smokingboot | Grapes and Roses

We made it out to the heart of the village, and did a little tour of the surrounds, a bucolic landscape of harvest coloured stone and endless vineyards, all grapes and roses under that beatific sun. My phone can’t capture the vibe. It sings of peace and prosperity for centuries, which isn’t strictly true; the Romans brought vines here around the second century, St Emilion’s monks were cultivating here in the 8th, the area’s reputation for good wines flourished in the Middle Ages and later came the usual difficulties of war, religious and otherwise. It reminded me by contrast of that other red wine area we visited years back, the Barossa near Adelaide, where no war came to destroy, and the only enemy was the inimical everything else. Lutherans began wine cultivation there in the 19th century. Visit today and there are few if any grand white-and-honey houses smiling at you from fields of verdant generosity. Instead, a different kind of beauty waits, grey stone barnalikes sit squat amidst old farming tools and vehicles now displayed as rusting sculptures while some stubble-faced guy tells you how much sheer b*ll ache it takes to get a vineyard going; the vinologists and soil experts you need, the expense of the water license year by year… ‘You get nothing back for the first three years,’ I recall one saying. Around St Emilion a vine is considered old between 40 and 65.

Then I read about Ballymena’s horrible riots.

The folk who first brought Saint Emilion its destiny were Romans. The people who brought vines to the Barossa were old world Lutherans. Everyone came from somewhere else once. Different problems wherever you land, but given time and peace and graft, you can make a decent life, maybe even an excellent one. I never understand why people don’t want that.