What Are 4 Ways That Winemakers Die in Wineries and Why Is It So Dangerous? Caro Feely, Author of Grape Expectations, Has Answers

Amazing Gains
May21st

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Introduction

What makes vine growing and winemaking so physically demanding? What are the hidden dangers of winemaking that most wine lovers never hear about? Why are some winemakers choosing to label their wines as Vin de France rather than follow strict appellation rules?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Caro Feely, author of the terrific memoir Grape Expectations: A Family’s Vineyard Adventure in France.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

 

Giveaway

Three of you are going to win a copy of her terrific book, Grape Expectations: A Family’s Vineyard Adventure in France.

 

How to Win

To qualify, all you have to do is email me at [email protected] and let me know that you’ve posted a review of the podcast.

It takes less than 30 seconds: On your phone, scroll to the bottom here, where the reviews are, and click on “Tap to Rate.”

After that, scroll down a tiny bit more and click on “Write a Review.” That’s it!

I’ll choose three people randomly from those who contact me.

Good luck!

 

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Highlights

  • How did Oprah Winfrey influence Caro and her husband to follow their dream of owning a vineyard in France?
  • What was behind the decision to leave their corporate jobs for winemaking, which was such a different career?
  • Why did Caro choose Bordeaux and Saussignac in particular?
  • What were the main criteria that Caro and her husband sought when choosing a vineyard?
  • Were there any transferable skills from the corporate IT world that were helpful in running a winery?
  • What was the most surprising hurdle Caro and her husband had to overcome to buy their winery?
  • How does Caro handle the tension between making wines she believes in versus what will pass official approvals or market trends?
  • Why did Chateau Feely want to be classified as Vin De France?
  • How physically demanding is winemaking?
  • What are some of the funniest and most surprising animal-related episodes that have happened at the winery?

 

Key Takeaways

  • What makes vine growing and winemaking so physically demanding?
    • As Caro explains it involves heavy machinery, tractors, attaching things to tractors, moving heavy pipes and other equipment around. Even hand picking grapes is a fairly active sport. Removing the vine shoots or suckers at the base of the vine is a big job and backbreaking. They don’t want them to grow because they take nutrients from the grapes.
  • What are the hidden dangers of winemaking that most wine lovers never hear about?
    • Caro says that many wine lovers don’t realize how dangerous winemaking is. There are four killers of wine makers. The first one was asphyxiation by CO2. In the fermentation, CO2 is created. If you don’t have a way for it to get out of the closed spaces, you’re going to get asphyxiated. The second one is falling from height particularly if a little bit of CO2 has escaped and made you a little lightheaded. The next one is machinery, so horrific things like falling into a harvest trailer. Electrocution because you’re working with liquids and high electricity.
  • Why are some winemakers choosing to label their wines as Vin de France rather than follow strict appellation rules?
    • Caro says that almost all of her wines are labelled Vin de France because she felt that so many of the appellation rules were not about the quality of the wine. She wanted to be free of those unnecessary constraints. For example, one biodynamic winemaker got kicked out of the appellation system because he had weeds under his vines. He handpicks his grapes so it actually doesn’t matter if they’re weeds under the vines. If you machine pick, the machine will kind of suck up the weeds. Caro would much rather have some weeds than have to use synthetic weed killer. Even when it comes to Saint-Émilion Grand Cru Classé and Premier Grand Cru Classé, some growers got more appellation points for having a parking lot for tour guests than they received for being certified organic.

 

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We found that so many of the AOC rules were not about the quality of the wine. - Caro Feely Caro Feely Click to tweet

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France is nearly 20% organic, and Saussignac is more than 50% organic. We are so fortunate to be in a place where the ethos is in tune with us. - Caro Feely Caro Feely Click to tweet

 

About Caro Feely

Caro Feely is a writer, yoga teacher, wine educator and organic farmer. She leads authentic, personalized and educative wine tours, wine courses, walking tours and yoga retreats near Bordeaux in France. She is a published author, an engaging speaker, a registered Yoga Alliance yoga teacher, a WSET* wine educator, and a professional with many years of workshop, presentation, teaching, and management experience. Caro offers accommodation, tours and yoga at her organic farm in Saussignac.

 

Resources

 

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  • The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.

 

