Not so Serene…
It’s the start of August so, as the domaines start to think of their pre-harvest holidays, it’s a worthy time to take stock of the vintage so far.
Complicated !!
Not surprisingly, due to the many complications, it’s going to be a later harvest, and potentially quite a prolonged harvest too.
A microcosm of the vintage is Chablis – to a greater or lesser extent, everywhere is like Chablis – it’s the peaks and troughs of Chablis’ weather patterns that have expressed themselves more in earnest, more brashly, though:
Parts of Chablis were affected by frost – they have seen a lot worse but the effect was there
Parts of Chablis were under water already for the second time in April – La Chapelle-de-Vaupelteigne
Parts of Chablis were hailed already for the 4th time in June – Chichée
Parts of Chablis were decimated by hail – Fourchaume & Fontenay
Most of Chablis has been fighting the mildew – the grapes and the leaves
Most of Chablis has been deluged by stormwater in the last 2 weeks
By a degree – plus or minus but mainly minus – it has been much the same in the rest of Burgundy and Beaujolais. In the last week, there have been heavy storms in the Côte d’Or too – heavy enough rain to start moving some of the topsoil down the hills (Meursault) or to have had some hail mixed in with the water (Saint Aubin).
Everywhere, the vine-treatments have been unending; unless you have been using contact sprays (ie not organic) with your treatments quickly washed away by the rain that punctuates all this year. On average versus the more recent dryer years – the number of treatments have been double.
Until mid-July, and ignoring the much stronger frost of that year, 2024 has reminded me of 2016; an early growing season with so much rain and not that much sunshine – that all changed when the sun came out in mid-July in 2016. This year the sun and warmer weather arrived just a few days later – but the extra warmth and sunlight were still punctuated with much more rainy weather than July/August of 2016.
We will have to wait many months before discussing the wines of 2024 but in terms of the conditions in the vineyards, and the apparent yields of grapes, at this stage we seem to have quite the hierarchical vintage, i.e. the better-placed vineyard sites (1ers and grand crus) seem to have decent yields and (probably due to better drainage) seem to have been much less affected by the mildew. The more ‘humid’ locations having little to no yields and prime mid-slope locations are looking beautiful.
This is going to make life complicated for the harvest !!
2-3 weeks ago, many domaines in the Côte d’Or were thinking about starting their harvest 15-16 September but those dates are already starting to come under a little pressure as domaines think to start 7-10 days earlier. The yields are a complicating factor; the smaller the yields, the faster the grapes will ripen. The higher the yield, the longer a domaine will wait for maturity.
So the harvest timings are currently in-line with 2019 – but with a lower crop this year – and also very close to the 2021 vintage timing.