Domaine Michel Gros Vendange 2024 – Day 2, Sunday 22nd Sept
Last year, as best I can recall now, we didn’t work Sundays which were free days but, and perhaps as only our second day this year, there was no sign nor prospect of such ‘luxury’ here.
After a very annoying occurrence during the night which badly, and inexcusably, saw the ‘beauty sleep’ of myself and room sharer, Guy, disrupted, to say nothing of our privacy (will say no more about this here), making my way over the yard to the dining cave building for breakfast it was apparent we’d also had light rain only overnight. The consensus amongst the Meteo sages over breakfast, including Michel (Gros), who’s weather forecasting ability had been impressively spot on last year, was that there’d be no more rain until the next night i.e 22nd/23rd. But, post breakfast, and meandering over to our gathering area outside the new building, I noticed others were busy moving in and out of the new building equipping themselves with the wet weather gear (clothing, rubber boots etc.) the domaine provided (laid out on pallets) for those stupid enough, or too lazy, to bring their own. With the odd curse to myself I hurried back to my room to get my Wellington boots (‘wellies’), cagoule, and over trousers albeit keeping the latter in their bag for now.
Cuverie yard early a.m. gathering
New building with domaine wet weather gear laid out
The first destination of our select sub-team little band was another new (to work in) terroir to me – Nuits-St-Georges Aux Murgers, adjacent to Aux Vignerondes from yesterday, and below Chaignots & La Richemone. The small extent of the domaine’s holdings in Murgers and Vignerondes lead to grapes from these terroirs being blended into the Nuits-St-Georges 1er cru. Average production I believe circa 600-900 bottles. I’d asked Pierre about producing separate 1er crus but he shrugged and explained that amount of grapes/wine per individual terroir led to a preference to blend – understandable I suppose; as was our small in number sub-team of this year working these terroirs, which I’d not experienced last year. I’d not previously considered a valuable (to me) side effect of being in the smaller sub-team but, enjoying now, this was great ! Namely, we were away from the main group, but in particular, the ridiculous, undesirable, element of scumbag Belgian youth and their propensity, as well as being lazy/slow, to distract themselves by throwing bunches of grapes around the vines at unsuspecting individuals, as well as looking to tip buckets of filth, grapes etc over AN Other – apparently a bizarre ‘initiation’ ceremony for a new, first year, worker. Doubtless my previously making clear this would not happen to me or consequences would follow, and nor did I consider hurling grapes around, or throwing bread at meal times, to be ‘clever’, had led to my lack of popularity in Belgium – which I couldn’t care less about.
NSG 1er cru Les Meurgers fruit
NSG 1er cru Les Meurgers top of slope post completion
NSG 1er cru Les Meurgers top of slope post completion3
Team members in NSG 1er cru Les Meurgers
It didn’t take us long to work Murgers and, to be quite honest, I can’t now recollect much about it, even prompted by the few photos taken although the latter suggest the grapes here weren’t ‘bad’ in context of what we experienced elsewhere. Done by c10.30 we moved off to Vougeot, taking the D25 briefly from the Vougeot/Gilly RN74 roundabout then right onto & along the Rue de L’Ancienne Nationale, behind the Total Energies Filling Station on the RN74, stopping/parking outside the last couple of houses looking north just before the Rue rejoined the main road. Initially, I was bemused by our street location and where we might be going but what followed was probably the most bizarre entry, and subsequent exit, to vines I’ve ever had, or will have ! Our on-foot destination into the vines turned out to be down the narrowest of rough underfoot, weed-filled path (in Northern England we’d call this a ginnel – a narrow passage between buildings) between two homes, down which we carried everything we’d need including cases as well as bucket etc. Emerging from said path, hey presto (!) we emerged, on this grey, dank, overcast morning into an unprepossessing plot of Chambolle Village vines – namely Les Nazoires. Another first for me & quite bizarre in terms of access!
Chambolle Village Route Nationale side pre start
Chateau du Clos de Vougeot from RN74 ChambolleVillage
Vougeot frontage to unreal entry to Chambolle Village2
We moved around in Les Nazoires with 3 or 4 row passes before moving en vehicule to a RN 74 roadside location for what was either Les Mombies or Les Maladiere. It was the one of those two in which is the white roadside sign for the Caveau des Musigny – I think must have been the former but am far from sure now ! All this took us up to lunch, or time to depart to get back for said meal. I quite like these varied mornings or afternoons as time passes quickly without ‘dragging’ and the cooler weather was a definite plus. Bits of light rain/precipitation had come and gone through the morning but nothing serious to impact work.
Post lunch took us back to the Chambolle Village roadside location initially to the plot of either Mombies or Maladiere we hadn’t ‘done’ pre lunch. Nothing remarkable or memorable to comment on here, but our next location was a great deal more interesting. This was still Chambolle but quite different to our three previous largely flat locations. We were in a steepish/sloping “Les Argillieres”. The domaine describe this thus, note the reference to Musigny, which more than one of my colleagues verbally referenced to me:-
“The main parcel (42 ares) is situated in the Argillières, the name of which gives a clue of the nature of the soil. This parcel continues the Musigny vines in the North at the entrance of the Chambolle comb. This parcel produces a cuvée with an unusual strength and density for a Chambolle village, and in this view it is rather similar to a Premier Cru.”
