Arlaud Vendange Day Six – Saturday, 8th Sept 2018

A largely Gevrey day here (excluding the already done first day Combottes).

Morning started a little chilly with our return to finish Morey’s Aux Cheseaux from the previous evening. Our team numbers were enhanced by weekend availability which, for me, happily included my good Japanese friend from 2017, Ako, and husband, Arnaud (Lippe), who’s a top bloke and ‘petrol head’. Arnaud’s aunt, also a Lippe, has a small domaine in Brochon which I believe she has only taken on in the last few years (two ?) but does not yet commercialise any wines, just selling either grapes or juice (can’t recall which). I was much amused to see Ako was wearing the same pair of black rubber gloves I’d given her in 2017, then taking pity on her lack of protection. Ako & Arnaud had not been able to extract themselves from their ‘day jobs’ this year to work other than the weekend but told me they were keen to participate, not least as they are buying a new Dijon apartment in the coming weeks, for which vendange wages would be useful for decorating materials etc.

Gevrey Village (below RN74) rest break

Gevrey Villlage fruit

Finishing my row I helped out with completing two to three more rows such that we eventually wrapped up Aux Cheseaux before circa 10.00 a.m. and moved to a plot of Gevrey Village known, checking my maps, (Mike Lange pls note 😉) as Les Seuvrées which lies just below the RN74, and between Arlaud’s Morey (Village) En Seuvrey and Roncevie. We had the usual break here before tackling the Gevrey, no fruit photos taken, which took us ‘neatly’ up to lunch.

Post lunch a convoy journey to Gevrey itself for the other contributor (see domaine website) to Arlaud’s Gevrey Village cuvee, La Justice. The entry to this site always amuses me as incongruous, to me anyway. Take the Avenue de la Gare from the RN74 traffic lights past Domaine Marc Roy and Domaine Phillipe Rossignol until taking a left into the grounds of two apartment blocks near the premises of Agir Technologies SA, skirt around the furthest back apartment block, and onto a track right in the vines. This was, doubtless due to the long, hot, summer a La Justice as I could not recall seeing in my previous 8 years coming here. It’s a site which can often have soft ground or, when its (been) raining, can be very muddy/boggy indeed. Leaf growth here has always been a feature and large, pendulous, bunches the norm. I can recall historic prodigious fruit such that one’s bucket can be filled almost with the ‘output’ of one vine. None of this was apparent this year though, quite the contrary, and ultimately if one site reflected the summer and the baking hot sun on the day then La Justice. The ground was dry and dusty like I’d not seen here before. Whilst the majority of the vines had reasonable foliage there were any number, in my row at least, that had leaves that were distinctly crispy and frazzled, a few vines with hardly any leaves at all and shrivelled, burnt, grapes. There was absolutely no need for the serious leaf stripping per vine to get at the fruit and I didn’t see what I was looking at as a result of the domaine’s June leaf stripping. Anyway, I was selected in a group to go, in our individual rows, halfway across the vineyard and start there. Suited me and as a bonus I had Monsieur Belfort as my preferred porteur. We will come to his music dans les vignes in another day’s output ! It was hot !! I was ‘perspiring’ freely, sweat running into my eyes, down my nose and dripping off other parts of my head such that if I shook my head it was almost akin to a dog shaking itself coming out of water. Battling on, we (the halfway across starters) were ‘caught’ before we completed our rows by the rest of the gang who’d started behind us – I guess they’d doubled up and finished what they had done before us as we hadn’t ‘hung about’, far from it. The full team soon saw the remaining parts of rows completed although I went back to help Maxime some way behind who seemed to have been abandoned.