Transcript

Natalie MacLean 00:00:01 What makes vine growing and winemaking so physically demanding? What are the hidden dangers of winemaking that most wine lovers never hear about? And why are some winemakers choosing to label their wines Vin de France rather than follow strict appellation rules? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in our chat with Carl Foley, author of the terrific memoir Grape Expectations A Family’s Vineyard Adventure in France. By the end of our conversation, you’ll also discover how Oprah Winfrey influenced Caro and her husband to follow their dream of owning a vineyard in France. Their decision to leave their high profile corporate jobs for winemaking. Why Caro chose Bordeaux, and specifically Saussignac. The main criteria Caro and her husband looked for when choosing a vineyard. Transferable skills from the corporate IT world that proved helpful in running a winery. The most surprising hurdle Carol and her husband had to overcome to buy their vineyard. How Carol handles tension between making wines she believes in and aligning with government approvals and market trends. And some of the funniest and most surprising animal related episodes that have happened on the winery.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:25 Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:07 Welcome to episode 338. On CTV’s The Social this week, we paired wines with flowers because why not? This segment was just ahead of Mother’s Day, but the pairings still work any time of the year. And really, you should be thanking your mother or whomever the important woman is in your life every day of the year. Okay, we shared lots of laughs, so if you want to watch the video, I’ll include a link in the show notes. Let’s start by talking about the connection between wine and florals.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:37 What is it? We often see floral descriptions of wine, and they’re more than just poetic, fancy or wine geek speak. It’s actually a reflection of the intricate chemistry of grapes and the artistry of winemaking. Grapes, like flowers, are profoundly influenced by their terroir, the unique environment in which they grow. So I’ve brought in five different wines representing a different bouquet. Perfect pairings for Mother’s Day. We’re starting with roses and Rosé. If you give fizz and florals, you’re no longer just the favourite child. You’re the only child who counts. Game on. Both Rosés and Champagne or sparkling wine have a timeless association with celebration. The delicate perfume of roses mirrors the subtle floral notes in the sparkling Rosé. Just as roses unfold petal by petal, this wine reveals layers of complexity. Sip by sip, the Rosé’s soft fragrance and the wine’s gentle effervescence. Create an experience that engages the senses. My first pick of this floral bunch is the Westcott Vineyard Brilliant Sparkling Rosé from Niagara, Ontario. This sparkling wine is elegant with fine bubbles and aromas of delicate rose petals, especially like those in this light pink Rosé. And what would you pair with this wine? Well, I don’t suggest eating the roses. Instead, try fresh spring greens like asparagus with melted butter or in a quiche with warm pastry. The sparkling wine’s finesse makes a great match.

Natalie MacLean 00:04:14 Next, we’re moving on to peonies in Sauvignon Blanc. These are the extroverts of their worlds. They walk into a room like they’re auditioning for the lead in Pride and Prejudice, and they get the starring role every time. There’s something wonderfully unapologetic about peonies and Sauvignon Blanc. The peonies’ explosion of layers and layers of petals and the intense fragrance corresponds beautifully to the wine’s bold, aromatic profile that opens up as you drink it. Both have a certain vibrancy that demands attention. In other words, they are not wallflowers, right? I have a crisp Sauvignon Blanc Cellar Selection from Marlborough, New Zealand. This wine offers aromatic floral notes alongside citrus elements, and it’s made from sustainably grown grapes. I’ve paired it with the bold and striking peony, with its vibrant colours and citrus notes that match the wine’s assertive character. I’d pair this with sautéed diver scallops with fresh celery root and lime.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:23 Next up, lilacs and Vermentino share an intoxicating aromatic intensity that lingers in the memory. This pairing is like a time machine in a glass and a vase. One sip, one sniff, and suddenly you’re transported to your grandmother’s garden. It’s very nostalgic. The lilacs’ distinctive sweetness with hints of spice complements the exotic character of Vermentino. They’re both also luxurious. The lilacs’ lush clusters of blossoms mirror the wine’s opulent mouthfeel. It’s like walking through a garden in full bloom just after a spring rain. I have the Luna Vermentino from Liguria, Italy. It’s known for its vivid aromatics, especially blossoms and stone fruit. Perfect for lilacs—sweet and spicy notes. I’d love to have this with pineapple grilled chicken with cashew nuts, ginger, and spring onions.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:21 We’re moving into reds now with Pinot Noir and cherry blossoms. The cherry blossoms brief, magnificent blooming season reminds me of Pinot Noir’s reputation as a temperamental grape that requires precise conditions to reach its full expression. They’re both high-maintenance divas that are so worth the trouble when sunlight filters through cherry blossoms. It reminds me of how Pinot Noir shimmers with a translucent ruby glow in the glass. I’m pairing the Corcelettes Winery Pinot Noir from the South Okanagan, British Columbia. The wine is bursting with juicy layers of cherry and berry aromas. Cherry blossoms, with their bright, fragrant nature, mirror the vivaciousness and elegance of this Pinot Noir. The Pinot would be lovely with pan-seared duck breast and white truffle risotto.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:14 Our final pairing is orchids and Gamay. They’re the high-fashion supermodels of the flower world—tall, stunning, willowy, and mysterious. They’re a little intimidating, but they beautifully complement the intriguing character of Gamay. Orchids are among the most diverse flower families, with endless variations in form and colour, much like how Gamay can express itself differently depending on where it’s grown and the winemaking techniques. There’s also something slightly untamed about orchids’ wild origins and Gamay’s rustic charm—a refusal to be entirely domesticated by winemaking. The Chiroubles La Grosse Pierre from Beaujolais, France, is made from the Gamay grape, so I’m pairing it with these orchids. The Gamay has lovely raspberry-plum notes, along with dark florals such as orchids, violets, and irises. It’s smooth, medium-bodied, with a juicy, mouthwatering character. I’d match it with wild mushrooms and spring lamb osso buco that falls apart in your mouth because it’s so tender. Thank you, Natalie, said the host. Where can we find these wines online? On Instagram, I’m at Natalie MacLean Wine. And online my website is nataliemaclean.com.

