Lifting

Another monday morning in Champagne, and what are we up to at the office?

There's always work to do. We tend to choose the tasks that are urgent, the rest can wait.

Like updating the website, work on an idea on how to label future bottles. Find customers for them.

Because rain or shine, shorts or coats, rubber boots morning, midday and afternoon. The vines grow.


And thus we lift the wires.

In fact, we have been lifting the wires all week.

Low wires, high wires. First hook.

The next will follow. Soon enough.



Before we put the agrafe in place, we push the stems a bit to the side to create enough space for the little piece of wood.

Each autumn we collect these to reuse them again until they get weaker and eventually break.


This is the first part of the lifting. Many stems don't yet have the length to reach the upper double wire, and we will have to place it manually.

Because of this we only put one agrafe at this time. Later we will put more, one between each plant to seperate them nicely and make sure that the stems with many grapes are well exposed for the sun.

The low wires stay side by side due to another type of agrafe that looks like white plastic. In fact, it's made of starch, thus it's biodegradable and saves us a round-trip of collection.


Thanks to the lifting the stems stand nicely upright, rather than climb or bend towards the neighbouring lines of vines.

Collegues in other villages have begun to cut the tops of the vines. Soon we will follow.

These ones have the length and the position as well. Due to the lifting.