This afternoon in Vosne-Romanée
A hot year – you could say quite a dry one – but, as you can see, not dry finishing for the later pickers.
The rain was quite strong in the Côte d’Or in the early morning of today. By 09h00 it had largely stopped. With rain forecast for today but then a forecast of nearly 10 days of dry weather, things were looking up for the later pickers.
But about 4pm the sky grew dark and the nearby villages were lost in the rainclouds. I missed the worst of the downpours – but not their aftermath – ie the rivers of fast-moving, brown-clay-coloured, water.
Above is the view with Vosne 1er Les Suchots in the foreground, with high-trained vines of Leroy’s Romanée St.Vivant in the background – your intrepid reporter chose to stay in the car !! Luckily, Vosne seems to have been largely picked !!
Gevrey-Chambertin today:
It’s really towards the north of the Côte d’Or where there is still work to do, hence, my trip to Gevrey.
I didn’t see the rain, recorded above, any further north than Chambolle-Musigny, as, at this hour, I was already heading south.
More generally, it’s a minority of the parcels, but plenty of grapes were still waiting in the vines, not much in the villages plots, more in premiers such as Corbeaux and Cazetiers. There were also grapes waiting in Mazis du Bas. As for grapes not waiting, there were teams picking in Bèze, Chapelle-Chambertin and Chambertin itself.
I had a small chat with Jean-Louis Trapet (some images from Domaine Trapet below). “We will finish harvesting tomorrow with some Pommard from higher-located vines and some Marsannay. I’m very happy with the maturity, and whilst we are just starting to see a little rot, it’s all triaged, of course.”
