Pick grapes for a day at the harvest
The first cut surprises you: secateurs snip, not tear, and the stem should give without you tugging the vine. By seven the dew has soaked through your boots. By eleven your back has stopped complaining, mostly because it has given up. A wasp works the split skins of a bunch two feet from your face and nobody flinches, because everyone has been stung twice already and lived. The vendange moves north as the weeks go, starting in the Roussillon in late August, finishing near Champagne in October. You get paid for this. Lunch runs two hours and involves cheese in a quantity that would alarm a doctor.
Practical
- Cost
- Free – paid seasonal work
- Best time
- Late August in southern France through to October further north
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time it takes
- Typically 1–3 weeks under contract
- What people get wrong
- People treat it like a holiday and skip the paperwork; most positions are proper seasonal contracts requiring ID or work eligibility, and turning up without gloves or old clothes is a common regret by hour two.
- With
- A group