Winemaker’s Journal — Guillaume

Some silences speak louder than any briefing.
I am three years into my time at Sababay.
Three years of brutal sun, sudden rains, early grapes, and watchful eyes.
When I arrived, I did what I had always done.
I asked questions.
I gave instructions.
I analyzed.
And then I understood:
here, you have to listen first.
Not just to people — but to the vines, to the climate, to the winery itself.
To the low hum of tanks fermenting too fast.
To fruit that refuses to wait.
The map I carried in my head did not match the territory.
So I began again.
I learned to listen without rushing to correct.
Without assuming I knew.
By observing.
By tasting.
By breathing more slowly.
The vineyard is alive.
Too alive.
The vine does not sleep here.
It grows. All the time.
It runs, it climbs, it races.
You do not force it — you guide it.
There is no talk of dormancy.
Only of fragile balance.

The team understands this better than I ever could.
They know this soil.
They know when to hoe, when to harvest.
They do not always explain.
They watch.
They act.
They sense.
And I listen.
I am learning their language — built from short gestures, long patience, and deep respect for time.
Everything moves faster here.
Riskier.
The sun does not dry — it bakes.
The rain does not warn you.
In the winery, the material takes the lead.
I arrived with plans:
experiments, trials, protocols.
But harvest does not wait for plans.
Warm grapes.
Swollen.
Eager to become something else.
So we reacted.
Together.
Calmly.
That day, standing around a restless tank — between a thermometer, a hydrometer, and a bucket of ice — I realized something important.

I was not here to teach.
I was here to collaborate.
To work with what is.
To adapt to what comes.
And most of all,
to decode what I thought I knew —
and re-encode it for this place.

Written by Guillaume Quéron