Work your way around France
By Susan Griffith
Published: 14 January 2006
I recall the mounting excitement and apprehension circa 1978, as a rattly old bus crammed with mainly monolingual British students headed out of Epernay in the failing autumn light. None of us knew our destinations and it soon became apparent neither did the driver. The bus negotiated increasingly narrow lanes searching for a local to give directions to the vineyards of the Champagne region, where the grape-pickers were to be decanted in ones and twos. I don't recall if the aptly named Bouzy was among the stops.
"Grape-picking" unlike, say, "potato-weeding" is sometimes to be found in the same sentence as "romance". Those who like to quaff rustic wines carry with them an image of a vine-covered hillside rising behind a turreted château. From there it is easy to conjure a picture of gliding through the rows of vines as the soft sunlight shimmers on the foliage, gathering the abundant fruit of the land.
Pure romance, added to which is the serious feasting that rewards the hard work of harvesting. In many places vendangeurs will be invited to join the celebrations at the end of the harvest. Long tables will be erected in the barn, perhaps, laden with platters of charcuterie and rillettes, Tomme and Chèvre, rabbit cooked in red wine, fruit tarts, bottomless flagons of last year's vintage. The harvest festival might be rounded off with homemade eau de vie made from plums. Pure romance, and - despite the trend towards mechanisation - it is still just about possible to participate in the grape harvest in France. Enough farmers have resisted the temptation to invest in noisy mechanical juggernauts to leave opportunities for hand-pickers, especially in prestige châteaux-producing Grand Cru wines, Beaujolais, Chablis and Champagne.
Many of the aspiring grape-pickers who fan out over France in September and October are migrant workers from the new EU member countries and from former French colonies, attracted through economic necessity rather than romance. All the same, travellers from Britain and elsewhere can still find vineyards offering space for sleeping bags in their barns or a field for pitching a tent, as part of the rewards for many hours of hard labour each day.
Many pickers are paid the French minimum wage (le SMIC), currently €7.61 (£5.40) per hour, with a small daily deduction for board and lodging. Others are happy to offer their labour in exchange for the cultural, not to mention culinary, experience. These happy wanderers have often followed up a personal connection with a wine-grower, perhaps through an expatriate friend in the village.
The work itself will consist either of cutting grape bunches with secateurs, or portering. Picking involves bending to get the grapes from a vine that may be barely a metre tall, and filling a pannier dragged along behind.
The first few days as a cueilleur/cueilleuse or coupeur (picker) are the worst, as you adjust to the stooping posture and become reacquainted with long-neglected muscle groups. The full panniers are emptied into an hotte, a large basket weighing up to 50kg, which the porters carry to a trailer.
Harvest dates differ dramatically from year to year: a late spring frost or a rainy summer can wreak havoc with schedules. If you are to have any chance, your timetable in September/October must be flexible enough to allow travel at seven to 10 days' notice. The average start date in Bordeaux is 25 September; further north in Alsace the norm is 15 October. Most vineyards employ pickers for no more than 18 days and sometimes for less than a week. The best plan is to contact the relevant ANPE office (Job Centre) or Chambre d'Agriculture in August, many of which set up special desks for the vendange. For example the ANPE in Orange recruits pickers for Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the ANPE in Colmar fills vacancies in Alsace, and the Chambre d'Agriculture in Lons-le-Saunier operates a seasonal employment office for the Jura.
If you are prepared to pay a €99 (£50) fee to avoid the scramble for a job, Dutch agency Appellation Controlée (www.grapepicking.co.uk) arranges jobs in the Beaujolais or Mâconnais regions north of Lyon for up to 500 people over 18 and in good health. The very same youth exchange organisation that was behind my eventful tour of Champagne nearly three decades ago, Jeunesse et Réconstruction, still arranges grape-picking jobs in Champagne and Beaujolais (www.volontariat.org/2/jr_29.html).
Some agricultural jobs are even shorter than the vendange, like the perplexingly named "maize castration" or l'écimage. Carried out in July, it consists of plucking off the flowers of the male maize plants so that they can't pollinate the female plants. According to the ANPE in the town of Riom in the Auvergne, the working period lasts only a few days, no accommodation is provided and the starting date is not known until the very last minute. It might be more worthwhile to make contact with one of the almost 300 French farms practising organic agriculture that accept volunteers on a work-for-keep basis; details are available after joining WWOOF International (Willing Workers on Organic Farms; www.wwoof.org) for £15.
A fortnight's harvest is hardly long enough to get to grips with the language and culture. Longer-term possibilities include working a summer season on a campsite or a winter in a ski resort. Unless you are fluent in French, the best chances are with UK tour operators or at British-run holiday centres. Among Britons, a summer spent by the seaside looking after children can do wonders for your French - yet au pairing seems to have become almost as obsolete as hitch-hiking. It is not difficult to arrange, even for males, through one of the many agencies that belong to the Union Française des Associations Au Pair (www.ufaap.org).
France is a hard nut to crack for anyone who wants to teach English. Sophisticated French language learners tend to look for teachers with experience not just of teaching English but of the business world. An education authority in the Vendée offers a programme to people aged 18-25 with an A-level in French to assist in local primary schools and lycées (www.explomr.com/english).
Gap-year students can earn a little more (but speak less French) by working for a UK company, French Encounters, which runs field trips for British school children in Normandy between February and June (www.frenchencounters.com).
Susan Griffith is the author of Work Your Way Around The World, published by Vacation Work Publications (www.vacationwork.co.uk).
by Independent.co.uk
