Sour Grapes

Sour Grapes.

On this sweltering day in 1765, one of the hottest of the year in southwest France, the sounds of the horse-drawn two-wheeled cart carried far over the flat farmlands.

Corrine du Corbieres noticed the faint, far-off sounds first.

Corrine held her sun-browned hand to her eyes against the glaring sun and focused upon what was stirring the rising plume of brown dust that stained the otherwise clear blue sky.

A moment later, Corrine grunted in satisfaction as her supposition proved correct: He - de Bergerac - was here.

Corrine stepped out of the traditional grape press - the 20-foot-long by 4-foot-wide tiltable wooden trough - of ankle-deep, half-pressed black grapes and onto the dark, fertile soil, which stuck to the juice-slicked soles of her sun-bronzed bare feet.

Upon stepping from the trough, Corrine would usually stand and rub the soles of her feet against its rough outer planking in an up-and-down movement. By these means, she would dislodge the major lumps of juice-dampened soil before stepping into her well-worn sabots... But not this time. Corrine's gaze was too intent upon the cart's passenger.

The other eleven female grape crushers had now also ceased their grape-treading labours. Just like their forewoman, Corrine, they too were looking avidly across the regimented rows of grapevines at the slowly approaching and gradually clarifying horse-drawn two-wheeled cart and focusing their gaze not on the driver but on its single, standing passenger.

Corrine's sister grape pulverisers now stepped out of the knee-high, long wooden grape pressing trough and onto the dark soil.

And neither did they rub their bare feet against the trough's rough exterior boarding to free the bigger lumps of clingy nutrient-rich terroir that stuck to their juice-wettened soles, as they too normally would, before inserting their feet into their old or hand-me-down backless clog-like sabots.

Standing united in their land worker tatty, threadbare attire in their dirty bare feet, enmity emanated from their sweaty, sunburned faces as they glowered their bitter resentment at the slowly approaching cart.

The twelve weather-worn, hard-bitten, attitudinous young women made a formidable-looking reception party as they stood with their arms folded.

Gilles de Bergerac - aristocrat owner of appellation-supreme winery Chateau la Feete - was expected.

***

Driven by a Social Charter Committee appointee detailed to oversee Civil Punishment and Compensation proceedings, the horse-drawn two-wheeled cart arrived with its single passenger and, as pre-arranged, halted alongside the grape-pressing trough.

The driver got down from his seat, took off his three-cornered hat, walked between his cart and the rudimentary grape press and slid the bolt to drop the cart's sideboard.

Proud and unbowed, arrogance personified, stood Gilles de Bergerac.

Arriving directly from the expected negative outcome of his Judicial Hearing, splendidly attired in his powdered wig, gold-braided blue frock coat and silver-buckled shoe finery, the flaunting of such flamboyant symbols of privileged societal status served only to antagonise and inflame further the belligerence and envy of his penny poor employees.

Hands restrained behind his back - another grievous insult to his esteemed upper-echelon station - his great umbrage plainly written on his face, Gilles de Bergerac stared downward at the twelve perspiring sun-seared vengeful faces of his all-female workforce.

The all-female workforce that he had criminally wronged, according to the findings of the Social Charter's Judiciary of Appeal, upon their having now passed judgment upon the five primary complaints formally submitted to them last week by his forewoman Corrine du Corbieres:

1) Doubled this year, the rents of his workers' on-site wretched dwellings.

2) Reneged on his promised productivity bonus payments.

3) Withheld their wages for weeks at a time.

4) Behaved towards his employees licentiously - abusing his authority in a manner grossly inappropriate in an employer/employee relationship.

5) And - the most grievous of all: halved their daily wine allowance.

Gilles de Bergerac stared down at his twelve grape crushers' baleful gazes - at their hostile, pitiless faces... and knew he could expect no quarter. Not that he would have asked those harlots for any; his aristocratic pride would not permit it.

But, for all of his outward bravura, his acute anxiety at his unthinkable predicament - and his trepidation at his imminent punishment, was apparent.

For all of his proud defiance - for all of the disdain that he projected toward them in his inbred air of upper-class superiority - Gilles de Bergerac was sweating from more than the mid-afternoon heat.

