Le Roi Chambertin.
Harvest day 16, but only our 12th day with grapes…
As we say, it’s only over after the Chambertin is in – and today, finally, it was. Despite the wait, no complaints about the cleanliness and presentation of the grapes. More info after a short (maybe long) Paulée… 😉
There is one response to “19 september – 2015 harvest day 16”
Hi there Bill, for those of us who have never seen a harvest up close, there seems to be quite a lot of broken grapes in the bunch to the right in the picture – is this not a problem?
Hi Adam – great question.
Perfect grapes can only be seen on the vines. Depending on either the ripeness or the thickness of the skins, just the act of cutting from the vine and dropping into your bucket is enough to start splitting them. Then, depending on the harvest team, maybe they go into large containers on somebody’s back before being tipped into a trailer, or for the highest appellations, more like 25kg containers – but still the wight of of the grapes above in the containers will start to crush the grapes. Of-course all that pales into insignificance compared to the act of destemming – ripping the grapes from their stems. Of-course juice seeping from crushed grapes is essential to the fermentations here so completely necessary.
The important thing is that all this is done in a timescale that avoids both oxidation or the potential for acetic bacteria turning everything into vinegar – so speed, cool temperatures, dry ice (carbon dioxide) and sulfur (in the form of ammonium sulfate) are the tools that are used…
Hope that helps
Cheers!