Life after Death continued...

Here’s the second instalment of Life After Death, the story of how I began again after my husband died. Today I’m going to tell you how I believe the universe rewards you when you’re brave…

By 2014 fourteen years had passed since John had died and I’d somehow reached the grand old age of sixty. My wine tourism business had really taken off and by then I had a wonderful team working alongside me and four little buses to drive my clients around the beautiful Languedoc.

I really enjoyed designing the tours. I selected great wineries that made delicious wines and found beautiful routes through stunning landscapes to reach them. Of course, the wine had to be good but it was the people who made them that were crucial to the experience. I didn’t only want to take customers wine tasting. I wanted them to be fascinated by the stories they heard and understand the hard work, passion and commitment it takes to be a wine maker.

I also wanted to immerse my customers in Languedoc’s culture, so the tours included visits to beautiful villages, goat farms to taste local cheese and to honey or olive oil producers. I even designed a tour that included a slow cruise along the Canal du Midi enjoyed while sipping chilled rosé and learning how the Canal is the oldest in Europe.

The tourism season was a busy one for me and my team. It started in March and finished abruptly mid-October by which time we were all pretty tired and happy to take the winter off. Previous to buying my cottage in 2014, I’d always returned to my home in England for the winter but that year I spent it decorating and getting the cottage just how I wanted it. I loved it but I was very lonely. Every day I would take a walk through the vineyards pinching myself that at last I lived in France but also wishing I had someone to share it with.

Languedoc is very quiet in the winter months and its cold..! The second winter in my cottage was one of the coldest and loneliest times of my life so I vowed I’d go back to England the following year and thank goodness I did. That’s where I met my ‘new’ husband in January 2017. His name is Fisher. Well actually its Kevin but that’s not one of my favourite names so with his permission I call him by his last name and it really suits him.

When we met he was retired and living in the UK but just three months later I’d managed to lure him to France. He wasn’t exactly kicking and screaming but we both knew it was the only way to find out if we could make a life together. Languedoc spun its magic, and he fell hopelessly in love with the region as well as with me..!

One day when I was out running a tour he climbed over the garden wall to explore a ruined building next door. When I came home he showed me a video of the dilapidated old winery. It was like stepping back in time. Cartwheels lent against the crumbling walls, harnesses and bridles still hung on hooks and there was even a carriage hanging from the rafters minus its wheels. In the days when it had been a working winery, horses had ploughed the land, hauled the harvests in and moved the barrels. In fact, up until the 1940’s horses were counted as the second most important inhabitants in the villages around here.

Abandoned nearly seventy years ago the building stood empty and forgotten and seemed about to fall down. I knew the owner and I also knew the building had been up for sale for a long time, mainly because he was asking too much money for it. But I don’t think that was why it hadn’t sold; more likely it needed someone with vision and deep pockets. Our pockets were shallow but we had buckets of vision or, as many of our friends put it, a wealth of stupidity…

We offered half the asking price and were refused. There was a bit of ‘backwards-ing and forwards-ing’ and in the end we walked away but a week later the owner caved in and we bought our ugly ducking in November 2017. Fisher and I had been together less than a year…

We had a Grand Design but no grand budget and that meant no money for an architect, but we found a woman who could draw plans and set about designing it ourselves. We would turn the stable into the garage and keep the rest of the ground floor open plan. Upstairs was just one enormous space enclosed by the four stone walls and what remained of the roof. It was a blank canvas and we had fun deciding how to divide it up into bedrooms.

This floor was reached by ladder and choosing the position of the staircase was key to how we would design the whole space. We thought of various options but in the end put it on the wall that divides the living area from the stable. Organically that decision led us to create a bedroom above the stable then we divided the remaining space into three further bedrooms, all with en-suite bathrooms - it’s a big-ish house, 285 square meters.

Once the plans were drawn up we submitted them to the marie (townhall) and very quickly received permission to go ahead. The Old Winery is in a prominent position by the river and I think they were keen to have us rescue it and remove the eyesore.

Miraculously we sold my cottage and Fishers UK house very quickly and with the money set to work with a husband and wife team who got things going. Through them we contracted a local construction firm to carry out all the big works starting with a concrete block and beam ceiling. This replaced the wooden beams and flooring which broke our hearts, but it was the right decision. The wood wasn’t in good condition having been left open to the elements for decades plus it tied the walls in which were rather unstable..!

But all was not lost. From the outset we were determined to reuse as much of the original materials as possible and preserve what was feasible. We managed to find two fantastic artisans who built our floating staircase out of the old ceiling beams. Homes were found for all the carts and cartwheels, keeping one for ourselves and Fisher had a grand old time re-purposing all the old metal bolts, handmade nails and other ironmongery lying around the place. We had to have the wine press removed, it wasn’t a pretty thing, just a big rusty screw thrusting from the floor exactly where we wanted to place the kitchen. Below it is a huge underground tank where the pressed wine would have flowed and this we repurposed by hooking it up to the gutter and collecting rainwater.

In the days when The Old Winery was built, wine was made in foudre which are massive wooden barrels that reach the ceiling but they were not ideal. Often they would leak and controlling temperatures was impossible. If it was a cold day fermentations would stop and if it was hot they would race. Our place had once been filled with them, but modernisation had also come in the form of concrete tanks of which we had two, one inside and one out in the courtyard. These we also repurposed making a wine store and pantry with inside one and Fisher has set up as his art studio in the other.

When we began the project it’s fair to say we didn’t know one another very well and had no idea of each other’s strengths or talents. Fisher is strong and practical and was able to get involved with the heavy work right from the start while I took on the role of project manager. I also planned the interior design but couldn’t really get my hands dirty until the building work was complete. Lockdown saw me painting the whole thing myself and I have fond memories of the ‘thinking time’ that gave me – space to plot my novel…

We moved in during May 2020 and spent the rest of that year finishing it off. It had taken nearly three years to complete and certainly tested our relationship, but we got through it pretty much unscathed. It’s our proudest achievement, that and meeting each other and making a wonderful new life. And somehow its seems very fitting for a wine nut like me to be living in an old winery.