By Gevrey La Justice – hmmm

Gevrey La Justice end water & rest break

Gevrey La Justice 2 Senior Citizen Vendangeurs

By Gevrey La Justice Department as described

Gevrey La Justice Water Break – Herve Arlaud dispensing

Gevrey La Justice Vine & Grapes

Gevrey La Justice Marko row with best porteur

Gevrey La Justice Grape Bunch

That destination turned out to be our first of several visits to come to Roncevie. I was glad we only had part of the afternoon left as 5 ha of Roncevie can be, and is, a real hard slog (for me anyway). Don’t get me wrong – I 100% agree with Mike de L from his response to my Day 5 ramblings on the quality and affordability of Arlaud’s Bourgogne Roncevie, have bought & enjoyed it for years and don’t disrespect the Roncevie vines at all but taking up to two days to pick it’s a hard place to be ! We started this year furthest away from the road by the edge of the woods. This section was the one that was very badly frosted indeed during the severe winter weather of 2009/10 with a considerable number of mature vines killed, necessitating much re-planting. The new vines from that re-planting are now, at last, very much into their stride in terms of growth and fruit return. They were a pain in the proverbial to deal with from year 3 on as they hadn’t fully developed and initial fruit was very small and hard to pick. Then there was post frost 2016 which, whilst we made the usual pass through this section, saw a ridiculously sparse fruit ‘return’. I suppose Roncevie isn’t quite the finished wine it was before the 2009/10 devastation but it remains a very tasty Bourgogne indeed & we are only ‘talking’ a part of it, I’d have to guess but maybe one fifth (if that), that was impacted – the rest has all the mature vines it has always had. On our left as we walk down to the edge of the wood to commence picking back up towards the road there’s another area of shrubs, trees, grass, cut & piled timber etc all as a form of island in the ‘sea of vines’. In this area there are a few huts and low buildings, some of which are dog kennels with wire meshed pens. I always feel a bit sorry for the canine occupants here, being generally fond of dogs, as they seem, doubtless deliberately (see below re noise !), to be kept ‘isolated’ far from the village. There are a goodly number of dogs in the several kennels, all of a hunting variety e.g hounds, spaniels, beagles and a terrier or two etc. When they hear & see us I guess they perhaps think they are about to be fed, watered or maybe taken hunting. The cacophony of barking & baying which ensues, particularly from the hound species, is quite something and relentlessly kept up all the while we are there.

On the subject of noise I should, lest I forget, mention more noise which became apparent early on from the start of our vendange and has continued, sporadically, daily and throughout the days from early morning to late afternoon. This noise is gunfire and emanates from the forested areas above and to the side of Monts Luisants and above Combottes/Latricieres/Chambertin. When I first heard the shooting, without then realising the scale of what was to continue, I just assumed some particularly keen chasseurs (hunters) were pursuing their sport. Chatting to some of my colleagues I mentioned my assumption of hunting sangliers (wild boar) but hadn’t bargained for the response. What I was told was that what we were hearing was professional pursuit, not just of wild boar but also wild goats ! Apparently, the goats have developed a liking for the vines and become some sort of real nuisance. The shooting was described as driving them away from the vines – whether this meant shooting to scare/drive them away up and over the hills, or whether it meant killing them I never figured out but the scale of the gunfire over many days was quite something and seemed to be more than just shotguns.

So, the first sortie into Roncevie, took us to ‘close of play’ – we would return ( a few times !). Bucket cleaning was taking an interesting form. The dry ground meant the exterior of the buckets were not requiring ‘serious’ cleaning as when the ground is wet or muddy but what was an issue was the ripeness of the grapes meaning the insides of the buckets were getting very sticky indeed. A sweep with a strong hosepipe jet wasn’t enough but filling each bucket with a modest amount of water was necessary, with that water then to be worked around the bucket sides with a brush before rinsing again with the hose. It was taking 5 of us some time to clean the not inconsequential number of buckets before beer reward.

And so to Day 7, more Roncevie, and an unexpected, in the vines, lunchtime ‘experience’.
Marko de Morey (written 20/9/2018)

In French (mainly) for French TV:

Family Drouhin and their 2018 harvest: https://t.co/uGuldZP0UG

— 🅱️ill nanson (@billnanson) September 17, 2018

Arlaud Vendange Day 5 Friday 7th September
Aligote x 2, Morey Villages (vers Roncevie), Vosne P-M, Morey Clos Solon, Morey Aux Cheseaux:

Friday turned out to be another very warm day but in terroir & picking terms a very varied one. We ‘kicked off’ with two separate parcels of Aligote in the area just south of the village’s main road traffic light junction and ‘below’ the road. The Aligote is looking really good this year (2016 was a disaster). I like picking Aligote and white grapes generally but one has to be thorough in leaf stripping or its all too easy to miss a bunch. One can almost guarantee if you don’t strip a leaf, or look behind it, then some grapes will be hiding. One of the two parcels was a little unusual in that Arlaud ‘only’ seemed to have a part of each of the very long rows, with the white paint splodge on a post coming also part way along the row to signify where to stop. I must have picked in these rows before but can’t recall ever noticing this. The Aligote took us to c9.30 when we re-embarked in the vans for a relatively short hop north of the village, still below & next to the main road, in a location similar to, but not as far as, Roncevie. This was Pinot classed as Morey Village which just shows how ‘daft’ are the inter-village politics which causes Arlaud’s Roncevie to be a Bourgogne as the upper part of Roncevie and the Morey Village we were about to tackle aren’t ‘that’ far apart and similar. I guess though not all of Arlaud’s Roncevie could be classed as ‘village’ i.e those sections further away from the road. Anyway, the slog that is Roncevie’s 5ha was still to come, meantime today’s section of the Morey took us up to lunch. I didn’t take any photos here which belatedly can only attribute to the fruit being unremarkable i.e good, but could also have been down to picking speed.