Gilles de Bergerac jutted his goatee-bearded chin at the lower-class females he so disdained - but who, now, as never before, were staring right back at him, eye to eye.

Unflinchingly.

But not just unflinchingly - brazenly.

And not just brazenly - insolently.

And not just insolently.

Challengingly.

Apparently, behind their land workers' protective shield, afforded to them by the new Socialist government, who appreciated the vital importance of their wine-producing roles, they were all feeling safe and secure from him. After being assured of the unlikelihood of any unpleasant comebacks from their master, as any form of reprisals by him would result in the confiscation of his winery by the Socialist government, Gilles de Bergerac's twelve grape-treader employees stared up at him resolutely.

Gilles de Bergerac and others of the elite classes thought the new Socialist government were too big for their boots. The land workers' protective shield was the reason for his employees' newfound brazen confidence - their new air of authority-defying challenge.

Gilles knew what was coming - well, let it!

Gilles pointed his goatee-bearded chin at his twenty-five-year-old forewoman and glared his impotent rage - confound you!

Gilles de Bergerac had employed Corrine since she was eighteen, and she had always been rebellious - problematic from the start. Gilles had thought that promotion might assuage her, so he had promoted her to Head grape-treader at twenty-one. He would have done so in any case. Corrine had proved herself - her barefoot grape-treading expertise was second to none. But Corrine liked her wine too much - and now she had grown too big for her hand-me-down sabots.

Corrine du Corbieres, who, even as a small mark of due and proper respect after all he had done for her, still flatly refused to make curtsy to him and would not call him Monsieur. Either when he summoned her to the house to report to him or whenever he paid a surprise call on her and her team in the vineyard to chivvy the slacking, chin-wagging, morally bankrupt wenches to improved productive efforts.

And now, to cap it all, Corrine had lodged those charges with the Social Charter Committee's Judiciary of Appeal. But Gilles knew he only had himself to blame - he had pushed Corrine too far. He could get away with doubling their rents, withholding their wages, reneging on his promised productivity bonus payments, and pinching their pert bottoms; those flighty tarts and sex-hungry harlots enjoyed that kind of thing - but he should not have halved their daily claret allowance.

In achieving her nearsighted aims, Corrine was blemishing his untarnished name.

Corrine would bite her nose to spite her face. She did not care if her legal charges damaged her employer. It was nothing to her if she ultimately ruined her master - if his five-generations-old winery fell into the hands of the new Socialist government. The chip on her shoulder was too big.

Gilles realised that Corrine would not stop here - at her surprise success with the new Socialist government's Judiciary of Appeal. Emboldened, Corrine had challenged his authority - she would do so again.

And so now, his wine estate was direly imperilled - at stake through potential forfeiture.

If she could leave her claret in the bottle and stay sober long enough, Corrine would think of more ways to improve her situation to his detriment. As efficiently and thoroughly as she crushed and squeezed the last drop of juice from his full-to-bursting sun-ripened grapes under the soles and between the toes of her dirty bare feet, Corrine would wring him dry of his wealth and worth.

Corrine was fond of telling Gilles what she thought about when she was squishing his plump grapes with her toes... Gilles squeezed his thighs together in instinctive self-protection at his disturbing recollections of Corrine's fondest fantasies.

Corrine was uneducated - but not unintelligent. Gilles did not doubt her cunning ability and certainly not the steadfastness of her will to bring her thirty-year-old master to his knees at her feet - and to keep him there.

If only she could find a way to do it.

But Corrine's failing was that she was nearsighted - she thought only of today.

So, thanks to her claret-loving flaw, Gilles believed the worst and most far-reaching of Corrine's envious ambitions would remain unrealised.

Gilles had lorded over Corrine for seven years. He would lord over her for another seven. And then another seven. He would continue to thwart her best efforts to undermine him. He would keep her firmly in her place.

The rest of the wanton wine-guzzling wenches thought only of today, too.

The wine was their opiate: the cheap and readily available ameliorator of their dissatisfaction with their life conditions in general and, more particularly, as his employees.

Against his better judgement, several times, Gilles had given in to their insistent greedy demands and increased their daily wine allowance.

But the wanton wine guzzlers were never satisfied.

