"In the summer, I'm usually working with a small team in the vineyards," says Olivier Tregoat, a terroir expert and vineyard consultant in Beziers in the south of France. "On a typical day, we'll be taking readings of the vines, and checking shoot growth, water stress, and all the other indicators of how good a growing season we are having."
Tregoat enjoys working in a team, but he also loves being out among the vines in the winter months, often on his own.
"[In winter, I work] on mapping the terroir of a specific site, drilling holes, taking soil samples to compare chemical profiles, getting to know every contour of the land," he says. "It's during winter, when all is bare and there are no leaves and grapes to hide the swells and hollows of the vineyard, that you can learn to read a landscape. That's when you start to realise how terroir works its magic."
Driving through a wine region in winter it's hard to believe people care about what is happening in a vineyard. Most of the obvious work has moved inside.
But the five months of rest that vines get between the leaves dropping after harvest (in the northern hemisphere by the end of October or early November) and the first stirrings of sap rising in March the following year can be crucial - not only to the running of the wine estate, but to the quality of the wine.
For a start, there are plenty of physical jobs to get done. The winter months are when most wineries make decisions about which vines need to be pulled up and entirely replanted, and which areas of a vineyard need to be "filled out" with new vines. Then there is soil to be worked, cover crops to be used to monitor soil nutrient levels, vine training decisions to be taken, new pickets to be planted, new wires to be strung, and vine plants to be pruned so they are ready for the new shoots. These are the months when the "big picture" decisions are taken.