FRANCE was not spared the cool wet weather that made much of July such a misery here, but it hasn’t prevented the earliest grape harvest in living memory. It began officially in Champagne on August 20, only equalled in 1822. Pierre Larmandier, my favourite Champagne producer, who pays enormous attention-to- detail and will only harvest when he feels conditions are right, emailed me to say they hoped to begin on August 27.

At dawn on August 23, I joined the team at Guimbelot, in the Charentes to start picking Henri Jammet’s Chardonnay. He had hoped to begin the previous day, but a heat wave would have not only made life intolerable for the pickers, but the grapes would have been too warm. They need to be kept cool to preserve their fresh, fruity flavours. With a day’s delay it was still an earlier start than the oldest vigneron in the area, a proud old man of 87, could recall.

Henri’s three hectares of vines produce the best white wine made anywhere between Bordeaux and the Loire Valley. He grows Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc. Both are fine but the Chenin is exceptional; and his efforts are startling proof of the potential for Charentais wine if others were even half as determined as he is to make the best possible product.

Just after 7am, it was light enough to set to work and the weather was pleasantly cool. The team was small: Henri and his wife Valerie, the head of the local primary school; their youngest daughter Louise, Martine and William, a couple who’ve been family friends for over 20 years; Thierry from Brussels, one of the four private chefs of the European Commission, who’d known Henri for all of three days; Couscous, the Jammet family’s ever-cheerful dog – and me.

Last year, the same plot was picked on September 20. It was a considerable success, with very high sugar levels and yet crisp acidity (tasting notes and more information about the Guimbelot estate are on my blog: www.helensavage.com). The grapes were very healthy. Four people were able to pick the lot in less than a morning’s work. It wasn’t so easy for the seven of us. Although there has been no outbreak of mildew this year, the soggy conditions in July triggered an outbreak of rot. Henri’s main hillside plot, where the air circulates more freely was little affected, but on our more sheltered site, we had to carefully cut away every rotten berry. The fine, very sharp grape secateurs make this fairly easy, but it’s time-consuming.

The rotten berries are brown and squidgy and smell strongly of vinegar. “Just imagine what the wine might have been like if it had been picked by machine and not by us,” Thierry muttered. We also tried to save innumerable ladybirds which sought refuge right in the bunches.

Henri is pleased with the healthy fruit. It has less sugar than last year: the finished wine will be around 12.5% alcohol, whereas some Chardonnay last year was 15%; but the fruit tastes fully ripe, and the skins are soft and the pips are brown and nutty, two further signs of true ripeness. The rot means the yield will be down, but not enough to cause concern. We picked enough fruit to make around a thousand bottles of wine.

We worked in pairs, one each side of a row of vines. I joined Valerie and took care not to snip her fingers with the sharp secateurs. My only wound was self-inflicted – easily done when you try to snip away rotten grapes too quickly. As the day warmed up, wasps and then hornets began to take an interest. You don’t mess with hornets – a sting means a quick trip to the local chemist for treatment.