In the Vendée countryside, there was a way of working: together, at dawn, in the dew, with open hearts and full hands. When harvest time came, the family rose before the sun. Coffee steamed on the table, baskets waited by the barn, and boots lined up like promises.

The field was quiet. The conscripts still slept somewhere under the eaves or at the neighbors’. But we were there. Marguerite gave the instructions, André checked the tools, and I, the little one, had my feet tucked into an old sneaker. Not in the cellar, but in the rows, between two lines of vines. The juice was cold and sticky when I crushed the grapes with my feet. I laughed, and the grown-ups did too softly, the way you laugh when the day begins.

Work moved forward in silence. The shears snapped, the baskets filled, and gestures passed from hand to hand without a word. It was serious, yes, but never sad. We worked hard, but we worked together. And that changed everything.

Around ten o’clock, the conscripts arrived. Tousled hair, loud voices, pockets full of jokes. They carried the baskets while singing, cut the grapes while daring each other, and turned every row into a playground. But they worked with heart, with pride. Because they knew this wine was the one we’d drink when they came home.

In the stone-carved cellar, the old press waited. When the juice began to flow, thick and red, André placed his hand on the wood and closed his eyes. He said nothing, but we knew: this was the moment. The wine was born. And with it, memory.

In the evening, we set the table beneath the linden tree. Planks on trestles, checkered cloths, mismatched plates. Children ran between legs, the grown-ups laughed loudly, and my grandmother brought the soup in her cast-iron pot, like an offering.

The conscripts sang: “One more little glass of wine, One more little glass of nothing…” And everyone joined in, even those who’d forgotten the words. Bread passed from hand to hand, pineau swirled in the glasses, and stories were traded like seeds.

Working together that was it. It was becoming one with the land, with your people, with memory. It was turning effort into celebration, and wine into remembrance.

And later, when we opened a good bottle for a special occasion a baptism, a long-awaited return, a Sunday reunion the cork popped like a burst of memory. The scent of wine rose from the glass like the mist of a Vendée morning, and everything came back: the full baskets, the shy laughter, the feet in cold juice, the conscripts’ songs, André’s hand on the press, Marguerite’s gaze above the pot.

Sometimes, no one said a word. We simply raised our glass, and in that gesture, there was everything: shared labor, passed-down gestures, beloved soil, and absent loved ones. The wine had kept the memory. It spoke without words. It bound generations like the bread passed from hand to hand beneath the linden tree. And in every sip, there was a little of that autumn light, a little of that joyful fatigue, a little of that Vendée that never fades.