Black sheep

How delightful it was earlier today to see a little herd of black sheep grazing in the vineyard near us. When we first stopped they started to scurry away, but soon realised we were friendly and decided to comeback and say hello.

Champagne production, and especially the care of the vineyards, is incredibly manually intensive, as we’ve witnessed over the years we’ve lived here. Tractors are used for a lot of tasks, but just imagine having to prune 80,000 grapevines by hand for instance. I have to admit when we are out walking and see the mammoth task the vignerons have in front of them, we realise it’s no wonder the Champenois are always willing to look at other ways of working.

Weeding is one of the jobs that can be done by tractor, but it requires a great degree of technical skill and planning to be successful, and damage to the vines is always a risk. So it’s great to see how one of the vigneron near us has taken to putting sheep into their vineyards. They obviously do a great job of nibbling away all the weeds, with the added bonus that any manure they produce will help improve the soil quality. However it’s not an all year round solution, only late, or early, in the year, as when the vines begin to bud the sheep will nibble those too.