Lavaux: Harvesting grapes is thirsty work

I’d anticipated this being hard work. But as I sat at the farmhouse table eating my second portion of homecooked lasagne, my glass topped up for the third time with local red, chatting with the 12 people gathered round the table, I could think of worse ways to earn a crust.

Better still, I was earning wine – six bottles would be my pay packet for a day’s work picking grapes in the vineyard of Alain Chollet, a wine-grower on the steep slopes above Lake Geneva in the Lavaux region of Switzerland. The gradient of these vineyards is such that the vignerons here can’t use machinery to harvest. So every year they ask for volunteers to come and help pick – and their gratitude is clear in their hospitality.

Though Switzerland isn’t exactly known for being a wine-producing country, it actually produces one million hectolitres a year. It’s hardly a huge amount – France, the biggest wine producer in the world, turns out 41m hectolitres annually) – but it could be a contribution to the international wine market, if only the Swiss didn’t drink most of it themselves – only 1% is exported.

While the canton of Valais is Switzerland’s largest wine region (and its residents the biggest drinkers, according to rumours), the Lavaux, in canton Vaud, is arguably the most historic. Vines were first grown here in the 12th century when Cistercian monks, finding the steep slopes incompatible with cattle or wheat-growing, built stone terraces and planted vines instead. It was an ideal choice: winegrowers in this region talk of the three suns: the sun itself, the rays reflected off Lake Geneva’s mirror-like surface, and the rays absorbed by the terraces that keep the grapes warm at night.

I got lost among these terraces as I picked my way upwards from the train station in Lutry, a small town five minutes’ ride east of the city of Lausanne, in what I hoped was the direction of Chollet’s small estate. It was before 8am, and after a night-time battering of rain, the sun was gradually brightening the sky into morning. The lake lay placid to my right, like the stage on which some drama would be played out, its audience the rows of vines sloping down to the shore.

After 10 minutes I passed a group of harvesters, dressed in yellow waders and gardening gloves, just starting to pick. Five minutes later, turning back along what I realised was the wrong road, I passed them again.

“Who are you looking for?” a man called out. Later I was told he was Blaise Duboux, one of the region’s best-known producers.

“Monsieur Chollet,” I said.

At that minute a small red van trundled up the road. The man held out his hand and stopped it, greeting the driver he obviously knew.

“These men will take you to Chollet,” he said with a smile. “Look after her,” he said to the two men in the van, as I hopped in.

It’s one big harmonious family in these vineyards. Especially so chez Alain Chollet, where I was eventually deposited.

This three-hectare estate in the Daley area of Lavaux has been managed by Chollet since 1992, producing around 22,000 litres annually, depending on the weather. Before then his father ran it, and his father before him, going back to the 1930s. His parents are still very much a part of the house – Chollet senior was chief wine-pourer during lunch, and had obvious pride in the wines that have been cultivated by his family for so long.

I was warmly welcomed by Chollet himself, who served croissants and coffee as the day’s 10 volunteers gradually arrived. Though he’s been running these volunteer days for more than a decade, advertising on his website, the message hasn’t spread that far and wide. All those taking part on the day I was there were locals rather than tourists: an artist, a tour guide, a couple of retirees, even a train driver on the night shift. All were there for their love of wine, their friendship with Chollet or their simple desire for a hands-on outdoor experience. One volunteer, Cedric, had been holidaying nearby for two weeks every year for five years, simply so he can come and help harvest. Why? “Because I like it,” he said simply.

After giving us a brief safety lesson in using secateurs – there have been finger chopping accidents in the past, says Chollet’s mother with a cheerful laugh – Chollet and his right-hand man, Carlos, led us from the house to the vineyard to start picking white grapes. Like 80% of the grapes cultivated in Lavaux they were the Chasselas variety, a grape that’s said to adapt well to the varying soil conditions of the area. In fact, it’s the most widely used white grape in Switzerland – but you won’t see it much in neighbouring France and Italy.

