Harvest

Yesterday I went to my family historical estate not far from Montreux. It's the place where they settled, around 1690, after the revocation of the Nantes edict. When my family arrived from France in Switzerland, they bought this estate and begun to exploit it, they built a large farmhouse that is still inhabited by members of my family. They also had a large vineyard until the 60ies, and a large part of the surrounding woods, but they were dispossed of a big part of it because a highway and a communation tower was built on it.

However, appart from the farm house, we still possess a small vineyard, and each year around mid-september, the family meet up there to pick up the grapes. We live in a blessed region, and from the vineyard, situated on the top of a hill, you can view all the mountains around the lake, and it's a sight that I'm never tired to look at. I love to go up there each year, to meet the rest of the family that I never see otherwise, and to work in the vineyard, exploited without interruption since the 13th century. We were 15 people, and worked the whole day. It's a hard work because the terrain is very steep, and we still work by hand, like hundreds years before, because no machine can operate in these conditions. We recolted 1.5 ton of grapes, and were finished around 5pm. That was time to open a few bottles from last year recolt, and chill, facing the lake and the mountains. I just wanted to share a few fotos with you: