Chablis Les Clos – on the triage table.

A day in Chablis – no rest for the wicked!

But first to Irancy – unlike the morning rain in Beaune, here was cloudy, indeed a little misty, but dry. The grapes looked resplendent – and the quantity too – they won’t make up for the lack of grapes in 2016 and 2017, but they will warm the hearts of the the vigneron(ne)s!

Onward to Chablis, I dropped into Long-Depaquit who had begun their harvest on Tuesday – they are one of the earlier harvesters but by no means the earliest – I heard Laroche were one of the first in some parcels. I was met not just by Cécilia Trimaille (who’s following on from Matthieu Mangenot) but also by the most beautiful looking Les Clos grapes – not a bad first impression!

Cécilia explained that one or two sectors had lacked a little water, so are later ripening, but the magic of the grands and 1er crus meant no such problem there. Long-Depaquit are harvesting 65 hectares by hand, normally this should take about 10 days or so with a team of about 50 in the vines. I noted that the grapes are delivered in quite small cases which each contain 10-12 kg of fruit, this year requiring only a simply triage to remove leaves before being pressed – there are a row of presses here holding up to 5 tonnes of fruit. This year each press runs for about 2 hours 20 minutes, with a slowly increasing pressure – apparently the extractions quite easy this year. The juice then spends one night in tank at 13°C to settle, they then analyse, allowing the start of the ferments in tank before dropping the juice into barrel – “It’s easier this way, keeping the juice at 18° before dropping into the barrels.” Vaudésir would be their first wine in barrel later today – all the barrels in the cellar are 1-3 years old. It’s not a large cellar as not many wines see oak, and the most oaked wines still only see 25% barrel…
 

Irancy cherry grove…

Irancy in the morning mist…

Chablis Les Clos

Long-Depaquit barrel cellar…

Grenouilles

Grenouilles towards town…

Vaudésir

Machine harvested Vaudésir…

A little (pretty) virus….

Team Drouhin, lunch pause in Vaudésir…

Blanchots…

(Some) employees at Brocard…

Amphora used for some of the domaine’s césar

César

César

Irancy Palotte

Irancy Palotte

Laurent in his Palotte…

Our harvest day number 9 – the last…

It’s over…

Chorey blank to start our last day; I see a couple of chunks of rot in the delivery bins but on the triage table it’s more like discrete berries here and there that are already detached from the clusters – again great stuff, but with the obligatory road-block as we wait for space in the press.

We finish the day – yes we are done at 2pm! – with more Beaune Montée Rouge, and it’s more homogenous than the first delivery (yesterday) much rarer are the under-ripe bunches to remove – done! Well, sort of – there remains Pommard Vaumauriens – but it won’t be ready for the best part of a week so will be attacked by the family one weekend.

2005 Capitain-Gagnerot, Corton-Renardes
Ardea sealed – one of the early adopters!
Ooh directly a great nose, and with plenty of development too, it makes me think of really good Cote de Nuits. In the mouth the shape, weight, and still plenty of tannin makes me think much more in the direction of Santenots – it turns out to be in the middle! The palate is young the nose more giving, but a super wine!

Chance for a run to Meursault and back in the late afternoon as preparation(!) for our evening Paulée 🙂
 

Still-life…

Chorey blanc

Chorey blanc in waiting (for the press)

Waiting for more grapes…

Finished!

The aftermath…

The last day’s luncheons…

Jogging back to Beaune (from Clos des Chênes)

Our harvest day number 8…

Pernand Sous Fretille was our starting point today – two parcels amounting to half a hectare; ‘young’ 25 year old vines, the other part about 70 years old near the cemetery and Domaine Rapet…
Of-course a morning of white included the obligatory enforced pause for the press! Anyway, beautiful stuff – practically as good as yesterday’s grapes from Corton-Charlemagne.

Naturally, waiting time in the morning means fast running in the afternoon to keep up – we had our last deliveries of Les Bons Feuvres followed by more Beaune – Montée Rouge this time. Here for the first time there is some rot to triage – apparently, though I didn’t see any, there were a few hail impacts here which helped the development of mildew. No problem, it was classic mid-bunch rot – two incisions, keep the top and tail, throw away the middle…
 

Sous Fretille

Sous Fretille (actually sous la press!)

The colour is coming…

Floor cleaned – ready for the next truck-load!

Morning cuvée sample testing…

Our harvest day number 7…

What a way to start our day – Corton-Charlemagne – from a super plot of 0.35 ha, on the hill in the real Charlemagne sector. Acquired by the owners on 1993. A pleasure to watch on the triage table – some beurot in this (pinot gris) and just a few leaves and grilled berries to remove. It looked great…

Did I mention that there was a little more Chorey rouge? Well there was, but we finished it before lunch – at last! Though there’s still a little (relatively rare) white to come.

Lunch: 1978 Bouchard Père, Puligny-Montrachet 1er Pucelles
With the slightest touch, the cork disappears into the bottle – oops! So decanted!
A deep golden colour. The nose (fortunately) is clean, deep and round – and it keeps getting better with air too – always the best sign! Volume, depth of texture, long, slow-moving waves of off-sweet mineral flavour – excellent – a great bottle, and so robust!

Villages Beaune, Les Bons Feuvres comes in after lunch. There is a little under-ripe to triage, but only that. Interestingly the stems were much riper than than most – some were almost red. We will be staying with this tomorrow too as it’s quite a large parcel – approaching one hectare. The finish-line is in sight for us now though, we should be finished sometime on Wednesday! The domaine’s Pommard Vaumauriens, having been hailed twice, will need another couple of weeks as it’s a long way from ripeness…

The have been a couple of questions for recent posts that I’ll address here :

• Acidity in whites: Is relatively modest – this vintage was never going to be like 2014 – but the amount of tartaric is relatively high, so pHs won’t reduce much during malolactic fermentations, as the sun burnt off much of the malic acidity.
• Yields: I will restrict my comments to Côte de Beaune for now, and to those vines that were not hit by hail – the yields are very good, and below the limits for the appellations – but not very far below. Growers are very happy to have both volume and quality. Hail damage will have caused very wide discrepancies – some parts of southern Nuits have lost most of their fruit – it’s too early to say how much. Likewise it’s too early to gauge HOW well endowed some of the those Côte de Nuits vines were…

And outside of the Côte d’Or?
It’s one of those years where everything is happening at the same time – usually Beaujolais starts before Beaune, Chablis is a bit more variable – but Beaujolais is now well underway – only the early pickers were out last week. Chablis is a little later this year – Long-Depaquit started their harvest today, and assuming that they are not already finished, I hope I’ll be allowed in to take some pics on Thursday!
 

Corton-Charlemagne…

Corton-Charlemagne…

Lunch (part of…)

Beaune Les Bon Feuvres

Reward…

Our harvest day number 6…

With visitors for the weekend, I managed to cajoule a half-day holiday from the domaine on Sunday, returning after lunch for more Chorey rouge – well the domaine does have more than 2 hectares! Nothing more/additional to report there. But I have a few photos…

Walking around Beaune on Sunday morning we happened upon the team of Le Grappin (right) – dancing around their triage table – unsurprising given how good their Santenay 1er cru grapes looked!

Before attacking a couple of 1998 Musigny(!) with Marko de Morey in the evening – who was to start his Morey St.Denis harvest the next day – I managed to jog my way through Pommard and Volnay, and back to Beaune. For the second time in the last few days the vendangeurs of Bitouzet-Prieur and Pierrick Bouley were letting their hair down for the evening – the smile on Pierrick’s face was enough to profess contentment with volume and quality, whereas Francois Bitouzet was much more concerned that I ought to be running faster!
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Chorey…

More Chorey…

Table grapes in Chorey!

Chorey for throwing away – the average delivery of grapes looked worse than this in 2004!

Pernand Le Pin – being pressed.

Our harvest day number 5…

Green and gold:
That’s how the triage table began this morning – villages Pernand – from relatively high up. At certain times the grapes on the table had me thinking of David Beckham – or rather his nickname – golden balls…

In recent times, relatively often have been the vintages where some proprietors claim that the grapes were so good that triage wasn’t necessary – of-course we who trie know better! But, this year, save for the extraction of leaves, and of-course not for vineyards touched by hail, I see a case for describing our 2018 triage as superfluous. There is a certain piece of mind that comes with triage, even this year, but for a number of vines, so little have we removed that I don’t expect a material difference to the wines.

Exceptional is a descriptor that has become overused to the extent that everything is now exceptional – like 93-95 point villages wines – but I can easily say that every other vintage that I’ve triaged since 2004 has not been like this one! Of-course the amount that you have to throw away is not the whole story, even the analytics are only the framework of the wines to, they don’t tell you about their texture, manner of delivery of flavour, or the wines’ complexity even if they may hint at the character – for that we will taste in another 12 months…

The rest of our day was Chorey-lès-Beaune rouge – the domaine has over 2 hectares – so it will be most of tomorrow too! The first deliveries needed a more ‘classical’ triage – much more unripe and a suggestion of rot here and there – this part of the vineyard is shaded by trees and is always wet – every year it’s problematic. Subsequent deliveries were more in the vernacular that has been set by other vineyards – still some rare bunches with rot, but virtually no unripe fruit. Apparently the soils are ‘worked’ here – but timing is everything! There is so much clay in the soil that the vineyards are impossible to enter when it’s very wet, or ploughing is ineffective when it’s very dry as the clay becomes concrete-like!

As noted yesterday, many, many more people were picking today as it was the 1st of September – a few images below of pickers in Beaune vines…

2008 Maison Saint-Nicolas, Volnay 1er Taillepieds
I don’t know this label – an hommage to Nicolas Potel maybe(?) He’d already left the Maison of his own name at this time…
Modest colour. Really a good nose of depth, complexity and flowers – not so wide. Fresh but with weight and width. A young palate but still a moreish wine. Tasty…
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Villages Pernand

Chorey-lès-Beaune

Lunch

Tannin – like nicotine…

Images from picking in Beaune…

Images from picking in Beaune…

Images from picking in Beaune…

Images from picking in Beaune…