The wine-tippling tarts badgered him for more. Sometimes, coming up to the house in the late evening in their drunken state, bothering him and distressing his lady wife. They were uninhibited, to begin with - and even the meekest and most introverted could be very forthright and belligerently confrontational when well into her cups. Some of the brazen hussies had actually propositioned him in front of his lady wife for another bottle of wine.

This was why he had halved their claret allowance - he had to do something to try and curb the excesses of their drunken salaciousness.

But his wine-reduction response had backfired on him badly.

And, speaking of wanton wine-guzzling wenches, where would those flighty young tarts Celene, Yvette, Silvie, Dolores, Martine and Minette be without him? Selling themselves in the streets for cheap wine money and sleeping off the exhaustion of one and the excesses of the other in the rubbish-strewn gutter - that's where!

He'd saved them all from that: from their dissolute downward spirals into the rubbish-strewn gutter. Offering them well-paid work and putting them up for just a pittance of rent in his attached workers' chalet accommodations, he had saved them from themselves. But where was their gratitude? They were as unthankful as Corrine - another of the common bonds of the sisters in shame.

Not to mention those trollops Simone, Chantal, Collette, Anne-Marie - and especially Nicole. They were just a motley collection of drunkards, dregs of society street girls. Incorrigible, good-time girl harlots who, for the fun of it, would be all too happy to oblige an amorous gentleman's overtures for the price of a glass of dregsy bottom-of-the-barrel claret.

But he - Gilles de Bergerac - was making honest women of them.

In fact, all twelve of them:

The ne'er-do-well, nothing-but-trouble females who barefoot-trod his famed grapes. And for doing so, were accommodated comfortably, paid weekly, and amply provisioned with his renowned estate's fine claret daily.

The immoral women - who stepped down from his traditional grape press and onto the rich dark soil and carelessly shoved their cursorily cleaned, still dirty feet into their old, worn-out or hand-me-down clog-like wooden shoes to trudge to their mid-day meal. Or to shamble home to their on-site compact chalets at the end of another day's gainful employment.

Gilles de Bergerac had no problem giving his workers a good deal - it ran in the family. You had to - if you wanted to keep your best grape-treading women from defecting to a rival winery. Skill was involved - there was more to the work than standing and moving about on the grapes. It required women with expert feet. Some of them, like Corrine, were naturals, while others learned the skills by example.

Gilles de Bergerac wished he could rid himself of his slovenly female grape treaders. Disown and dismiss the whole damn disrespectful and disreputable lot of them. And so did his lady wife.

And now, as never before, he was sorely tempted - but it would be self-ruination. Something his lady wife understood all too well.

His competitor vineyards were undercutting his prices by investing in more modernised mechanical grape presses.

It was a simple question of economics: Less labour - more yield. Lower wage bill - higher profit margin.

From their weekly Wine Association dinner meetings, Gilles knew that his grape-growing colleagues regarded him eccentric, his de Bergerac traditional grape-treading methods antiquated.

But it was with good reason that the de Bergerac wine estate was a Small Packet producer.

Chateau la Feete was a wine of distinction.

Gilles' viticulturist forebears had all sworn, down the years, that barefoot female grape-treaders were accreditable for imparting his family's wine's distinctive, attractive bouquet and its immensely appealing, delectable flavours.

And it was their steadfast, emphatic opinions that the best vintages had been produced when the grape harvests had been barefoot-trodden exclusively by younger women - eighteen and nineteen-year-olds.

Profit wasn't everything. Reputation mattered. For his wine craft predecessors, and now himself, it was a question of quality over quantity.

Chateau la Feete's bouquet was seductive.

And, once tasted...

Chateau la Feete, a sumptuous full-bodied red, was an exquisite olfactory treat and a gustatory luxury. The wine titillated the taste buds with a tantalising extravagance of gorgeous flavours and then prolonged the discerning claret drinker's delight with its long and lingering subtle finish.

Wonderfully appealing to both male and female tastes, many had been enchanted by the wine's indefinable but strangely satisfying allures.

That was the de Bergerac family's winning wine-producing formula: Grapes, barefoot-trodden exclusively by female feet.

So, even after he had undergone and endured what was imminent, Gilles would not think of losing a single, solitary one of them - girl grape-treaders these days were in such fiendishly short supply.