Natalie MacLean 00:08:37 Back to today’s episode. Three of you are going to win a copy of the terrific memoir, Grape Expectations: A Family’s Vineyard Adventure in France, filled with vivid descriptions of delicious wines, great food and stunning views, along with insight into the world of the winemaker. Written by our guest today, Caro Feely. I still have two copies of the award winning book vines in a Cold Climate by Henry Jeffreys. If you’d like to win a copy, please email me and let me know that It does not matter where you live. I’ll choose five winners randomly from those who contact me at [email protected]. In other bookish news, if you’re reading the paperback or e-book or listening to the audiobook of my memoir Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much, a national bestseller and one of Amazon’s best books of the year, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. I’d also be happy to send you beautifully designed, personally signed book plates for the copies you buy or give as gifts. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at nataliemaclean.com/338. The paperback usually arrives within a day or two of ordering. The book and audiobook are instantly available. Okay, on with the show.

Natalie MacLean 00:9:57 Caro Feely is a writer, yoga teacher, wine educator, and organic farmer. She leads personalized wine tours, courses, walking tours, and yoga retreats near Bordeaux, France. She is a published author, speaker and Registered Yoga Alliance yoga teacher, a WSET wine educator, and a professional with many years of workshop, presentation, teaching and management experience. She joins us now from her farm in Saussignac. Welcome, Caro. We’re so glad you’re here with us.

Caro Feely 00:10:28 Thank you Natalie, it’s such a pleasure to meet you. As I said, I am just really, really delighted to be with you this evening.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:37 Wonderful. It feels like we are at your kitchen table. Your reception is so good there. All right, so the first question I have to ask because you alluded to it, but you did not explain. How did Oprah Winfrey, the talk show host, influence you into following your dream to starting or buying a vineyard in France?

Caro Feely 00:10:58 Well, Sean, my husband and I, we had a dream to go wine farming very early on when we met in Johannesburg in the early 90s. We had this wo wouldn’t it be great to be winegrowers? We were both really passionate about wine. His grandfather was a wine grower. I shared a house with the Master of Wine who ran the Cape Wine Academy in Johannesburg. And so we were both very passionate about wine and it was like, wow, wouldn’t it be great to be winegrowers? And so we had this idea, but we were paying off student loans. It was so far out there. There was no way it was going to happen. So we kind of put it on the long finger. We got on with our lives. Work took us to Dublin and it was in Dublin, sitting in our rented apartment, looking out over the Irish Sea with lashing rain and blowing gales. That I was reading Oprah’s magazine, the O magazine, and I think my sister had given it to me or something. She lives in Canada. At the time, she was in Vancouver and in this magazine it said, Oprah said, where do you want to be in five years? Write it down. Write down what your dream is of where you want to be in five years. Don’t worry about how you’re going to get there. Don’t worry about what it’s all about. Just put it out there. Dream the big dream. Because if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re never going to get there. And I said to my husband, Sean, we are going to do this. Let’s sit down and do our five year dream. And he was like, that’s chick stuff. I’m not doing that.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:45 That sounds like man stuff, in response. But anyway.

Caro Feely 00:12:49 Exactly. I twisted his arm. And we did. And when we swapped our one pages, they were both a dream to live on a vineyard in France.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:01 Really? Both of you had the same dream.

Caro Feely 00:13:03 The same dream. And even though we hadn’t talked about it for a while, we had been visiting France every year. But we hadn’t kind of concretized this idea. So it was amazing, actually. So two quite similar descriptions of own a small vineyard, making artisanal wines ,organic and also growing our own food. So a sustainable dream as well. So that was also something that was important, the self-sufficiency. And interestingly, that five year dream we put it out there. It was such a long shot. Anyway even then Sean’s description was with two dogs in it. I didn’t have any kind of dogs in mind, but in a way, the vineyard dream was similar, and literally five years to the day we moved to our farm in France with no dogs and two kids.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:59 At least, you took the kids. You didn’t leave the kids and get new dogs or something. Now that’s quite a jump because you were an IT professional. I’m not sure what Sean did, but why this desire to go make wine when it’s so seemingly opposite, if you will, to a corporate job?

Caro Feely 00:14:18 I was an IT strategy consultant and internet project manager, that was pretty much what I did for about ten years. I enjoyed it, I really did. I enjoyed my career very, very much. But we found that we really we both grew up in fairly rural environments and we missed this connection to nature. And for Sean, he was a certified financial analyst working in a big bank, asset management. We felt like we were missing out and we also had this passion for wine. So while we looked at other opportunities like maybe making cheese or doing some other kind of organic farming, really our passion was for wine. And when we looked at it, we were like, wow, if you’re going to be a small farmer, it’s going to be damn hard work. You better be doing what you’re passionate about. And so it kind of was a no brainer to go for the wine dream, but it did mean coming to France because really we couldn’t do vineyards in Dublin. So we had to really burn the bridges and go, which is probably lucky because we might have given up if we had had the safety net. We might have said, wow, this really is too hard. Let’s just go back to the safety of our corporate jobs.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:39 Now, why did you choose Bordeaux and more specifically, Saussignac? Maybe step back and tell us where they are on the map for those who aren’t as familiar with the region.

