Found a new pub & vendage ends

Mum, dad and I went for a bit of a drive yesterday and, after a somewhat circuitous route, finished up in Chalabre. Now I have never been there before and dad was thirsty so we stopped to look around. To my delight we homed in a cheerful looking bar and ordered drinks all round. I have to say they certainly do a good bowl of draught water there, not that dad was interested in that of course.

Me outside the new pub

Sad day today as, at about seven o'clock this morning a very large and noisy grape picking machine went up the hill, woke up my mum,  and started harvesting Uncle Francois' merlot grapes. These are the last grapes to be picked in my neck of the woods so now my choice of early morning snack is limited to those grapes that either the pickers or the machines have missed. Mind you, there are a fair amount of those, and as the leaves fall off the vines it gets easier to find them! Probably enough to keep me going for a few weeks yet.

Still enjoying lots of nice sunny hot days here although apparently the pool has cooled to socially unacceptable temperatures, not that I would know. Suppose I had better go and bag a few more rays.

Scary dogs and creature comforts

The other day my best mate, Lilly, came round to lunch with her mum and dad. The humans, as per usual, gathered round the table and got stuck into loads of food and the bottle stuff.

I had not seen her for a while so there was a lot of catching up to do, a bit of lizard hunting, and then we decided to have a contest to see who could look the scariest dog. I won, of course!

Today mum and dad went shopping and came back with a lovely present for me. It is a super soft rug to go in the conservatory in front of my day bed. Those of you who know how much I like my home comforts will appreciate that I took to it straight away and have hardly been off it since.

In fact, it is so comfortable I might just have to try it out for a quick nap.

I've found my ideal job

I was browsing through the local paper the other day when I came across a very interesting article. It was talking about the methods used by wine growers in our region to tell when the time is right to harvest the grapes. Traditionally this has been done by measuring the sugar content of the grapes using a reflectometer or by doing a more detailed analysis in the lab looking at other features such as acidity levels.

However, it appears that increasingly some growers are abandoning the time honoured methods in favour of using taste buds. And here I don't just mean their taste buds, but more importantly those of their dogs. One grower reported that he decides when it is time to harvest when "his dog decides to start eating the grapes".

Those of you who follow this blog will be well aware of my penchant for the noble grape but I am fussy in ensuring their ripeness first. It would appear, therefore, that I have found my ideal role in life - that of Chief Taster of the Grapes. 

Me at work in my new role

On that basis they should have started harvesting here last week as I have been busy munching grapes for about 10 days now - but they are only just getting round to it in our locale. Don't say I didn't tell them, and don't blame me for a duff vintage!