Usually, young female workers of such cut and calibre as his preferred to go into domestic service for the upper classes. Though working hours were long and demanding, they would rather live with all found at one of the big, well-to-do houses where servants far outnumbered the pampered family members.

But, as they would soon discover, there would not only be their employer's family to serve - to wait on, hand and foot. There would be an endless stream of their monied and manicured guests to attend, catering to their soiree circuit, Champagne-swilling, late-night party lifestyles.

But it was better than treading grapes or tending the vines every day.

And the domestic work wasn't without its pleasurable bonuses.

In the evenings, expensive fine wines didn't just fill the cut-crystal glasses and find their way down the cultivated throats of the beautifully dressed lovely ladies and the handsome gentlemen. No - not a little of it found its way down their own, undiscerning throats, too.

And, if a girl wasn't backwards in being forward with her favours...

Damn them all - Corrine and her slovenly string of claret-craving harlots.

But he needed them! Every ungrateful, impudent, inebriate, sluttish one of them.

By order of the local Social Charter bureaux of Bordeaux, Gilles was bound to pay his forewoman Corrine du Corbieres and her team of grape treaders a compensatory sum of francs and a placating quantity of de Bergerac Estate claret.

But also, under terms set out in the Social Charter, to avoid forfeiting his vineyard - the low-yield, high-quality Small Packet wine estate his family had run for five generations - to show remorse, Gilles must compliantly submit to his other penalty: a 'Punishment to Fit the Crime'.

***

The Social Charter Committee appointee removed Gilles de Bergerac's hand restraints. And at the appointee's prompting with a gesture of his three-cornered hat for Gilles to cross the narrow divide from the cart to the long wooden grape-pressing trough alongside and to lie down on his back in the midsection, again Gilles jutted his goatee-bearded chin and glared his rage at his successful accuser and now punisher-in-chief Corrine before compliantly doing so. An empty gesture - but all he had left.

The ankle-deep juice from the half-pressed black grapes seeped through the back of Gilles de Bergerac's trousers, saturated his blue frock coat, and soaked his powdered wig as he laid himself supine in the midsection of the traditional grape-pressing trough as directed by the appointee.

Hands unbound, Gilles placed his arms by his sides - where he must, on all accounts, keep them. Otherwise, his declared acceptance of and compliance with his punitive sentence would be adjudged insincere and unremorseful by the monitoring Social Charter Committee appointee - with the attendant catastrophic consequences.

Gilles craned his neck to look up at the now, staring down faces of his twelve-strong all-female grape-treading workforce who looked down into the trough at him... and then sank back, resigned to his ignominious fate.

From the eager, anticipatory expressions on their deeply suntanned, older-than-their-years faces, Gilles knew he would be shown no mercy - given no quarter.

Very well, then, he thought - so be it!

But - what about from now on?

Because he had been ratted on by Corrine, the Social Charter Committee were on to him - so he would have to watch his step from now on. At a minimum, he would have to pay their weekly wages on time, pay them his promised productivity bonuses, and stop pinching their pert bottoms - even though he knew that those tarts and harlots liked that kind of thing.

Corrine had complained to the local Social Charter Committee that, in both a financial and a metaphorical sense, Gilles de Bergerac had been walking all over his all-female workforce.

And so, to suffer a Social Charter Committee adjudicated 'Punishment to Fit the Crime' - a demonstrative act of sorrowful and sincere regret - reluctantly, but of necessity, in addition to paying all of them a sum of francs and supplying each of them with a quantity of his estate's fine claret, he had consented to his twelve, all-female workforce literally walking all over him - to be body-trampled.

And, where better than in the grape-pressing trough?

As successfully petitioned by Corrine.

And so, as there was sufficient room for all twelve of his female grape-crushing crew to step into the traditional long wooden grape-pressing trough to administer his Social Charter Committee prescribed comeuppance - individually and as one - it was so decreed.

***

Corrine felt assured and had faith in the trustworthiness of the land workers' protective shield, as afforded to them by the new Socialist government. But she could understand why some of her more reticent younger underlings still had concerns and did not share her confidence in the authorities to stand by their word. It was a prodigious leap of faith.