Caro Feely 00:15:49 So firstly, Saussignac is just outside Bordeaux. We are in the appellation, the greater appellation of Bergerac, which is part of Saussignac. But we are literally four kilometres from the border with Bordeaux-Saint-François. So if you picture France and you think of like the western side of France coming down the west coast, not the Mediterranean part, but the west coast of the Atlantic, Bordeaux is a couple of hours north of the Spanish border at that point. And so Bordeaux city. And if you go inland about an hour from Bordeaux or a bit more than an hour with city traffic, you’ll get to Saussignac. We’re a little further east than St. Emilion. For people that have visited Bordeaux and maybe have been to the city and to St. Emilion, if you kept going east from St. Emilion for about another half an hour, 40 minutes, you would get to Saussignac.

Natalie MacLean 00:16:51 And what makes Saussignac special? Like, why did you choose it and what’s distinctive about it?

Caro Feely 00:16:56 We had this lovely long list of criteria that we wanted.  And we had a very, very tiny budget. In fact, this farm was the first one that met all our criteria and was a price we could afford.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:12 What criteria, for example, were you looking for?

Caro Feely 00:17:16 We liked the Bordeaux style of wines. Red and white. But actually, Sauvignon from the Entre-deux-Mer. We love that style. The barrel aged like Pessac Lignon Of course. The wonderful red wines, like a St. Emilion sort of style. So we really loved those kind of wines. It already fit that. But really the criteria were. We wanted it to be around ten hectares of vines, so a good size for a couple to run. Not too much so you’d need employees and too risky and not too small to not be a going concern. We wanted it to be walking distance to a village with a school. We wanted it to be a single piece of land so that we had control over our borders. As in, you know, if you were five pieces of two hectares and they were all surrounded by conventional wine growers, you would have much more pesticide exposure. So we wanted to have a single piece of land and ideally with the buildings in the middle and with old buildings that had potential to be renovated and to be a beautiful, I guess, venue as well, although we didn’t really think through the whole tourism thing right at the get go.

Caro Feely 00:18:25 But that became something very important to us pretty quickly. And the huge plus then was that we’re less than five minutes from a train station on the main line between Bordeaux and Sarla. And that is huge. Plus, especially with people being more concerned about CO2 print and wanting to use things trains instead of cars. And anyway, if you’re having a few glasses of wine, much rather be training than driving, so it’s such an advantage. We’re so lucky. So many, many things I guess, in there. And it just turned out to be this kind of miracle because we were organic kind of in our mindset, but we didn’t have a clue that Saussignac was very organic and already back then. So when we bought the farm in 2005, France was only 1% organic and Saussignac was 10% organic.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:20 Oh really?

Caro Feely 00:19:21 Today, France is nearly 20% organic and Saussignac is more than 50% organic. So we are so fortunate to be kind of in a place where the ethos is in tune with us, I guess.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:35 Absolutely. And has there been any sort of transfer of skills or similarities between what you did in your corporate worlds, you and your husband, and applied to the winery? Now there’s the business of running the winery, which we’ll get into. And probably it has it needs as well. But was there any other skills that you thought, wow, I didn’t expect this, but my skills from the corporate world are really applicable right now.

Caro Feely 00:19:59 Yes. Actually, one of the things that I did after being in IBM and Accenture was I started a business with people that were with me in IBM and Accenture, doing early stage venture capital for software startups and consulting. And so I had been in a small business. And I think that was very, very fortunate that I had that stepping stone out of kind of the big company where I was managing projects to something where I had to kind of worry about a wider picture, if you like, of the whole business. But definitely the most important one, I guess, kind of entrepreneurship. Being adaptable. Coming up with new ideas at each point along the way. And you know, we’ll get into it with the different books and the different constraints. And I’ve used so many of those skills from setting up our website, selling online right from the get go. In 2005, we were selling online. I think we’re probably the only people in the whole of the region selling online back then. So that was pretty dramatic. We really trail blazed into selling online to our client base in Ireland. We ship all over the world. So it’s very important to us actually that direct selling that was absolutely, yes. Us having internet knowledge, having run internet projects, being able to do that, that was really great. I’d say the other thing is being able to be with groups to facilitate, to talk about wine to large groups without kind of feeling ill at ease. So the wine tourism part and managing groups professionally, delivering wine education and experiences. That definitely was helped by my years of running workshops, facilitation, that kind of thing for sure, for sure.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:52 And just while we’re on that. So today people can come and take classes and tours and so on that I mentioned in your intro. Do you have a place where people can stay overnight as well?

Caro Feely 00:22:02 Absolutely. So we have two accommodations. The Wine Lodge, that sleeps four, and the Wine Cottage, that sleeps 2 to 3. People can stay there for three nights or more. We don’t do really short stays because you don’t get enough of a sense of place. I think if you just put your head down and disappear again. So we’re encouraging a bit more of an immersive experience. So yes, people can absolutely stay in peak season. Over the summer, we do weekly rental because it’s just too busy for me to try and manage the changeovers on different days, but for the kind of shoulder and the rest of the short stays are possible. And when people come to learn about wine, what do I give them to read?

