burgundy 2013 harvest – wednesday 9th october…

9.10.2013billn

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An antidote to all those perfect Facebook bunches that take so long to find. NB. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the Domaine 😉

We are building up to a crescendo of action here, and it’s hard to believe I’ve been here a week already – tomorrow will be my last day…

We started with more Vosne-Romanée villages this morning – the same, pretty fruit as yesterday – I pulled out an extra case of whole clusters so, overall we did 1/3 of the cuvée with stems – lovely, fruit and really tasty. Next was some Lavaux St.Jacques; times are getting harder and harder – despite expecting enough fruit for three barrels, we got barely enough for two. Some new negociants are actually driving the price spiral that many end-customers are complaining about – paying way more than the going rate, but finally, all the prices are averaged by the BIVB to calculate the ‘going rate’ for grapes, so as you can imagine, just one new buyer who is prepared to pay 40% more for fruit means we will all be paying more next year! Still, the fruit from Lavaux was good stuff – some rot but easily triaged and we did some whole clusters too – the grapes tasted completely different to the Vosne, thicker, with almost crunchy skins too!

2-WP_20131009_003Lunch, what can I tell you about lunch(?) Well, we ‘played away’ for wine, but I think I can say for everyone, that we felt completely stuffed afterwards – I suppose it was luck that no grapes were scheduled before 16:00 – personally, I managed a little ‘down-time’ to recover from our repast!

At just after 16:00 hrs, our Santenay Clos Rousseau came in waves of trucks – the pickers clearly had a joke at our expense as there was absolutely no sign of selection at the vines – a whole lot of hard triage to be done – rot mainly, hardly any unripe stuff. Such was the triage that our table had to run quite slowly – still at least 4 pallets of fruit remained after 8:00pm, and with the hired hand looking bleary-eyed, the pallets were consigned to the back of the refrigerated truck – we will tackle those at 08:00 hrs tomorrow – but a ton more stuff is expected – I’ll feel sad leaving the team at 17:00 hrs tomorrow, but places to go, people to see… 😉

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There is one response to “burgundy 2013 harvest – wednesday 9th october…”

  1. claude.kolm@gmail.com9th October 2013 at 7:21 pmPermalinkReply

    Thanks, Bill, I’m enjoying your daily updates.

    For Lavaux Saint-Jacques, do you have any thoughts on its suitability as a terroir for use of stems? I generally think it works very well without stems, although I have to admit that Confuron-Cotétidot’s with the stems systematically added is an amazing wine.

    • billn10th October 2013 at 10:33 pmPermalinkReply

      Hi Claude.
      Yes I think the Confuron-Cotetidot a nice wine in that style, but you are right, most producers seem to destem here in the supposedly cool terroir (certainly cooler than the CSJ I suppose), as has David Croix in previous vintages. This year he was very taken by the depth of flavour the grapes offered – I found them quite striking. So anyway, from memory, a bit less than 20% whole clusters in this wine. Will be interesting to see…

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