In the afternoon the other parcel owner calls and saysd they can pick for us. They have a team of 35-40 and as Jane described them “a rahter motley crew.” this was an apt description but they descenced on the vines and cut our 3 barrels worth of graopes in 35 minutes; my kinf of motley crew.

Leaving off from last night the qwuestion was/is how are we going to process the grpaes with our busted destemmer. Our supplier promised us a loaner machine Tuesday night for Wednesday morning. Thus when we brought in our Vosne we twiddled our thumbs waiting for the machine. The grapes were cold and we had the air conditionong on the the cuverie so the grpaes were very cool/cold so there wass no panic to have to proiceess them. Finally mid afternoon I callled pourt suppleir asking “what’s the story?” He siad I ill have it to yoiuy in an hour. An hour goes by andf nothing so I call agina nd he satys meet mew inb Meursaiult with your truck. I understoood this would be a transfer b/c the machine was in Puligny; wrong. By now it is 6:00 and Will and I followed him to the vigneron in Pulighngny ot pick up the machine. After wainting a few minutes ,the sureal begins.. As we walk in the  courtyard we see a wall of grape boxes piled on a wagon and our guy says “oh there are still a few cases to process, 80.” Honest to God there was a disconnect for us; the wall of boxes, the number 80, no machinbe in sight and finally the site of two men in a cuverier lifting the 70-80 pound boixes over the destemmer, empting the contents on a makeshift sorting table that reast on top of the destemmer, then procceding to ”sort the grapes” sort of (sorry for the pun) and then pushing the rather lousy looking underriope and slightly rotten grapes intop the destemmer. I looked at Will and he looked at me and we have the same though; ”you have got to be kidding me. This is the definition of FUBAR.”

Knowing that we had been thrown into the Burgundy equilivant of boiler room on a slow boat to China we realized that the only way to extract ourselves was by shoveling coal as fast as possible we began to schlwep and lift the boxes over the destemmer and onto the ”sorting table” so the owner and his assistant could ”tri” the grapes.

Now you ask how could this be so bad; well it was after having loading and unloading our boxes all day we then had to to dead lift and carry the boxes with arms outstretched over the machine, all 80 of them, and you begin to get the point. (Plus the rain started in the late afternoon and the boxes were full of water; a simple tarp wopuld have avoided this problem.)

Remember the last scene in “Braveheart” where Mel Gibson is drawn and quartered? Well you get the idea of how our arms and chests felt the next morning. Heck I woke up and thought either I am having a heart attack or I had open heart surgery yesterday with my sternum split from my ribs. Will on the other had could only mutter; “you have got to be kidding me?”