Natalie MacLean 00:22:45 [laughter] You have a couple of books there. Thank you for having one of my books. Nice plug.

Caro Feely 00:22:52 I love this book.

Natalie MacLean 00:22:55 It’s Red, White, and Drunk All Over.

Caro Feely 00:22:56 It is a great book. Wonderful for people that want to just start to understand a bit more about wine. I love it, it’s so entertaining.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:05 Thank you so much. Really. This was not a paid ad. That was unexpected, but thank you. Okay, back to you. The process of purchasing your property. Chateau Au Guerillic. Did you give it that name? And how did you come up with it, or was it already named that?

Caro Feely 00:23:18 So that was the old name. Our friend in Ireland said, hey, why don’t you call it your name, your family name? And he’s quite a skilled business person and we should have listened to him because no one could say Au Guerillic. No one could spell Au Guerillic. In Ireland, everyone thought it was, oh, karma. You know, like O’Grady or O’Brien. So if I was on radio and I was talking about it, no one could find us afterwards because they didn’t know how to spell it. The French spelling. Too complicated. So we changed it to our family name, wisely following many, many great estates like you find in Burgundy. So Feely is our family name and family. And Feely is the chateau name now.

Natalie MacLean 00:24:05 Okay, so when you were first in the market trying to buy this property. There were a lot of false starts and complications. Tell us about the most surprising hurdle you had to overcome to just buy this piece of property.

Caro Feely 00:24:19 Oh, my gosh, you’re hitting all the spots of Great Expectations. I mean, that is the the first few chapters are just like, how is this possible? Is this real? Am I dreaming? Is this hell sometimes.

Natalie MacLean 00:24:36 What fresh hell is this? What was the one that was hardest or most surprising or weirdest?

Caro Feely 00:24:43 I think the weirdest has to be. And you might remember me mentioning this in the book. The 300 litre donation that we have to give to the previous owner who owned it three purchases back. So it was an old right that he had because he had distillation rights, and so he had the right to get 300 litres of our wine every year.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:12 It sounds like a feudal lord or something taking his tithes.

Caro Feely 00:25:16 That was the funniest, like when our notary said that and we were kind of getting into the final signing, and suddenly this clause shows up. I’m like, what is this? Where does this even come from? And he was like, oh yeah, yeah, you just got to sign it. There’s nothing you can do. You’ve got to wait till he dies and then it’s going to be over because that’s…

Natalie MacLean 00:25:37 Incredible. Wow. Do you still do that today?

Caro Feely 00:25:40 Yes.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:41 Oh God. He’s hanging on just for that wine. Oh.

Caro Feely 00:25:44 But actually, we can give him the lees. It doesn’t actually have to be good wine.  We can give him the lees because it’s for distillation. So it can be fruit or liters of wine. But obviously for him, fruits are no good. He wants the wine. But it can just be the lees

Natalie MacLean 00:26:01 The lees? Well, that’s what you get what you don’t have a lawyer checking for, I guess. And looking back, do you think all of these hurdles sort of prepared you for the realities of winemaking? Or were they almost enough to make you throw up your hands and go, I’m not, we’re not doing this?

Caro Feely 00:26:18 Oh, they were definitely some moments there where I was like, wow, this is too crazy. And especially when, we’re in the purchasing process. And Sean came over to see the property and he arrived luckily, by some kind of miracle. I had searched online for advisors about vineyards and had found somebody and called them and organized for them to meet Sean to l give us some advice about what they thought the vineyard was like. And it turned out that this guy was part of  the government organization Laissez Faire, which actually and they knew that the property was in liquidation and we hadn’t been told. The agent didn’t know. The people hadn’t owned up. And so that added a whole nother ball of wax.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:05 So in liquidation it was bankrupt. So did the owner even have a right to sell it to you?

Caro Feely 00:27:10 They had the right, but they had to work with the liquidator. They didn’t have the only say. So it became a much more complicated situation because it had to be. The Bergerac liquidator and them agreeing to sell.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:29 Wow, that was complicated.

Caro Feely 00:27:31 Yeah, in the end it all worked out and I’m so, so pleased we did. It’s been an amazing journey.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:37 Yeah, quite the journey. Now, your description of the AOC police, the appellation police, which are the people who enforce the wine regulations in France and their tasting panels, really reveals the subjective nature of assessing wine quality. How have you handled that tension between making wines you believe in versus what will pass official approvals, or even beyond that what the market wants?

Caro Feely 00:28:02 So do you know, Natalie, now one of our key things is that we actually do almost all our wines under Vins du France, so that we don’t have any of those constraints. We just found that so many of the rules were not about the quality of the wine. I mean, and I’ll give you an example that isn’t actually our example, but one that illustrates this so beautifully. There’s a wine grower in Sancerre, and I can’t think of his name just off the top of my head now, but he’s really, really well known. His Sancerre is on 47 of the top 50 restaurants in the world. And he’s really amazing, organic, biodynamic winemaker. And he got kicked out of the AOC because he had weeds under his vines and he hand-picked. So it doesn’t matter if they’re weeds under the vines when he hand-picked. It’s not like the machine where it might pick up weeds and then you’ve got weeds inside.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:08 What was the issue? Why did they think weeds were going to interfere with the quality of the wine?

