The wine
harvest is the high moment of viticulture
and there are even people who pay to cut grapes. But for those who work by
need, the party is only in the first and last days. This is a report/story of a
day spent in one wine harvest in Douro, which this year was destroyed (more
than 20%) by the mildew and hail.
One more day,
the same routine, always with their backs bent, sometimes squatting or even on
their knees to reach the most hidden bunch. The harvest starts at seven in the
morning, but after ten the heat starts to difficult the job.
However, the day only ends at 4 pm.
First hours.
Each one with their group and their row of vines. This is the most productive
moment of the day. The conversations are
about soap operas, the last football game and the crisis, anything to break the
monotony. The boxes begin to fill with grapes, one after the other.
Midmorning. At
11 am, the youngest start looking at their watch. Lunch is only at 12 am,
still one hour to go. Now, there is just one break per day to eat something
that we bring from home with friends and family. One hour to rest our backs and
legs.
We are about
ten people, but no one sings. What we hear is just complaints of a sad and poor
life, without money for anything. The school is starting and the money they
raise isn’t enough for children´s books and to survive.
This year was
tough in Douro because of mildew and hail. There are people who lost
everything. The break in the whole region, if there are not many grapes from
the neighboring regions and wine coming from Spain, should be higher than 30%
percent. The quality is still unknown. In one of the hottest seasons ever, the
grapes have reached the point of ripeness with surprisingly low levels of
alcohol. But that is a subject to be talked in the cellar.
Any shadow is
enough to have a snack. There are Portuguese and Romanian workers, people who were
sent by the contractor and other people from the nearest village. At the peak
of the harvest, it is a daily struggle for everyone, whether young or older, native or foreign from Ukraine, Romania, Moldavia, Bulgaria or
elsewhere. The Douro and the whole Portuguese countryside is today a place of
multiple languages and religions.
This time there are only adults. In another day, it was different: "Do you already have Portuguese nationality?", I asked the young Romanian woman who had been harvesting with tiredness, not very enthusiastic about the idea of cutting grapes, with her Romanian boyfriend, always beside her watching the other men. She, timid and ashamed, answered in perfect Portuguese: "Not yet. I can only apply for it at the age of fourteen". Until that moment, she was a worker like any other. After all, she was a 13 years old child, with a woman's body, but a child, half-Portuguese from the years she takes in Vila Nova de Foz Côa, studying and working in the countryside like her parents. "Shouldn't you be in school?" "Not worth it. In a few days we will go to Romania to work in the vineyards too. We miss it".
Child labor, a
crime which the inspectors of the Authority for Working Conditions are
investigating. They all pay: the agricultural contractor who hired the teenager
and the winemaker who hired the contractor. The teenager, like any woman,
receives 28 euros a day from the contractor (men receive 30 euros) and the
vineyard pays the contractor 38 euros for each worker (whether male or female)
plus taxes. The contractor offers the transport and pays the insurance and
contributions of the workers (except the children, of course!). It's business.
One party?
When I was 13 years old, I almost
begged to cut grapes or pour buckets. We used to earn a few pennies and then we
returned home at sundown. It was hard, and yet, every year we longed to go back
to the vineyards and the wineries, while the school did not reopen. But the
vineyards aren't for children, nor for old people, much less in the
Upper Douro, where temperatures reach over 40 degrees Celsius.
Three in the afternoon. The last
hour is always torture. The thermometer should be closer to 50 than 40 degrees.
It looks like fire is falling from heaven and rising from the earth, and the
wind – when it comes - is also made of fire. Everything burns: the wires that
hold the vines, the sticks that hold the wires, the leaves that protect the
grapes, the grapes themselves. You can only find some comfort in the filtered
shadow of the streakiest vines, still living from the rain that fell during the
spring and the first weeks of summer. The fresh water refreshed the mouth for a
moment, but soon the sweat became salty ardor in the eyes.
The vineyards are not in the desert,
but in Foz Côa, in the Upper Douro, there are vineyards and the place is almost
desert: it rains as much as in the Sahara, the landscape is arid and in the
summer months there is always a steaming slush in the air.
You can see by their faces and their
walking that they have reached the limit: the retired septuagenarian of France
who agreed to give a few days "at the request of his nephew" and the
constructor; the girl who cuts grapes with cigarettes in her hand; her mother;
the sad widow who barely speaks; the sexagenarian, newly separated, limping; the
man in charge, proud of the production; the Romanians who always walk together,
whispering in Romanian and asking in Portuguese: "And now, chief?".
And now we're leaving, half an hour
earlier. No one speaks, but the silence is the sign of thanksgiving and relief.
The ordeal is over, but the men still have a truck to carry with boxes of
grapes for a few extra euros. For many, the next day, the hottest of the year,
is going to be worse. Who said harvesting is a party?
