering cans, but not more plastic ones. The dogs have chewed the nozzles to old bones so the water fizzles and spits everywhere. Plants attended to, I settle back to bask in the cooler gloaming hour. It is well past eight o’clock when Michel and Quashia eventually descend the hill. Both men are sweating, sticky and masked from head to foot by strips of felled herbage. Quashia unburdens himself of his tools and bids us a friendly goodnight, refusing even a soft drink.

  While Michel swims in the pool he cleaned this morning, I draw a cork and pour him a well-deserved glass of rosé. The wine tumbles into the glass as I listen to the motion of his body, arms plashing, feet kicking lazily through the clear blue water. I love this time of year. It seems joyous to me with its promise of sweetly mellow autumn offerings. I am seated now at our wooden table, legs outstretched across another chair, the canine trio at my feet, playing audience to the sinking rays of light, rich with a shot-red sunset, when my husband joins me, showered, hair damp, looking decidedly more relaxed. He takes a sip of wine and his long slender limbs spread reposefully. Satisfied, he declares himself, after his strenuous afternoon’s work. ‘There’s a message on the machine from Madame B., asking me to call her. I wonder what she wants after all these years.’

  ‘Really? Well, she can’t have the farm back!’ I josh, recalling our first encounter with the fierce and outstandingly wealthy woman from whom we purchased this postage stamp of paradise.

  ‘I’ll wait and give her a ring at the end of the week, when we’ve cleared the land. With these long days, it should be finished by Friday.’