The winemaker, his daughter and their workers. It could be the title of an old fairy tale. Instead, it is a contemporary story set in Fréterive, a village in the Savoie region of southeastern France, nestled between the Bauges massif and the Isère River. On this mid-May afternoon, the sun warmed the south-facing hillside. Adama, who asked that his name be changed, crouched among the vines. With swift, assured movements, the 24-year-old from Côte d’Ivoire, who arrived in France at age 15, systematically removed certain shoots from the vine stock. “I’m removing the extra buds,” he explained. “You have to take off the branches that are too close together to let the vine breathe.”
The steep terrain makes the work “difficult” and hard on Adama’s knees. He is undocumented. A few rows away, Shakro and Giorgi, both from Georgia, had also been denied residency permits and now find themselves in administrative limbo. Shakro, whose papers were irregular, is subject to a deportation order, while Giori is required to report to the local gendarmerie three times a week.
On the day of our visit, of the seven workers tending the vines at Philippe Grisard’s estate, two were French, one was a recently regularized foreign national and four had no residency permits. The winemaker and his daughter Nadège decided this year to dedicate a vintage to these workers in the shadows. They named it “Sans eux” (“Without Them”).
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