A gang of bored looking teenagers dressed in blue overalls milled around the entrance like extras from a George Romero film, all revved up for a day spent artificially inseminating pigs or something suitably agricultural.
The place had a slightly surreal air to it, like an open plan zoo. Kids roamed the grounds alongside various beasts of the four-legged variety. Dawn of the Dead meets National Velvet meets Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. By the look of the litter strewn on the lawn a sign reading 'Please do not feed the humans' might have been useful.
I must have been the oldest and grumpiest person there apart from Chris, our lecturer. He'd made wine in the seventies and not just any old plonk but the revered Chateau d'Yquem, the frighteningly expensive sweet wine from Bordeaux. Felt like Eric Clapton showing you how to play Layla.
After a few minutes though the combination of the dark classroom and his slow measured voice began to send me to sleep, thanks to a king size hangover after last night's impromptu 'getting to know each other' piss up in Brighton with my fellow trainee viticulturalists.
The most important information I needed to garner from him was where the coffee machine was.
'In the corridor, adjacent to the reptile room' he said. For a second I thought this might be a witty euphemism for the student common room but far from it, 'Try not to disturb the giant Chinese cockroaches while you're at it, they can get rather moody!' I'll bear that in mind.
Bolstered by caffeine the morning perked up a bit. It was like being back in a biology class at school and that was a long time ago in my case. I was useless at sciences but did against all odds manage to scrape an O Level in Biology. As a vine is a plant, one needs to have some rudimentary understanding about its molecular structure and how they go about producing grapes. It was like a trip down memory lane, words I hadn't heard for years like photosynthesis and chlorophyll. I was starting to enjoy it.
'Did you know wine is fermented ovary juice?' Chris informed us. To be perfectly honest I didn't think that plants had sex, I thought they just, well, grew. Seemed they're at it all the time. Pistils and stamens in a state of frenzied copulation, the dirty little beggars. Some happen to be hermaphrodites and can do it with themselves.
It was so far so good but then things started to get worrying. Just in case I was under any illusion about how difficult it might be for me to actually produce something drinkable on my own over the next hour Chris put my plans firmly into perspective.
For starters vines need certain things to grow successfully. Plenty of sunshine for one, enough for it to successfully complete its year long life cycle. It's why we struggle to produce anything decent in this country. Too far North but thanks to global warming things are changing. Chris informed us it might be worth throwing a few bob at a vineyard just off the south part of the M25. Same soil type as Champagne region of France apparently. Unfortunately I don't have the x number of million pounds needed to do that. As well as lots of sunshine you need sufficient rainfall but with the proviso it falls at the right time as too much during the growing season can damage the crop. We talked a bit about vintages and how the weather can influence whether its a good or bad year. In Bordeaux, they insure against the weather by blending their wines from different varieties thereby mitigating the chance that a particular variety might fail. The guy sitting next to me raised his hand at this point, worried about the half a dozen vines he planted in his back garden in the Wirrel. Global warming will have to go some before the Wirrel Peninsula is the new Medoc but one has to salute his stoical fortitude in the face of impossible odds.
There seemed to be a million other things as well to take into consideration. Planting the vines at the right angle to catch the sun (cue several diagrams on the white board with mathematical formulae - I was crap at that too!), at the right altitude and with enough shelter from the wind. But most important of all folks, don't plant a vineyard in a frost pocket!!
So having now had a quick refresher course in biology, geography and Maths it was now time to move on to Geology.
Chris was not much of a fan of 'terroir' that much beloved word the French use to describe the special environmental factors that go into making their wine without a trace of modesty the best in the world. To be honest I thought it was a given too. Sancerre is the best Sauvignon Blanc in the world because of its chalky soils. I wasn't sure why that should be the case but its there in black and white proclaiming it on the back label so who am I to disagree.
Apparently there's little hard scientific evidence to support the view that it's the soil that gives wine its character. I thought to some of the wine tastings I'd been too. There was a definite whiff of bullshit in the air at especially when someone remarks 'ooh this wine is sooo minerally, it's just like sucking wet stones' Having not sucked many wet stones recently I invariably take it as a fact and nod my head 'come to think of it, you're right'
All things considered though I reckon I'm a terroirist, being a romantic at heart, someone only has to say the magic words Puligny Montrachet and I lose all sense of reality.
We finish the morning with a quick trot through the dizzying complicated world of cultivar and vinestock selection. It had been a fascinating morning but by now my head was numb with theory, I was looking forward to the afternoon exploring the college's vineyard sites. My chance to get my hands dirty perhaps and ask some serious questions.
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