Harvests

And no, I’m not talking about the Hautes Côtes! I understand that Laurent Ponsot’s team finally swung into action this week – he started on Monday (1st Oct.) and will be working through this week – and who knows, maybe a bit of next week too! Here’s a nice view. And this may be a bit snooty, but it isn’t bad either! [Archive 1 and 2]

Last year it was relatively easy to make some broad-brush descriptions of the vintage. This year it really isn’t so easy. The growing season has delivered very little consistency in terms of yield – it’s very low but not consistently-so. Poor weather at flowering was the starting point, followed by frosts, constant rain, then later came occasional hail and the concomitant disease pressure that made life harder, day by day. The only ‘given’ was that the Côte de Nuits suffered less than the Côte de Beaune. Some parcels have come close to delivering a ‘normal’ yield, while neighbouring vines have offered nothing – for example Jean-Marc Roulot has 50% less volume in 2012 and decided not to bother harvesting 45 small parcels! Meursault certainly suffered, [....]

I understand that the Clos de Tart has just started its harvest today, whilst the home domaine is still waiting for their last grapes from the 2012 campaign – Chambertin – they will be picked this afternoon, but that will be too late for me as I’m heading home tonight. The grapes will be quite warm once picked – did I mention that Friday is a dry(!), beautifully sunny and deceptively warm (19°C) day? – so will spend the night in a cooler-van, waiting to be triaged on Saturday morning. A stroke of luck for the home team is a new contract for Chablis Bougros – particularly with grape volumes being about 40% down. There could have been more grapes, but despite coming from a [....]

To a soundtrack of Johnny Cash and Massive Attack we make our own attack on the grapes of Lavaux St.Jacques and Maranges Croix de Moines – happy under our cover from incessant rain. [Edit: The rain lasted for 30 hours, delivering 50mm!] The Gevrey is lovely – we use about one-third whole clusters – and even the other two-thirds from this produce of a lovely old-vine selection needs not much more than a cursory trie. Then we have the big cuvée of Maranges which will take us right up to lunch to finish the triage. If it hadn’t been for the rain, these would have been left on the vine a couple of days longer – and it’s easy to see why – a mix [....]