Corinne Kox describes it as a “lottery.” It’s a challenge she faces every morning as a stickler for detail. She pays attention to everything, all the time, often in spite of herself. Yesterday, Kox’s teams worked long and hard in the vineyards, their backs and necks bent, their senses on the alert. This Friday, it’s break time, or more or less. Everyone will meet up again at the end of the weekend, in the early hours of Monday morning.

The skies are clear, the sun is bright, but the temperatures are colder than normal. All these factors contributed to the decision to press the “pause” button for 24 hours. Not to mention the operational organisation of the teams. In any case, harvesting is synonymous with the unexpected and constant adaptation.

“You have to use your brain”

At the end of each summer in Remich, Kox oversees the work of twelve to fifteen people during the harvest. Half of them are seasonal workers with a variety of backgrounds. Students, retired people... “Some people have been coming back for several years, especially retired people. That’s the ideal situation for the quality of the work. You explain things for the first time, and then you can settle in with a sense of continuity,” explains Kox, who, since 2019, has been the manager . Eleven of them are currently being farmed (the twelfth has just been replanted, so we’ll have to wait a few years).

When she spoke earlier of a “lottery,” this is what Kox was referring to. “Putting people together is a lot like that, yes. As with all teamwork, cohesion is important. But the atmosphere can be both positive and negative. Some people are there to have a laugh, others turn up for the job thinking it’s a simple job, just cutting grapes. I don’t agree, you have to use your brain too. You have to select the grapes. Everyone is in charge of a form of quality control.”

“A meditative exercise”

When we arrived at the vineyard, we pointed out that her hands showed no signs of the work he had done in the rows of vines. Not a single scratch. We were surprised. Hands are the most solicited work instrument, aren’t they?

“No, the most important thing is this,” Kox retorted, pointing to her nose and palate, which were ranked equally. “To check the grapes, it’s very simple, you just have to taste them,” she explained. Then she illustrates: “In a vineyard with a red grape variety, you can have uneven ripeness. But you can tell that by looking. For whites, things can be more complex in terms of colour. So if you’re in any doubt, you need to taste. In itself, it’s not complicated. But you have to be willing to reason.”

The silence, the great outdoors, the fresh wind on your cheeks, the sweetness of the grape (or its acidity) in your mouth… Kox says, with a touch of mysticism: “If you're in a state of flow, it can be a meditative exercise.”

Sprint and marathon

Here, the grape harvest began as soon as August began to wane. “On the 22nd,” recalls the owner, who for some years now has been reviving verjuice, the green grape juice used in cooking to replace vinegar or lemon. Starting with this famous verjuice, the parenthesis is designed to last a month. This is a particularly long time compared with other vineyards in Luxembourg (around 1,200 hectares), and is justified by the huge variety of grape varieties planted. “Fifteen,” Kox calculates. “That’s an enormous number. In fact, all these grape varieties have different degrees of maturity. In other regions, such as Champagne, where we only work with two or three grape varieties, the harvest is more condensed.”

Sprint or marathon? “Both,” she says. Blame it on the vagaries of the weather--again. “Last year, we didn’t have time to ‘rest’; we had to harvest practically every day. There was a lot of humidity in July and August, the soils were soaked and the grapes were rotting at an incredible rate. More than ever, we had to make a selection.”

Summer 2024, same story: “It’s complicated. I'm sleeping under the roof and I can hear the rain. Yes, as soon as there are three drops, I can hear them... We work in organic farming, and the frequency of the rain has had a huge impact on the development of the vines and fungal diseases.” Fungus is enemy number one.

“Three billion scenarios in my head”

From August to September, Kox lives with a stopwatch in her skull. And quite a few obsessions to go with it. “I’m really bad at managing all the emotions during the harvest,” she smiles. “Others know how to stay cool and calm. I don’t know how. As soon as I get up, I think about everything that’s happened and everything that’s going to happen. I have three billion scenarios in my head about the hours to come. That’s what creates stress.”

She analyses herself: “By nature, I want to control everything. I got it from my father [Corinne Kox succeeded her parents, Laurent and Rita], who was very keen on micro-management. When he took over the estate from his grandparents, he was on his own. So he couldn’t delegate anything. My background is different. I studied molecular biology abroad, grew up in a company with employees and even worked as an employee for companies. When I introduce something new, I establish protocols. But then I try to leave room for freedom. You have to recognise that you can't do everything. You have to be humble. To be able to say to yourself: ‘Other people know better than I do.’ In the end, it's a balancing act.”

This same humility means that she refuses to make any predictions about the quality of a vintage: “I never say anything on the subject. I don’t have my father's experience, nor that of winemakers with thirty or so vintages behind them. In any case, everything can change right up to the last minute. The conditions may have been favourable throughout the season, but there’s nothing to say that they won’t be ruined at the end.” She has this phrase to sum up the difficulty of the undertaking: “It’s the grapes that have the last word.” For 2024, the story is just beginning.

This article was originally published in .