Caro Feely 00:29:13 So if you machine pick, the machine will kind of suck up the weeds if they’re growing up a little bit. And so really, that rule was completely irrelevant for him. And actually, I would much rather have some weeds than have weed kill, to be honest.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:34 Sure. And there’s more of a microcosm or microbial life if you’ve got some sort of plant life between the vines, I would assume.

Caro Feely 00:29:42 Absolutely. And we hopefully can get into that. If not, we’ll have to organize another another chat, because I’ve got so much to say on that topic.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:51 Biodynamics. Yeah. But I can see why you went with the most open liberal classification of Vin du France, which just means basically a wine of France that doesn’t have all these tangled red tape regulations. It’s kind of what the Super Tuscans did to they said, okay, we’re not going to be in Italy. Forget your DOC classification. We’ll just be us. And, they were just wine of Italy. And eventually, they got their own appellation because they were selling for hundreds of dollars a bottle. But yeah, I can see that being quite a frustration to deal with.

Caro Feely 00:30:25 Absolutely. So I mean, Sean, I think after a couple of years, he was already getting just sick of it all. You’re right because it’s just ridiculous red tape. And just to illustrate it actually, even when it comes to, say, Grand Cru Classé in St. Emilion,  Grand Cru Classé and Premier Grand Cru Classé in 2012, people got more points for having a parking for guests, like tour guests than they got for being certified organic.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:58 Wow.

Caro Feely 00:30:59 It makes a point about and that’s not an AOC as such as a classification, but it’s just that it seems the focus is not in the right place to me. If this is about wine quality, that’s bizarre.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:11 My goodness. And sometimes people don’t know where these things started. And do they still make sense today and is someone creating a new rule based on an old rule? And then it got twist anyway?

Caro Feely 00:31:22 Absolutely. Oh my goodness. You probably remember the story where we’re in the customs office and literally the people were arguing about our situation. There were about five customs specialists in the room arguing for about two hours about what to do, about some minor thing. And I was just sitting there going can you imagine the cost of all these heads here about something that really. Oh, I was just but they have a book like this that they’ve got to follow and they don’t want to make a mistake. And those rules go back to the Roman times. Some of them are literally going back to Roman times, so no wonder they sometimes don’t know what to do because there’s a ton of conflicting stuff in there because there’s just so much baggage, you know. The joys of the old world.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:21 Absolutely. Oh my gosh, the weight of history is heavy. But let’s talk about another challenge that you talk about how physically demanding y making is. Can you give us an example of that? What surprised you specifically about just how physically demanding it is?

Caro Feely 00:32:37 I think is very physically demanding in terms of the wine growing and the wine making.  Wine growing, you know, all that machinery, tractors, attaching things to the tractor, just incredibly physical work like Sean does it. I don’t do it. I mean, I’ll go out and do some handwork in the vineyard, but I do any of the kind of big, heavy tractor work, but it really is very heavy machinery and the same thing in the winery. And even just hand-picking. We handpick everything and and that in itself is, is a fairly active sport. And removing the shoots at the base of the suckers at the base of the vine, even that’s a pretty big job.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:22 Why are you removing the shoots at the base of the suckers? I’m just curious.

Caro Feely 00:33:26 So the suckers at the base of the vine. So the vine has the main growth.. I can only think of the French word now, but the kind of like the canes.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:37  The canes. Okay.

Caro Feely 00:33:38 So the canes. And it has a tendency also to send out shoots at the base that might be from the rootstock. And those shoots, we don’t want them to grow because they’re going to take energy away. They’re going to take nutrients and everything we don’t want we don’t want them. So we’re going to remove them basically.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:58 Okay. That makes.

Caro Feely 00:33:58That’s a pretty physical if you do it by hand. We now have a machine that does it. So it’s much much easier. But just to come back to the physicality, I think as important as it’s very physical work. And even in winemaking, just moving the pipes around, moving the equipment around. It’s all kind of heavy stuff. But I think one of the other points that so many wine lovers don’t realize it is a very dangerous. It’s a very, very dangerous thing. In my book, I talk about how I go on a course, so pests and diseases in the vineyard. And that in itself is pretty scary. And luckily we don’t use systemic pesticides. So that part of it was less scary. But the following day when we arrived, they gave us this innocent looking little booklet that said Evaluating Risks. And inside it said there are four killers of wine makers. Beware for killers of winemakers.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:06 Is wine critics, one of them like a devastating score. Sorry, I should not make light of this.

Caro Feely 00:35:21 Or Trump tarrifs.

Natalie Maclean 00:35:24 Oh my God. Okay. So what were the four in the booklet.

Caro Feely 00:35:21 So the first one was asphyxiation by CO2. Now that I think a lot of people would be aware of because in the fermentation CO2 is created. If you don’t have a way for it to get out of the closed spaces, you’re going to get asphyxiated. So that’s very, very important, making sure you aerate. The second one is falling from height, particularly if you have a little bit of CO2 has escaped and made you a little lightheaded. It hasn’t completely asphyxiated you, but it could actually make you lightheaded enough to fall from high on one of the tanks. The next one is machinery. So horrific things like falling into a harvest trailer and all of these things. It sounds crazy, but all of these things have happened within a five kilometer radius of us since we’ve lived here.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:12 Oh my goodness. Was there a fourth one?

