I could sing… (burgundy harvest 2013 – saturday 5th october)

5.10.2013billn

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Gevrey-Chambertin Les Crais – okay, if I was being picky, the chardonnay grapes are a little large 😉

In the last 24 hours I did three things I’d never done before (well, almost never…!) I ate a burger and chips approaching midnight after Friday’s late harvest finish, then today I had a nutella-filled doughnut for dessert (maybe the French description is more ‘come hither…’), and finally today, I triaged Gevrey villages grapes that would put most grand crus to shame – just lovely stuff – after the trudge of hard triage yesterday, I could almost sing!

Given the previous (late) evening’s culinary exploits, I chose to start the day with a run to Pommard and back; it was lightly, but incessantly raining, probably not a lot of fun in the vines! We assembled the various parts of our triage machine and about 10:45 began our assault on the grapes from Gevrey – lieu-dit Les Crais which neighbours La Justice – gorgeous grapes (see the picture above) that really put yesterday’s Charmes-Chambertin to shame in terms of cleanliness and form – one assumes not taste!

WP_20131005_001Lunch today was more of celebration of the boss’s birthday as we were simply too busy yesterday (La Romanée excepted!), paraphrasing Hilaire Beloc, I don’t remember the food, but the wine was 2004 Cristal, 1993 Meursault and 2002 Clos des Lambrays. I can’t remember the last time I experienced such a joyous trio of wines, they were that good!

Back to work after the Brillat-Savarin and the doughnut, the second tranche of our Gevrey Les Crais – from older vines – and possibly slightly cleaner (toss a coin) but I thought the cluster shape and smaller berries of the young vines more interesting. Of-course with grapes in such great condition, we didn’t need the blade, but with more Volnay coming in the afternoon, its return was mandated. Oh, and what an afternoon for picking – close to torrential rain for a few minutes, and incessant between 2-3pm – definitely very shitty in the vines…

Next on the triage table was Volnay Billard (villages-level) for which we decided to re-install (queue the Superman music) ‘the blade‘. You can see where it sits in the process, and how how it works, sort of, below – the last part shows where the air deflects the lighter berries that pass through the second vibration ‘table’ after the de-stemmer – well it would I was a half-decent videographer 😉 Anyway the grapes were surprisingly good – minimal triage was required, only to watch out for the rare spot of rot, and under-ripe clusters. Lastly we had some more Gevery-Chambertin Les Crais. Sadly not quite to the standard of this mornings batches as there was more bigger-berried bunches and more rot – occasional cases of fruit were just like this morning though, and clearly no worry as we were using (queue Superman music again) ‘the blade‘! There was blue sky and a little sunshine by 18:00 and they say summer will return next week – let’s see. Triage finished at 19:30 (Ooh! Early!) Potentially we may be finished by about 21:15 🙂

Agree? Disagree? Anything you'd like to add?

There is one response to “I could sing… (burgundy harvest 2013 – saturday 5th october)”

  1. Mark Priestley6th October 2013 at 6:35 amPermalinkReply

    9.15pm Bill! Sounds like a half day to me. We did a 3.00am at Le Grappin on Friday.

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