Friday 30 Sept.
Despite the poor weather forecast that tells us that there will be plenty of rain later today (Friday) and rain for most of the daytime on Saturday, it seems we are still left wanting for a volume of grapes today. Still, we actually do have grapes and from very different ends of the spectrum.
First up, we have some (Bourgogne) Hautes Côtes de Beaune, these are actually domaine vines, but ravaged by frost – there wasn’t much. And from the other end of the hierarchy we had Charmes-Chambertin, and they were very-much grand cru grapes…
The home ‘domaine’ actually is a négociant, but with a little over 1 hectare of domaine vines, and today’s parcel from the Hautes Côtes de Beaune laid bare what the frost has done to so many vines in this growing season; normally more than 80 cases of fruit are yielded here, today 18. Last year there was more than 7 barrels worth, this year, maybe, one and a half. There was some botrytis to remove from these grapes, but in this case very little of the raisined, dried mildewed fruit. The tiny quantity prompted a rarely seen sight, people triaging what came out of the destemmer – we recovered nearly half a case of grapes!
The Charmes-Chambertin was really a sight for sore eyes – just beautiful fruit that needed very little in the way of triage – at least optically, better than the Corton Clos de Roi due to the smaller more classic grape size. Gorgeous stuff! The grapes here were not better in any of the 05/09/10/15 vintages…
And that was it! Given the forecast, no grapes are in the planning for tomorrow (Saturday) and possibly not Sunday either. Eventually we will get our ‘big day’ but maybe it will be Monday…
