I Spent a Month in France for Much less Than $650 — This is How I Did It

The bottles glowed like lava lamps between the vines. Vin de France — French desk wine, created from the very grapes we’d spent the morning choosing. Two dozen of us sat round a folding desk on the base of a sloping winery in Alsace, the place dirt-crusted palms handed round hunks of contemporary bread and the dialog danced between French and English.

Tu veux extra, ma chérie? requested Jeanne, providing to refill my glass from one of many label-less bottles of Si Rose — a $17 pour by New York requirements. I’d purchased this similar wine, a skin-contact mix of gewürztraminer and pinot gris, exactly three days earlier at a wine bar in Brooklyn, the place it value $85. Right here, we polished off half a dozen bottles pulled straight from the cellar throughout our lunch break.

I’d prefer to inform you it tasted higher as a result of it was free, however in fact, what wine wouldn’t style higher in a sun-drenched winery? Fairly, I loved it extra as a result of I may afford to be much less valuable — I may sip it with out stressing over the price.

Whereas the general public round me had been being paid, a number of of us had been bénévole, or volunteers — we’d signed WWOOF (World Huge Alternatives on Natural Farms) contracts, committing to a few weeks of serving to with wine harvest in change for meals and housing with pioneering pure winemaker Christian Binner. Fairly than shell out 1000’s of {dollars} for an additional certification course, this was a hands-on probability to deepen my wine training — and spend practically a month overseas — with out bankrupting myself.

Wine harvest is at turns indulgent, exhausting, romantic, and humbling. You wake with the solar, seize a espresso and your secateur (shears), pile into automobiles, and pair off within the vines, clipping grapes and plunking them into buckets as you go. You sweat, inform secrets and techniques, sing Serge Gainsbourg to cross the time. Within the afternoons, you decrease your self right into a vat of fermenting grapes, squishing them down along with your naked ft. You are taking turns cooking for one another within the evenings, making pasta and pissaladière as you observe your French. Work, drink, sleep, repeat. It’s removed from a trip — extra like a labor-intensive summer season camp, a grueling getaway of kinds that’s change into the annual spotlight of my 12 months.

In case you’re interested in work exchanges, right here’s how I organized mine, and the way it allowed me to spend lower than $700 whereas staying on a picturesque winery in France for a month.

I reached out to the winemaker through their U.S. importer — however have beforehand used websites like Workaway and WWOOF.

Value: $32

Whereas expertise isn’t essentially required to assist with harvest, I wasn’t a stranger to winery work: I’d beforehand frolicked working with winemakers in Umbria and Burgundy, working beneath the same work-exchange mannequin. I’ve discovered these alternatives through websites like Workaway and WWOOF, which join vacationers with change alternatives of all stripes (assume: agricultural work, hospitality, youngster care, language studying, and extra). Most websites require a nominal membership price: With this previous harvest, we created WWOOF accounts with the intention to signal an settlement.

For wine-specific ventures, I’ve additionally discovered it useful to examine Raisin, which compiles an annual checklist of pure winemakers searching for harvest assist, or to achieve out to the wine importer immediately through e-mail. Domaine Christian Binner is imported by Jenny & François Alternatives — whose social media accounts I run — so on this case, I used to be fortunate to have the ability to attain out immediately.

I took on additional work prematurely and sublet my condominium to mitigate my bills.

As a contract wine and journey author, my revenue varies from month to month. Whereas I usually work remotely throughout my travels, I’d discovered the laborious means the 12 months earlier than that harvest requires an excessive amount of time and vitality to stability different assignments, so I reached out to the shoppers I work with (magazines, digital publications, and a wine importer, amongst others) to debate my time without work, and to tackle extra assignments beforehand. I additionally picked up a number of shifts at a pal’s wine bar to make sure I’d have the ability to comfortably cowl my bills.

Whereas my housing on the winery was lined as a part of the change, it could have been an infinite monetary burden to proceed paying my Brooklyn lease whereas touring. Fortunately, I used to be capable of finding a pal of a pal to sublet.

I booked my flight with a low-cost service.

Value: $435

Whereas I usually use bank card factors or airline miles to cowl my flights, I couldn’t discover any direct, round-trip tickets from New York Metropolis to Paris that will make good use of them for the dates I wanted to fly. I opted to avoid wasting my factors and booked a ticket with French Bee, a dependable, low-cost service that I’ve flown on a number of events. I flew economic system with only a carry-on to keep away from extra baggage charges. Whereas the airline doesn’t but supply alternatives to redeem factors or miles, it tends to supply cheap fares (and Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne for premium class).

I purchased fundamental journey insurance coverage.

Value: $109 

I all the time buy important journey insurance coverage, in case of emergencies whereas overseas, and given the potential bodily dangers related to harvest work, I opted for even broader protection than normal. For this journey, I bought OneTrip Prime protection with Allianz Journey, which lined my bases when it comes to journey cancellation, plus emergency medical and emergency transportation wants.

Meals and housing had been lined.

As a part of our contract, the vineyard lined my meals and housing in change for the hours I spent working. Whereas some websites, like Workaway, set up a 25-hour-per-week guideline for work, wine harvest doesn’t fairly function that means: Nature dictates the hours to a level, and when the grapes are ripe, they must be picked. Some days stretched from dawn into late night; others, I helped clear tanks within the cellar for hardly an hour.

I hadn’t requested a lot concerning the housing state of affairs forward of my arrival, past confirming I wouldn’t be tenting, which is pretty commonplace for harvest employees. (Whereas I’m desirous to work in nature, sleeping in it’s merely taking issues too far for this metropolis woman.) I’d did not even ask how many individuals I’d be sharing a room or rest room with (one and eight, because it turned out).

I couldn’t have been extra delighted after I arrived on the charming, half-timber home within the scenic village of Ammerschwihr, the place the image window in my room seemed out over 70-year-old vines and I had a wine barrel for a desk. It’s the home the place Christian and his sister, Béatrice (who handles the entire administrative work for the domaine), grew up. Béa would make sure that the pantry was all the time stocked with groceries, coordinating with whoever was on dinner obligation (all of us rotated the cleansing and cooking duties all through the week) with the intention to purchase the mandatory components.

Whereas I had a number of miscellaneous bills alongside the best way — a gaggle of us went out for a typical Alsatian dinner (tarte flambée and a tower of sauerkraut) on the pleasant Bratschall Manala in neighboring Kaysersberg, and took the prepare to Strasbourg on our day without work — I managed to spend beneath $700 for the month, together with flights. (To place this in perspective, that’s primarily half the price of my month-to-month Brooklyn lease.)

For all of the bodily pressure of harvest, it’s essentially the most relaxed my thoughts has been in years. There’s a meditative high quality to the work, and a few kind of magic occurs while you’re not equating hours labored or bottles drank with a financial worth. Work, drink, sleep, repeat: It’s a cycle I’m terribly privileged to take part in every year, and one which I romanticize so deeply that I are likely to neglect simply how demanding it’s. Certainly, I’ll be reminded quickly sufficient — I head out to do all of it once more in a number of weeks.