Frustration and the levels thereof...

P got up to an email this morning from our Cave saying there is a problem with our replanting this year and can we please call them urgently.

After a very frustrating meeting, in which I'm sure I babbled incomprehensibly in very poor angry, tired french we are frankly non- the wiser. We do however have a meeting on wednesday am with the Duanes.

Basically it seems that back in the dark-ages when some of our vines were planted they were registered as being on a bit of land, when in reality they were on three. No-body corrected it and when we did our pulling out forms and things were looked at on the satellite it became clear. Now it seems that we have another problem because our Ugni-blanc is only a table wine, or rather, was, as we've pulled it out. They now say we can't replace it with AOC without filling in a form, paying some money and waiting. The most important part of this is, we can't replant all the parcels we've arrached, because, wait for it, you can only apply for the AOC when there are no vines in the ground. One lot of bureaucrats won't talk to another and P is loosing his sense of humour!

My frustration at not being able to speak good enough French is building, sadly not at the same rate as my french is improving.

Everyone think nice calming positive thoughts for Weds and lets hope it's one of those occasions where it does all get sorted out, as opposed to those where, we leave with more problems than we arrived with.