CHAPTER 10Along the Valley of the Marne after Chateau-Thierry I had to turn on my fog lights. The damp countryside was exhaling thickening mist that blocked out the sky. Under the mist, gently tilting vineyards took up more and more of the landscape on both sides of the A4. They looked depressingly bleak.
In April, vineyards that far north are dismal even on the sunniest days. Just fields of dirt with rows of thin stakes connected by black wires. Between stakes the brutally pruned base of each potential vine resembles nothing more promising than a twisted chunk of long-dead driftwood.
That early in the spring it’s hard to envision what it will all look like after those gnarled roots have given birth to the vines. In two months you won’t be able to see the ground for the lush foliage spre
