The day started with the pickers in Corton-Charlemagne – 07:30 sharp!
This plot had seen plenty of hail, though there was mercifully something still left on the vines. Quantifying ‘something’ is less fun though; this plot normally delivers about 5 barrels, today there’s been enough picked for about 1 barrel – and we still had to do triage at the home domaine. Although the grapes looked scruffy, the advantage of whites is that the skins are in contact with the juice for only a couple of hours (+/-) so we concentrated on removing obvious chunks of rot – actually not that much – and picking out the small dried grapes that will do nothing in the press. As you can see from the image below, the configuration of the setup changes for the whites as there’s no destemmer, the triaged grapes go up the ‘giraffe’ and drop directly into the pneumatic press.
The Corton-Charlemagne is delivered:
Lunch was a nice surprise so I decided to open the 79 Corton-Charlemagne to celebrate today’s grapes and the birthyear of a fellow vendangeur 😉
Lunch behind us, we attacked Marsannay Les Longerois, good grapes, not too much rot but plenty of under-ripe bunches to discard. Then there was the Vosne-Romanée; really lovely robust clusters, such that we went for 30% whole clusters for the fermentation. Possibly cleaner fruit, even than our Gevrey Les Crais, but not quite as pretty! Next-up, Le Roi Chambertin 😉 As you may not note from the image, not the prettiest grapes, but as I learned in my first (04) harvest, the optical impression is not everything – these were clearly the tastiest grapes of the day, but we had to work hard on triage as the skins were rather fragile and there was some rot too.
We finished the day with more of the Marsannay – it made sense to insert the Chambertin as looked a bit more fragile. Hmm, finished triage and it is only 20:30 – I guess there’s some clean-up now though…