Caro Feely 00:36:14 And there is a fourth one. Electrocution.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:16 Electrocution?

Caro Feely 00:36:18 So electrocution wasn’t actually a wine grower. It has happened to somebody, but it wasn’t a wine grower. But electrocution because you’re working with liquids and high electricity. So, I mean, that was one of the first big, big investments we made was rewiring the winery because our lives were more important than that.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:42 So you could have written a mystery thriller. There’s so many ways to die in a winery. But your husband Sean, what happened with his finger? There was something there. An accident?

Caro Feely 00:36:52 Yeah, absolutely. Oh my goodness. Our first vendange, our first harvest was a baptism of fire. And we had really been working all hours because we’re learning, you know? We were learning the ropes and we didn’t know how to do anything, so everything took way longer. It was completely all new to us. Even though we’d learned it in textbooks, we’d never done it ourselves. So that’s a very, very different thing. And we were on the last day. We were picking our Cabernet with the last day of machine harvest. We had picked the Cabernet. Back then, we were still machine harvesting some of the vineyards, and we’d picked the Cabernet, brought it in safely in the winery. We were breathing a sigh of relief. All the machine harvesting was finished for the year and Sean came back round with the harvest trailer. He parked it up next to the house. It was still dark because we’d pick very early, like 4 a.m., be finished by kind of five, 530, 6:00, and it was still dark. And he said to himself, oh, I should probably go in for coffee and just take a five minute break, but oh, I’ll just finish rinsing this trailer before I do.  And I went around the back and he went to take the lid off the back of the trailer, and in the dark he couldn’t see and the lid was already off.

Caro Feely 00:38:21 And so as he went like this, his finger went into and it got chopped off.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:27  It went into where, sorry?

Caro Feely 00:38:29 The harvest trailer has a big auger inside pushing everything out. And that auger is a chopper basically. And so he went to take the cap off, forgetting that it had already come off just because we’d been in so much. He thought it had been put back on or whatever. He didn’t think, essentially didn’t think. And isn’t that the way all these stupid accidents happen? And so he went to take the cap, and since there was no cap, his finger, his middle finger went up the little spout and goodbye finger. So that was, how he just said, thank goodness it didn’t go into the wine.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:15 Yeah, that would be.

Caro Feely 00:39:16 It went onto our land, making Sean truly part of our terroir.

Natalie MacLean 00:39:22 He has his finger on the pulse or something terrible. There’s a terrible kind of thing going on there. Oh my goodness. But beyond that, all these physical dangers you write about that you had a mouse phobia despite the fact you’re becoming a farmer.  Tell us about the mouse phobia. Again, I don’t mean to imply it’s funny. But it is odd, where you are placing yourself. I would expect a lot of mice.

Caro Feely 00:39:50 Exactly. Oh my goodness. I really get scared of mice, and I don’t know why. I can’t help it. I guess it’s from when I was young. We had a few horses growing up, and as I said, we were in a rural environment and there were rats in the stables sometimes because they went for the horse feed and I just. So I never kind of got over that. And so when we arrived, crazy, there was like an infestation of mice and oh my goodness, did we have to try every which way to get rid of the mice. The good news is we now have an amazing cat called Maitre Gimps, named after a French rapper. Mr. Gimps is an uber hunter. Beware the mice is all I can say now.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:42 Game on. Now you also have a phobia of or a fear of snakes as well.

Caro Feely 00:40:49 I guess like everybody I’ve learned actually with the snakes to be a little more circumspect, because I know that there’s only one kind that is very dangerous. Be aware because that one is so dangerous. It’s the European viper that if it bites you, you’re dead in 20 minutes. And Bergerac Hospital is about 25 minutes away, so you’re probably…

Natalie MacLean 00:41:20 Enjoy the scenery while you can.

Caro Feely 00:41:24 The only time I’ve seen a viper, and I’m not even sure it was, was a tiny one that got stuck when we were doing the building project. And, maybe they were living here in the stones that are where the tasting room eventually was. It was dead. But apparently there are viper ruins that actually look a bit like that as well and aren’t so dangerous. But I’m not going to take any chances, you know?

Natalie MacLean 00:41:48 No, of course not. Then again, you talked about becoming attached to your farm animals. Tell us about the The Chicken Coop episode.

Caro Feely 00:41:58 Oh, so the chicken coop episode now. I’m not sure which one you’re referring to, but I’m going to tell the one that I like the most about the chickens.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:08 Yes, please.

