Late last year, in October 2023, I had the opportunity to fulfill one of my long-harboured desires: getting my hands dirty while growing my understanding, appreciation and respect for winemakers, by spending some time working on a small scale vineyard in Quebec.

Les Soeurs Racines is a small family-run winery located on 20 acres of land in Saint-Ignace-de-Stanbridge (approximately 90 minutes outside of Montreal). Before putting their vines into hibernation for the season, owners/winemakers Sophie and Fred Ouellet-Lacroix had put up an Instagram post appealing to anyone with the time and desire to help out with the final grape harvest of the season. It was crunch time, and as extra enticement they had reserved the gîte (guesthouse) attached to their homestead – usually rented out on Airbnb – especially for volunteers who were willing to stay for more than a day’s work.

In my initial email response to the post, I described myself as “a hard worker, an athletic person, and an eager and quick learner, who is easy to get along with and possesses a good sense of humour (and humility).” I flaunted my “appreciation for local ingredients, food, drink (wine, beer, etc.) and terroir – and the people who devote themselves to growing and creating it”, and stressed that I had no illusions about the hard work that would lay ahead should I be selected to participate. Sophie wrote back that my email was “perfect”, and I was offered accommodations for four days and four nights while helping out at the vineyard.

The week that I arrived at Les Soeurs Racines, Autumn was just beginning. However, although the changing colours of the Quebec countryside were evidence of the shift in seasons, a summer-like heat was still blaring from the sun overhead. Most of the clouds I saw were nuages of bugs: leaf hoppers, ladybugs (which, I was told, are stirred up whenever a nearby farm’s corn has been harvested), and wasps – so many wasps! – attracted by the perforated, sugary fruit. I started my days in rubber boots and merino wool socks – the most practical choices when up to your knees in dewy grass. But by the afternoon, the black boots were sizzling in the sun, cooking my feet and lower legs, begging to be swapped out for something breathable.

Like the unpredictable weather, the number of volunteers on any given day was also a variable. If there were enough of us (approximately 8-10) then we spent the first four hours moseying down the rows of grape vines, pausing to sit on up-turned plastic buckets while using clippers to liberate and prune bunches of raisins before dropping them into a second bucket, which we each touted, becoming more heavy-laden with every stop. We moved in two lines on each side of the vines, working face-to-face with each other – volunteers as well as the vineyard full-timers, Anna and Vincent, and Fred and/or Sophie. At noon we all took a break to enjoy a communal lunch on the picnic tables positioned behind the house, overlooking a field where three veaux (veal calf) and numerous enormous white cochons (pigs) grazed.

We were well-fed: homemade meatballs with pasta one day, and two kinds of quiche made with farm fresh eggs on another; chicken pot pie and maple marinated pulled pork on others. The hearty main course was always accompanied by a new iteration of kale salad (their small vegetable garden amounted to a veritable kale forest), plus homemade sourdough, and fresh baked cookies for dessert. There were cans of cheap beer and bottles of excellent local cider from Ciderie Chemin des Sept aplenty – plus the occasional bottle of wine, natch.

After the luxurious, pastoral mid-day meal, it was back to the fields for another four(ish) hours of the same hard labour (or another variation of it), refuelled by ample nourishment and alcohol, which could have just as easily been conducive to faites de beaux rêves (sweet dreams).

When asked how a day of harvesting in the vines was, I usually answered, “sweaty and sticky”, because they were the first and most concise descriptors that popped into my head. The long answer: harvesting grapes – in this case, of the Melon, Gewürztraminer, and Chardonnay varietals – is physical, dirty, and repetitive work; but it’s also stimulating, tactile, rhythmic, grounding and sociable. Or at least it was at Les Soeurs Racines.

I had enrolled myself in this reality with no delusions. What I did have misapprehensions about, it turned out, was how I would spend my time not working while at the vineyard. I had planned on spending my downtime reading the copy of Grapes of Wrath I had (un-ironically) packed in my bag, or journalling about my experiences in the idyllic rural-lux setting of the gîte. Mais non! Each night my thoroughly exhausted body overrode my brain, shutting the whole thing down by nine o’clock.

I only put in four days of work – albeit full ones, under the blasting sun and pressure of a looming snap of cold and rainy weather in the forecast – but it was enough time to not just solidify but actually intensify my already strong appreciation for the people, places and processes involved in making wine. It’s truly a marvel the dedication, passion, persistence, trust, and strength possessed by those who choose to work with the land day-in and day-out, in all conditions for seven months of the year (or more). To be a winemaker is to participate in a perpetually evolving long-term relationship with a temperamental and whimsical collaborator. Getting into the grit, giving every ounce of your energy to a beautiful experiment (ie: New World wine), while never having any guarantees about what exactly will come out of it (or if it would even be good); simply knowing that all your hands-on hard work will leave an indelible impression on the final ephemeral product…which would eventually be consumed by strangers who, best case scenario, were discerning and intelligent enough to savour and consider it – I guess that’s what you’d call true “passion” and “commitment”.

I know that my short harvesting stint will sure as hell add an extra dimension to my own personal experience of selecting and drinking a glass of wine, regardless of the region it’s from – from the Okanagan to the Niagara, Quebec to France, Austria to Australia, etc. – just so long as it’s somewhere wine grapes are being naturally cultivated on a small scale. What goes into each and every bottle of handmade wine is obviously so much more than the 750ml of delicious liquid denoted on the label. What’s contained inside, unadvertised and largely unrealized by the average consumer, are: the memories, conversations and connections made while sweating (or shivering) in the vineyards; the educated, calculated and creative decisions, concessions and faith of the winemakers; and the knowledge imparted by the vineyard environments themselves (terroir).

If you truly care about good food and wine, and want to continue to enjoy it, then I think it’s important to seek out and take these opportunities when presented with them – even if it’s just for a day; even if your biggest takeaway is major props for the folks who stick it out and the realization, “I’m not cut out for it!” It’s one thing to be a conscientious consumer, support local, “shop small” and hit the Farmers Market – we should do all of those things, of course, whenever possible; I’m not knocking them, by any means – but it’s another thing altogether to take your appreciation out of your own comfortable context (in the case of wine, from your seat at the bar) and out to the fields, to really understand what’s involved in the process of making wine.

Below are some photos from my experience, taken on the rare occasion when my hands weren’t coated in a layer of juice, must and dirt…