harvest 2009 – monday 14th sept

15.9.2009billn

So much for the forecasters; brilliant blue sky at 8 a.m. The north wind is now a blustery cold wind, but keep to the sun and you are fine.

It’s a quite morning – racking the Meursault of Saturday afternoon into barrels, but no new fruit before lunch. We decide to take a walk in the vines above Pommard close to Volnay border – some occasional cloud passing over, but very pretty. As we return to Pommard, the pickers of Louis Jadot are hard at work in Les Rugiens.

Back to the domaine in time for lunch 😉 A beautiful deep flan-like quiche but with a little tuna, tomato farcie, the obligatory cheese and bread, then chocolate desert……….. Hmm, I almost forgot the wine; Réyane et Pascal Bouley 04 Volnay Santenots (modest 04 character) and 03 Engel Grands-Echézeaux: I may have been less than stinting in my recent praise of the 99 and 02 versions, but that can come with the territory of drinking such wines when young, but the 03 is a sweetie – super aromatics that transition from pure ripe fruit, to hints of tobacco after 90 minutes or so. Full palate, but with a balance that begs another sip – no awkward tannins either – a great success and whilst a little riper, I think I may prefer this to the DRC – or at-least my memory of it!

Waiting for us are the grapes from Beaune 1er Les Avaux: relatively clean, but the clone is not the best as it tends towards tight bunches of large melons grapes – perfect for rot, or in 09 when the rot is largely absent, juice-bombs. We are tough with triage as any hint of under-ripe or rot is simply thrown away – no cutting! There is anyway enough juice. Fingers are cold from the wind after 2 hours of that! And no more grapes 🙁 Still there is much cleaning and preparation as we start the Côte de Nuits campaign tomorrow, whilst at the same time mopping up a little more Côte de Beaune. We even have 5 minutes of very light rain about 4:30 – drizzle actually – but then the wind drops and blue sky returns.

Whilst in the shower my mobile rings – it’s Le Chef from Remoissenet, we should have tasted his 08s today, but things became too busy: “I have a nice bottle of Bâtard-Montrachet open – fancy an aperitif?” Tough decision huh? We manage to shoe-horn him into our program and whilst we didn’t see the Bâtard, the bottle of 72 Volnay Santenots was consumed rather quickly! Anyway we now have a new booking to taste his 08s on Tuesday.

That only leaves dinner; paté, various salads, quenelles, the obligatory cheese and bread, and a selection of leftover deserts from the last two days – lubricated by a magnum of 01 Deveny Bourgogne Hautes Côtes de Beaune Les Chagnots, Mugnier’s 06 Chambolle Fuées and a Freestone 05 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir. The Mugnier was rather muscular – much more Bonnes-Mares-like than I remember his 97-01 bottles.

And to bed…

Leave a Reply to David SimpsonCancel reply

There are 2 responses to “harvest 2009 – monday 14th sept”

  1. David Bennett15th September 2009 at 6:45 pmPermalinkReply

    I hope Le Chef was on good form. Please pass my regards on!
    D

    ps really enjoying the reports so far…I’m very eager to taste these in a few years time. Emmanuel at Guillot Broux was excited about the Domaines harvest recently. I had not realised that the Maconnais was classified (many years ago) rather like the Bordelais were ie the *vineyards* were classified into 5 levels divisible into a further 3. Must find out more.

    • billn16th September 2009 at 8:48 amPermalinkReply

      David – he’s always on good form 😉

  2. David Simpson24th September 2009 at 7:09 pmPermalinkReply

    Do you happen to know what those white plastic bags with 2009 written on them are doing at the end of some rows of vines? I saw these all over the Cote just before the harvest but could not get an explanation . . .

    • billn25th September 2009 at 6:34 amPermalinkReply

      Hi David,
      Such ornaments are commonly used in agriculture to keep check on different ‘treatments’ – I expect the rows have been treated differently and it’s a way of making sure records are correct for comparitive purposes – close to, but not quite an ‘educated’ guess!
      Cheers, Bill

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