Early a.m. in Aligote row

Early a.m. in Aligote row Climent approaches

Aligote

Aligote 2nd plot of day close to first

Casse-croute break Mor

M.Belfort Porteur with his rather good Spanish 45% Anise

Another Marko approved nice lunch

Post lunch then a moment I’d been eagerly anticipating ever since we ‘did’ Echezeaux & CSD. When the usual call to vehicles came I went, as usual, to hop onto the front bench seat of one of the two ageing, white, battered Mercedes Sprinter vans (perhaps the most unusual looking rental vans one might come across !) with my outside perch alongside J-P Feral & with Herve on the driver’s side. However, Climent grabbed my arm & directed me to the black, almost new looking, VW Caravelle mini bus which he drove throughout. The reason for my vehicle direction was quickly obvious – a number of us were off to Vosne for tackling premier cru, Petit-Monts. This is just a fantastic location, high up above Vosne with a superb vista looking down on Vosne, and with Nuits St-Georges to the north. Lamarche’s team were ‘hard at it’ in La Grande Rue as we climbed. The road narrows and takes a very sharp right a little before we go no further, other than on foot. A short walk from the vehicles takes us to the vines but the Arlaud (negoce) parcel requires a left turn upwards, then a right along the hill slope to come to ‘our’ section. Unusually, this parcel of vines as I’ve recorded in past years (but do so again for new readers) is planted longitudinally across the slope whereas the earlier vines we walk past in different ownership are conventionally planted ‘vertically’ i.e up/down the slope. Its quite steep hence picking grapes from vines so planted, with minimal room between rows, can be trickier than might be imagined in terms of one’s stance and making sure one’s bucket doesn’t go somewhere down slope it shouldn’t ! Arlaud have had/worked these P-M vines from 2013 inclusive and the benefits of Arlaud’s husbandry has become clear to see over the years. A very good advertisement for biodynamism. We’d just started picking when I became aware there was a human figure some way ahead of me in my row. For a split second I assumed this must be a picker for another domaine on adjacent rows but quickly realised as the figure approached I was looking at a young lady, smartly dressed in leisure clothing (included a Blancpain Series top) and carrying a camera with one of those huge grey lenses which made my slung Canon G16 look puny ! It turned out this presumably professional photographer had been commissioned by Cyprien to take vendange photos for the Arlaud website. We’d see more of this girl on Sunday to come but for now she moved amongst, sometimes, very close, ‘snapping’ us in action. I generally do not like having my photo taken at all, with my long joking the ‘first rule of vendange is Mark takes photos, Mark does not appear on photos’ so I’m rather hoping I will not be making any website appearance in due course. My Canon was however approved of by this professional as ‘a good camera’.

Afternoon sun thro Aligote vines

Arlaud team commence Vosne Petit-Monts

Vosne Petit-Monts Marko row

Arlaud team descend from Vosne P-M

Damian on Arlaud camion Vosne Petit-Monts

What a bunch of Petit-Monts grapes !

Madam Professional Photographeur in Vosne P-M

Comte Liger-Belair Polo Shirt Models Vosne P-M

Marko Morey Aux Cheseaux row

Morey Aux Cheseaux Water Break finish

Morey Monts St Luisants from Aux Cheseaux

Morey Monts St Luisants from Aux Cheseaux (2)

Back in the vans we dropped down into Vosne. I tried a couple of photos of La Grande Rue from the moving/bouncing mini bus window and when I came to download was gratified to see at least one photo had ‘worked’.

From Vosne our return to Morey saw us re-join the rest of the team who’d not been Vosne bound. They were in Morey Clos Solon where we helped them quickly finish their rows before we all moved on as one to Morey 1er Aux Cheseaux, the final of our premier crus (as often seems the case). By now it was blisteringly hot with water intake essential and much needed (by me particularly) hence we had a break before commencing. I never asked directly but assumed the hot, & occasionally, humid weather was behind another new for this year development which could see Herve or Climent (occasionally one of the porteurs) move amongst us in the rows whilst we worked, morning and afternoon, dispensing welcome drinks from those plastic barrel type things bulk wine might come in or similar. We also seemed to be finishing regularly at c17.00 hours, an hour earlier than I’d been used to in past years (but I wasn’t complaining ! I put this down to the energy sapping heat.

We only part completed Aux Cheseaux before the day’s closure – we’d return to finish the next morning. I’ve noticed I’ve captioned a couple of late afternoon taken photos from here, seemingly without thinking/automatically, as Aligote. Now, thinking about it, I did have a couple of vines at least which, whilst they should of course have been Pinot Noir, bore ‘white’ grapes. These may not necessarily have been Aligote but could be something else – if someone can identify (assuming Bill includes said photos) then please be my guest !

And so wearily back to base, bucket cleaning and a beer, then one’s own gear & self cleaning.
Marko de Morey completed 15/9/2018

But 30 minutes from my house in the Bielersee vineyards – Switzerland – a very nice day for it!

There are approaching 50 different varieties grown on the terraces above Lake Biel (Lac du Bienne) but it seemed that the pinot and chasselas were the ones being harvested yesterday.
 

Pinot

Chasselas

More Chasselas…

We also took a trip up the the Chasseral – the highest point in the Swiss Jura at 1,609m – the restaurant up there is unremarkable, rather like a modest place in a ski resort, but the views were cool! The tower is mainly a radio and TV relay for Swisscom, 120 metres tall and (this version) built in 1983…