There are ten independent winemakers in Douzens (population 750). This, strangely, isn’t the source of discontent, Shakespearean rifts or drunken knife fights – we all get along pretty well and some of us are even close friends. We sometimes share equipment – which is logical because we all need pretty much the same stuff. Living in a teeny village we are also so close together that sometimes you can see our friend Jean-Pierre’s fork lift driving down the main street toward our winery – we need it about 2 days a year – or Michel loading or unloading the destemmer or the labeling machine that we bought in common.
Jean Pierre has a vineyard that dwarfs ours, being over 20 times its size, so we often borrow equipment from him. This time we were able to reciprocate ; he needed our “little” barrel press for a special cuvée that was too small to go into his giant press. After a quick discussion, Didier and Fernando decided that the easiest way to transport the press was on foot. I photographed the “press walk” down the main drag of Douzens and made an (admittedly lame) stop motion movie. It only took me most of yesterday and the day before to get the movie to work – a real improvement over my first one.
I love the last frame with the gigantic vats in the background. I think our whole harvest would fit in one of Jean-Pierre’s vats !
