THERE are easier places to grow vines than northern Creuse. It’s an extremely beautiful part of Central France, with green hills, woods and rolling pastures where prize Limousin beef cattle graze contentedly; but at more than 1000ft above sea-level, the climate can be harsh.
Around 30 years ago, a Parisian couple decided to defy nature and planted a small vineyard with two red wine varieties, Gamay and Pinot Noir. After a few years’ toil they abandoned it. A local wine merchant put it back to rights, but he too gave up.
And then in 2007 along came an enterprisingly stubborn bunch of Brits. They cleared the head-high broom from amongst the neglected plants and determined that the 1,000-vine plot, sheltered by trees from the prevailing northwest winds, could again be persuaded into production. And being Brits, with a certain bulldog spirit, they succeeded. Clos Brégeot is probably still the only vineyard in production in Creuse.
I met most of the team there just south of Dun-le-Palestel, on a bright, breezy summer afternoon. They’re all members of Entente Cordiale, an association that seeks to bring people of different nationalities together through a range of activities. But the vineyard is an all-British affair, except at harvest time, when according to Robert Bates, a retired headteacher from Leicestershire who manages the project, “the locals turn up in droves to help pick the grapes”.
The team, which includes a good smattering of folk with Northern accents, have added 50 young Cabernet Franc plants to the vines they inherited.
Robert feels that Pinot Noir and Gamay are not an ideal choice. He’s probably right, but they are traditional in the few scattered vineyards of Central France. The big difference between Clos Brégeot and the nearest commercial vines at Châteaumeillant, about 40 miles to the north east, is simply, and crucially, climate and altitude. Early ripening white varieties might have been a wiser choice for the uplands of the Creuse, but the existing vines, tended organically, have survived neglect, fearsome frosts and violent storms of both wind and hail, and still look perky. Robert and his friends have surely been right to keep faith with them – at least for the time being.
The only problem is getting them to ripen. “You always need to add sugar to the juice,” Robert told me, “otherwise the wine would be like battery acid.”
Even so, the impressively deep-coloured 2010 was still a bit on the sharp side. An experimental sparkling red made the previous year was much more successful: still crisp, but in a juicy, crunchy-red-fruit way. Harvest tends to be late September or early October, though if the weather holds and the grapes aren’t beginning to rot, I’d advise them to hold on as late as possible.
The 2011 crop was healthy and ripening well and the entire 2008 harvest can’t have been too bad because it disappeared one night. Birds from the surrounding woods look upon the vineyard as a highly convenient canteen, but according to Robert, this was “the work of two-legged birds with no wings”. The friendly local cops weren’t able to retrieve the stolen fruit, but despite a few instances of people coming to help themselves, there’s been no serious further trouble.