What Picking Grapes In Switzerland Taught Me About Life And Back Pain

We’ve teamed up with Heineken to introduce you to some men and women who have chosen to go beyond their borders, challenge the status quo, say ‘why not?’ instead of ‘it can’t be done’ — and as a result have made the world a more interesting place for the rest of us. For more people worth watching, head here.

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The mountains in Switzerland, as you may have heard, are notoriously steep. Around Lake Geneva, they drop down to the water at near-45-degree angles and for some genius reason, a few centuries ago a bunch of monks decided they should build terraced vineyards on those steep slopes, and make them accessible only by precarious stone stairways.

The white wine they make from those rare Chasselas grapes is spectacular: crisp, delicate and award-winning. And expensive, because the only way you can harvest the grapes is by hand. Since the ‘60s, the grapes for most mass-produced wines have been harvested by machine; in the Swiss grape harvest (La vendange), they do it all using nothing except the five-fingered meat-claws that we were born with.

The pickers snip bunches of grapes with secateurs, sitting hunch-backed and working their way along the rows of vines as they fill big plastic tubs. The porters then load these full boxes – usually three at a time – onto hooked harnesses on their backs and walk them slowly down the steep stairways to the truck, which carts the grapes away to be crushed, fermented and sold at outrageous prices.

The work is back-breaking: 13-hour days from sunrise at 6am through to sunset at 7pm. The pay is not inspiring: $100 Swiss Francs a day, which at the conversion rate of the time (2004) was AUD$110, or about $8.50 an hour.

That year the pickers were mostly tough nonnas from the north of Italy making some summer cash to supplement their meagre pensions, while the porters were either grizzled, chain-smoking Portuguese dudes or sportif Frenchmen whose idea of a good time was running two marathons back-to-back. And then, for one agonising 11 day stretch, there was me: a lazy Australian exchange student, grown soft and decadent after a year in France on a diet of €4 pizza and €3 wine.

I needed the cash – I’d burned through most of my funds drinking my way around Western Europe with the other students. The winery hook-up came through old family friends, so I was brought in like a surrogate son. But I could never have  prepared myself for just how fucking hard the work was going to be.

Back then, aged 21, I weighed a shade under 60 kilos, none of it muscle. A full load of three grape buckets weighed about 50 kilos. The first time they loaded me up and sent me down to the truck, I wobbled like a newborn calf and pitched sideways, spilling everything. Oh, how they laughed.

It got easier – after about eight days. By the second day, I’d lost the feeling in my fingertips (I figured it’d be easier lifting the buckets onto the harnesses of other porters, rather than carrying them myself. I was wrong). By the third day, two porters had quit (a taciturn German IT guy and a Swiss teen), and I had taken to wrapping a jumper around my shoulders to buffer the permanent bruises from the harness straps.

The Portuguese guys were hardcore: after years of full-time grape picking, following the harvest season around Europe, they’d turned their bodies into lean, tanned calluses. The spines of the elderly Italian pickers were curved by the weight of years, so sitting bent double all day seemed like no trouble at all. For me, it was near constant torture.

The greatest reward was the food – spectacular lunches and dinners of potato gratin, veal, pasta and tongue in lemon sauce – and the never-ending flow of wine. They’d bust out the first bottle of cleanskin with the mid-morning tea, served as always with cheese and chocolate, and mix a half cup of red in with the tannin-rich tea (it doesn’t taste as bad as it sounds).

Then the bottles would stay open all day. After you’d successfully pack-horsed a load of buckets down the long stairway to the truck, the foreman would unload and reward you with a short glass of white to knock back. It kept a constant trickle of alcohol in your system throughout the day: never enough to approach tipsy, but enough to act as a little anaesthesia for your back and legs.

The scenery was spectacular, the people were hilarious (despite the fact we could only communicate in broken French) but the work – lugging heavy loads up and down those ancient steps – was so hard that for six months afterwards, my knees clicked every time I took a step, and my shoulders still crunch over a decade later.

Nepalese Sherpas, backpackers who have to grape-pick for slave wages to extend your visas,  and all other physical labourers of the world – I feel a fraction of your pain. However, the whole experience did teach me a few valuable things: that throwing yourself into situations where you have no idea what you’re in for can be both valuable (in terms of good anecdotes) and painful (literally); that you’re probably tougher than you think you are; and that a little splash of liquor goes a long way.

I’d never, ever do it again. But if you’re after a challenge you’ll never forget (and one that pays), then have a crack at the Swiss vendange. Ask for the Massy family of Lavaux. They’ll take excellent care of you, and you might even emerge without permanent physical damage.

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Nick Jarvis is the editor of global dance music community inthemix, and the former editor of Time Out Beirut, The Brag and 3D World. He writes for Junkee, AWOL and various other outlets.

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Photo Credits: Adrian Jarvis