Caro Feely 00:42:09 So we have chickens for eggs. We usually do, but we don’t at the moment because the bird flew. The rules became much stricter. And there have been so many foxes around here. So we’re kind of in a phase of not having them. But we love having chickens. And they all had names. You know, they become kind of like family. We let them walk around, have a lovely time. They kind of own the place. They’d go in at night and one day I had about 12, maybe 14 people here for the wine tours, the day wine tours. And so in the morning we go around the vineyard and then we sit down. We do like a pairing platter. I explain wine and food pairing and all of that as part of it. Then the afternoon we do a whole kind of, I guess, the winemaking part. And this big group of people, we’ve just served the lunch. Everything is fantastic. Everyone’s having the greatest time. The wine glasses are filled. Well, won’t you know the head chicken? Poc Poc came in, jumped onto the table, did a lap of glory. Knocking wine glasses and chaos. Stomping in food. Kicking red wine onto people. Oh my God. I was just like, what are we gonna do?  I ran inside, opened the kitchen door. I was just like, Sean, that chicken is going in the pot. And our two daughters were sitting at the table and they both burst into tears. They were just like. We can’t eat Poc Poc.. Oh my God, it was so, so funny. Anyway, what was amazing is that all these folks – they didn’t know each other because it’s a group of maybe couples and friends that don’t know each other before –  but because some of them were staying, one of the ladies landed up with red wine on her on her white dress. So one of the ladies said, oh, I’ll lend you a dress. And they went off and they rinsed the dress and they exchanged contact details. They ended up meeting a couple of times that week then and stayed good friends. So like, wow.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:37 Bonding over a chicken.

Caro Feely 00:44:39 Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:40 Sure. And it didn’t even have to end up in the pot or pot puck.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:53 Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Caro. Here are my takeaways. Number one, What makes vine growing and winemaking so physically demanding? As Caro explains, it involves heavy machinery, tractors, attaching things to tractors, moving heavy pipes and other equipment around. Even hand-picking grapes is a fairly active sport. Removing the vine shoots or suckers at the base of the vine is a big job, and backbreaking winemakers don’t want these vine suckers to grow because they take nutrients from the grapes.

Natalie MacLean 00:45:03 Number two, what are the hidden dangers of winemaking that most wine lovers never hear about? Caro says that most wine lovers don’t realize just how dangerous winemaking is. There are four main killers of winemakers. The first one is asphyxiation by CO2. In fermentation, CO2, or carbon dioxide, is created. And if you don’t have a way for it to get out of closed spaces like the winery, you’re going to get asphyxiated. The second one is falling from a height, particularly if a little bit of CO2 has escaped and made you lightheaded. The next is machinery. So horrific things like falling into a harvest trailer and other unmentionables. And then there’s electrocution because you’re working with liquids and high electricity. Sounds gruesome. Very much opposite those gauzy ads we see for the wine life of owning a winery. And everybody’s in fine white linens on the veranda, sipping lovely wine, sparkling with sunlight. Anyhow, it’s good to know the reality.

Natalie MacLean 00:46:33 And number three, why are some winemakers choosing to label their wines as Vin de France rather than follow appellation rules? Caro says that almost all of her wines are labeled Vin de France because she felt so many of the appellation rules were not about the quality of the wine. She wanted to be free of those unnecessary constraints. For example, one biodynamic winemaker got kicked out of the appellation system because he had weeds under his vines. He handpicked his grapes. So it actually doesn’t matter if there are weeds under the vines. If you machine pick, the machine will kind of suck up the weeds. Caro would much rather have some weeds than use synthetic weed killer. Even when it comes to St. Emilion Grand Cru Classé and Premier Grand Cru Classé, Some growers get more appellation points for having a paved parking lot for tour guests than they receive for being certified organic. That’s nuts.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:31 In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Caro, links to her website and books the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now, no matter where you live. If you missed episode 311, go back and take a listen. I chat about how smell the Cinderella sense goes full princess on wine with scientist and professor Johannes Frasnelli.  I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.

Johannes Frasnelli 00:48:00 There’s a very interesting paper that came out five, six years ago by John McCann. He described that there is a myth about us not having a good sense of smell compared to other animals. This has its roots in the 19th century, where Darwinian ideas came up and became more important, and all of a sudden we were just another animal. Not this creation of God that stands out. So different players, including the Catholic Church, had to make sure that we are different from other animals. What makes the human human? It is sight, where we can read with it its language. Where we can talk, so it’s audition. These senses were the senses that we distinguish ourselves from the animals. And the other senses, where animals may be outperforming us, these are then lower senses. The consequence of this is that we thought this is less important for us. We would then also, as mankind, put much less effort into understanding how the sense of smell works, because that’s something that was reserved for rats and dogs and other species like this.

Natalie MacLean 00:49:03 You won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Caro Feely. If you liked this episode or learned even one thing from it, please email or tell a friend about the podcast this week, especially someone you know who’d be interested in learning more about Bordeaux or starting your own winery. It’s easy to find my podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, their favourite podcast app, or they can listen to the show on my website at nataliemaclean.com. Email me if you have a sip, tip question, or if you’d like to win one of five copies of the books we have to give away. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this episode, or if you’ve read my book or are listening to it. Email me at natalie@ nataliemaclean.com. In the show notes, you’ll find a link to take a free online food and wine pairing class with me called The Five Food and Wine Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner and How to Fix Them Forever at nataliemaclean.com/course

Natalie MacLean 00:49:56 And that’s all in the show notes at nataliemaclean.com/338. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week, perhaps a Bordeaux shared with family and friends. You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at nataliemaclean.com. Meet me here next week. Cheers.

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