The Aubry and Grillot Families in France

 The Grillots and their ancestors were from the small towns of Hennemont, Pintheville, and Pareid on the plain east of the Meuse River, between Verdun and Metz. Although most residents of this area were farmers, Louis Grillot was a mason and stone cutter and his father was a weaver.

 The Aubrys and their ancestors were from several towns a few miles to the southwest - Herbeuville, Hannonville, and Tresauvaux. These towns are in the hills (the "Côtes de Meuse") closer to the river. Like many of their neighbors, the Aubrys earned their living by cultivating small vineyards on the lower slopes of the hills, although a narrow garden plot near their home probably provided some necessities.

 The history of the vine growing on the Côtes dates back as far as the early Middle Ages. Although Lorraine never produced any of the "great" wines like the regions of Burgundy and Champagne, cultivation of the vine was an important source of income.

 Before the French Revolution, vineyards were primarily the property of large landowners - the nobility, religious communities, and wealthy merchants. They were leased to local wine growers who did the planting, cultivating and harvesting. By the 19th century, however, hillside slopes all across northeast France were covered with small vineyards owned by peasant farmers.

 The vineyards required almost year-round attention to complete the pruning, staking, tilling, and harvesting. The yearly schedule in the vineyards often followed this pattern:

• January - Pruning
• February - Transplanting young plants
• Around Easter - Placing stakes and attaching plants to them
• Mid-April - Tilling around the plants
• May - Tilling and removing excess canes
• June - Trimming shoots, bending them into crown shape, and attaching them to the stakes.
• July - Tilling, removing leaves around late grapes, and setting out new plants in recently cleared sections.
• Mid-September to Mid-October - picking grapes and stomping them to extract juice which was placed fermentation vats (5 to 6 days to ferment red wine and 2 days for rosé - grapes for white wine could be pressed immediately). After the first fermentation, the wine was drawn off into barrels to continue the process.
• October-November - Vineyard cleanup and stake removal

 The typical home of the vine growers of the Côtes de Meuse was pretty small. One of these homes which has been preserved as a museum in the town of Hannonville. Historian Marianne Doyle provides the following description:
 
 

It's basically one room wide. When you come in from the street, you're in a dim, windowless corridor that runs straight through from the front door to the back.

You can get to the front room -- a bedroom also used as an occasional parlor -- only through the central kitchen. The kitchen was the main room of the house, where the family spent most of its indoor time. With the huge Lorraine fireplace and no openings to the outside, it must have been cozy and warm in the wintertime, but imagine how stuffy in the summer, and how it was surely always in a sort of twilight haze.

The kitchen of the museum house has a big wooden table in the middle, benches and a few wooden stools, and some simple wood cupboards against the walls. In the old days, beds for the children would have been here, too.

Farther down the corridor, in the room behind the kitchen, is a stall for the family cow (who entered by the front door just like everyone else) and outside the door, a lean-to shelter for a pig. A small open square separates the back of the house from a detached two-story structure -- up a few steps to space for vine tools and equipment, the winter supply of potatoes, maybe a sack or two of grain ... down to the wine cellar.