Today I am promoted to bottler. What that means I have no clue since I’m pretty sure you take racks of bottles, give them to a machine, and then another machine fills them with whatever whatnots you want them filled with. I know…I’ve done the tour. So as I gracefully strut down the winding drive to work bottling I think to myself it’s going to be a beautiful day of ease. I even might be able to work on my tan which is coming along just nicely even with all the rain.
I round the final bend to see a U-Haul sized machine that is obviously the bottler and I notice at the one end is a narrow two and half foot stretch of conveyer belt and beside it rest two giant stacks of bottles. I get a few more steps on realize it’s more than two, it’s about 15. All right, no big deal, can’t be any more grueling than taming those twig vipers. Once again I am sure they will show me something, give me some training or offer some insight into technique but nope, they say, “Ce botteilles ici,” and point to the cute little conveyer belt. Still can’t be all that bad I think to myself as they literally turn and flip on the machine and I suddenly realize that means I’m on. I begin to feed the machine in a controlled fashion and feel that all is well until Benôit comes up to me and says in French that it is very important there be no gaps which for me means I gotta work a lot faster. Later, as we momentarily shut down for lunch I can only say to myself.
“I am and idiot.”
Every muscle in my back and shoulders scream and we have only done a third of what needs to happen today. I figure they will rotate us but nope, I’m on again and jump back on the line the second that lunch is finished. The rest of the day progresses just as before except they eventually move to a taller clear bottled stack which requires me to step up onto a milk container to reach the bottles. Folks, I’m six foot tall and easily the tallest thing here outside of the German machine operator who I still think I have two inches on. Who did this before I got here? Who will do it after I leave? It was grueling and yet fun in the sense that all things are when you know they are not permanent. Besides, I’m beginning to be happy with the person I’m seeing in the mirror with all the labor so why not just keep pressing it while I can especially since I know that in two weeks I’ll be in Paris for six days for a wine fair. Of course now that I type that I can only wonder how heavy the booze will be that I’ll be pushing around. Screw it, I hope it’s a lot, because right now I am starting to be able to see all the muscles in my back and chest and I’m not spending $50 a month and gas money to go to a gym. I wonder what these people would think if I mentioned the gym as we think of it?
I finish the day and it’s been a long day. Dinner is already being served upstairs and all I want to do is shower and hit the hay but I worked hard so I deserve a meal. I drag myself up to find another wonderful dinner prepared and folks who genuinely want to help me and it turns into a wonderful time where I’ve learned just enough to make even more people laugh. I walk home in the pure black that is night in the country and thank the heavens that I didn’t grow up in the city.
The next day I do the same but instead of loading three thousand bottles like I did the day before we only do a bit over a thousand but then move into full bottles of jus de fruit and other old classics that are finally ready to clean and label. Yep, the second half of day number two is labeling so instead of feeding empty bottles, I am now feeding full bottles and the pace is the same. We finish the bottles and my day is done, that is until I walk past the cave to find Antonio pushing palettes around. He sees me and asks if I could help him for a second. An hour later it’s dinner time and we have shoved and moved and cleaned about fourteen tons of wine that will be shown off at their wine fair the following weekend. Remember when I said no one has a job description, the vineyard is the description, well I never knew that to be more true than today. Ah, dinner.
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