We worked methodically, each choosing a row of vines and a trio of orange crates in which to deposit our grapes, chopping them off in bunches with the secateurs. Under instruction, mouldy grapes were included in the haul – “there’s plenty of sweet juice in them,” said Chollet – but we were told to discard the small shrivelled grapes that obviously hadn’t grown properly, as their juice is bitter. There were unfortunately plenty of those – 2013’s cold spring had spread into May and June, the months when the grapes begin to grow (it was due to this late start to the growing season that we were harvesting as late as mid-October). Because of that, quantity would be down in 2013. But happily, quality was not affected as September, when the grapes ripen, was hot and dry.

Our crates filled quickly as my hands became sticky with juice. Driving a little motorised wagon, Carlos collected the crates to transport them back to the house for pressing. The estate didn’t, unfortunately, own one of the bizarre-looking monorails I’d seen elsewhere in Lavaux. Winegrowers here have to be creative with their transport, given the steep slopes. The richer among them use helicopters, at 50CHF per return flight, said Cedric, and indeed the whir of one was a constant presence that morning.

There was something almost meditative about cutting bunches of grapes in such beautiful surroundings, and time passed surprisingly quickly. At midday we trouped back to the house, where that copious lunch was waiting for us. An aperitif was a welcome indication of the product we were contributing to – in addition to Chasselas, Chollet makes wine from Viognier and Chardonnay, plus reds Pinot Noir (Switzerland’s most common red grape), Garanoir and the more unusual Plant Robert.

Back in the fields that afternoon, full and sleepy after our meal, I discovered our picking was directed by the way the grapes are treated later. White grapes must be pressed immediately in Chollet’s wooden press, which takes 1,500kg of grapes at a time. So when we’d picked enough for two pressings – all that can be managed in a single day – we moved on to the Garanoir. In contrast, red grapes shouldn’t be pressed the same day, as they need to macerate in their own juices for a while. If not, the juice wouldn’t take on the rich colour of the skins.

The slopes were steeper here, so I used a crate as a seat to save my now aching back as I worked my way along the vine. More solid and less mouldy than the white, the Garanoir grapes felt satisfying to pick, though the manner of picking them is more hazardous – due to the way they are grown they hang on both sides of the vine, so we were directed to pick two people to a row. I quickly learnt to stay well clear of my picking partner’s sharp secateurs.

By the time we wrapped up for the day around 4.30pm my back was stiff and I was glad of ‘les quatre heures’ – the traditional high tea served to manual labourers, which felt deliciously satisfying after such physical work. I sipped tea and revelled in the view from Chollet’s terrace over the vines and the lake below, painted in watercolours by the late afternoon haze.

It was worth leaving that view for an instant, however, to witness the last pressing of the day. Chollet stood inside his wooden press in green wellies, sploshing around in the grapes that had been poured inside. Once evenly spread, giant slabs of wood were placed on the grapes and several strong people were needed to help turn the press manually, squeezing the juice into a plastic bathtub next to the press. Once every drop had been extracted, the press was dismantled and the leftovers – skins, stalks and leaves, now compacted into a greenish cake – removed, to be used for compost during winter.

Chollet is one of the few wine-growers to still use this traditional method – the press had its 110th birthday in 2012. Why hasn’t he modernised, I ask? “We like doing it this way,” he replied. “It makes the whole process more interesting.”

He also values the history contained in the press, which has been used by his family for decades. I can see, watching Chollet senior operate the small forklift used to tip the grapes into the press, that it is important to him too.

But sadly, this family affair may not last. The rise of mass produced wine is making life for artisan wine-growers like Chollet unsustainable, he told me, and he doesn’t see himself being able to pass his vineyard along the family line as his father did for him, as the estate “doesn’t feed a family.”

That would be a tragedy, and a sad irony, because I’ve rarely felt so welcomed into a family as I did that day. I may have arrived at Chollet’s in a stranger’s van, but I left feeling that I’d made new friends – with six bottles of wine to remind me of them.