arlaud vendange diary – day 4

Update 2.10.2016(3.10.2016)billn

Arlaud Vendange Day 4, Tuesday 27th Sept 2016

Am starting to type this at 6.24 a.m Saturday morning, grabbing some rare free time, having managed to get Day 3 stuff to Bill last night. Its raining outside and has been heavily overnight I think so today (Saturday) could be ‘hilarious’ but lets not get ahead of ourselves. Back to Tuesday which essentially almost divides neatly into Bourgogne Roncevie and Morey Village.

All morning we dealt with various parcels of Roncevie, mostly nearer the road, the top section as it were in my parlance. The grapes here were mostly ok if not in the volume of past years but one could come to a particularly laden vine which would challenge your bucket. Weather was once again blue sky, bright sunshine glorious once past early morning. Seems we are truly blessed with this first week’s weather, really too hot in the afternoons. The Morey centre car park was still relatively lightly populated and neither was there ‘great’ activity in the vines – seems a little odd this year in timings etc. Neither Perrot-Minot nor Taupenot-Merme seem to have got going yet, nor have I noticed Clos des Lambrays activity but could be mistaken re the latter. Anyway, an otherwise unremarkable morning of graft saw us to lunch – once some of us had cleaned buckets and secateurs.

Post lunch saw just a brief return to Roncevie, but not for long, then en vehicule not so far to Morey Clos Solon. Here we pitched up next to the team from Domaine Regis Forey. Nothing had quite prepared me for what happened next though which was just an incredible quantity and apparent quality from Clos Solon the likes of which I’d never seen here before. Quite breathtaking and all the more surprising given what we’d been seeing/dealing with previously. It was as if the grapes had taken a large hierarchical leap with higher plot classification.

Once we’d seen off Clos Solon we moved just yards away, and cutting, towards the road in Morey Seuvrees. The rows here were long, great weight of fruit again so this was a bit of a slog for this old man such that I was glad when time was called on our day. Evening meal saw Le Carp arrive on our plates. Daniel, of the Chasseurs vendange longstanding ‘gang of four’, normal day location at the head of the triage conveyor feeding it with cases, role including loading, unloading, and case washing (via machine), had been in self appointed ‘charge’ of the fish which he’d previously dismembered to remove head, fins, tail, innards etc and by the time the casseroled end result appeared on our plates it was as various sized pieces of fish. I can’t now recall what it was served with, may have been some yellow rice, but whilst I was expecting something muddy and unexciting tasting, the actual reverse was true, it really was quite delicious – very tasty indeed & a first time real treat. Those monks of the middle ages sure knew a thing or to with their wine, fish breeding, agriculture etc !

Unfortunately my evening closed with traveller hippy type Sebastian wanting to unburden himself and his life on me, seemingly wanting some sort of 3rd party (i.e me) psycho analysis of himself. I didn’t really need this nor want to get involved, all the more so when I realised besides his rolled cigarettes he had a small packet of something else which I’d better not go into. The issue of his night time loud music was ‘aired’ such that I was confident that would not re-occur.

And so to bed. Day 5 to come saw car frustrations but finished on very high, including domaine grand cru note.
 

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