The domaine quote the vine age across the various areas of Chambolle Village as 50 yrs old. We somehow managed to get the vehicles to the top of the slope before we alighted and walked down to pick coming back up as customary. Before descending I managed to grab a quick picture of our little group for ‘posterity’ ! We had two passes at different points in this terroir, one almost on the ‘corner’ of the hill around which was Musigny with ‘Les Amoureuses’ below. We weren’t that far away as best I could tell from the Domaine Michel Noellat Chambolle Village I’d worked in during the 2019 and 2020 (Covid affected) harvests – but Argillieres seems pretty special and is now my Village site favourite. I can’t now, with passage of time, recall grape quality, and quantity here but my brief end-of-day scribbles don’t include anything negative. I do remember at some point during the vendange, and from a hillside site (could have been this one), musing to myself (easy to do a lot of musing whilst working !) on whether I had formed a sufficiently solid impression that grape quality was better, & mildew damage seemed less, from altitude sites but I never ultimately decided on thoe aspects to fully convince myself one way or another – it was that sort of a harvest ! The rain, or drizzle, immediately post lunch & in Chambolle Argillieres had been kind to us i.e held off but the heaviest was to come/return as we concluded our afternoon in yet another new to me terroir, and the one that reflecting post vendange completion, was my favourite – for no other reason than I liked it best, even on a wet and grey late afternoon.
Chambolle Village hillside vines around hill from Musigny
Commencing hillside Chambolle Village around hill from Musigny GC
My select bunch sub team at top of hillside Chambolle Village
Our final p.m destination, after a little more vehicle travelling, and after our van had to pause a while in Morey centre to await the other which had become detached, was another first:- Morey En la Rue de Vergy (‘ElRdV’). Am not sure why but, curiously on a personal basis, notwithstanding 9 harvest years of working and living in Morey-St-Denis, I’d never been up to the high parts of the village, and not above Clos des Lambrays or Clos de Tart. The other producers with vines here (ElRdV) I know are, in no particular order:- Bruno Clair, Aurelien Verdet, and Lignier-Michelot but doubtless, there are others.
Morey from above Clos des Lambrays
Positioning to start MSD En la Rue de Vergy in rain (1)
Positioning to start MSD En la Rue de Vergy in rain (2)
Top section of MSD En la Rue de Vergy with our camion
We approached by going high up the village until, with Cote Rotie on our right, we turned left onto a well-made concrete/cement type road, with the Clos des Lambrays below us, and the likes of other village sites La Bidaude and Les Larrets above us. We proceeded the length of the road until it turned sharply left, and steeply, down the southern edge of the Clos des Lambrays at which point we disembarked the vehicles, then walking (little hard to stop oneself’s momentum becoming too much so steep was the road) a little way downslope and right into En la Rue de Vergy at its bottom edge. I noted with interest the Clos des Lambrays had been picked – not a bunch of grapes in sight ! We had time to do one pass here, upslope, one person to a row. Finishing this one pass that was ‘it’ for the day, the rain, typically, stopping as we left ! Our return to Vosne was a meandering tour through the vines, with it a late almost 17.30 by the time we got back, well behind the rest of the overall team who’d clearly been back a while !
At summit of MSD En la Rue de Vergy post completion
Fruit bucket MSD En la Rue de Vergy
Onyx post completion of MSD En la Rue de Vergy
View back to MSD Hautes from above Lambrays
Somewhat fatigued, a shower was the order of the day. A word on our evenings:- dinner was circa 20.00 hours, in practice more often than not a little later. Pre-dinner, unless one had one’s own beer, the drinks offering was red wine and cassis, or just the red wine if one didn’t care for it with cassis. For the most part i.e lunch, pre-dinner drinks, and unless Michel and/or Pierre opened more ‘superior’ wines with dinner (as they invariably did e.g NSG Village, NSG Chaliots, Bourgogne Cote d’Or, HCDN Fontaine St Martin) the red is/was an interesting wine I’d become familiar with in 2023. In brief, the domaine takes the pressings from all their other cuvees, and presses again to extract the max residual juice – this then forming our unclassified ‘Vin de Table’ – the latter my name for it. Very drinkable always. I suppose I should have asked if 2021/22/23 but that never occurred to me. As in 2023 the catering was provided by an external ‘Traiteur’ who delivered daily (twice I think) in large ‘warm’ boxes. Our catering team, with last year’s chef (my then room-mate) indisposed at the eleventh-hour pre-vendange for personal reasons this year, was a very young twosome who travelled in daily from Dijon. The young lady of the twosome was Manon, an engaging, bubbly & always cheery personality, her colleague/friend (never established if he was actually the boyfriend) a hardworking young man with blond highlights & tattoos who’s name now escapes me. Both were very friendly and chatty with me at all times which was appreciated and responded to accordingly. They had to prepare the dining cave, dish out the meals into large serving dishes and provide for each table, and then clear up, wash up etc afterwards. They did well.
Tomorrow, Monday, would be a dry day when we operated for the most part north of Vosne before a mid to late afternoon session back in the Vosne locale across the railway lines at Boncourt-le-Bois.
MdMdlV
Without looking into the details of the sale, the total amount achieved by the sale was much lower than other previous vintages. It is, however, important to note that this was due to the challenges of the vintage producing one of the smallest crops in recent years – only 2021 was lower, see the table to compare below – just 449 barrels being offered in the sale. The average price of the reds did fall by around 5% but the price of the whites increased by 8%. This resulted in the 3rd highest average barrel price.
Thursday the 21st November 2024 will be Beaujolais Nouveaux day – so how about a few stats to get us going?
I’ll keep my comments strictly on 2024 Nouveaux:
