Domaine de la Vougeraie have their harvest log now online.

Moving on, let’s start with today’s update from Mark in Morey:

Bonjour,

Petit dejeuner day 3 a Domaine Arlaud vendange 08.

Thought we had done a fair chunk of Bourgogne Rouge on day 1 mais non !!

We started there again at 7.30 yesterday for another hard morning’s graft. My back was feeling day 1 quite badly and by lunch I was an object of some amusement for my fellow vendangeurs. Am starting to get to know them better now. 2 brothers, Georges et Fernand are in their 70’s but incrdiedibly fit – and so quick along the rows. The peer pressure to keep up is quite something. Tremendous roast pork lunch after rice salad and salade tomatoes from Berthilde Arlaud who’s mass catering is very impressive – a bit different from her dayjob ploughing the rows of vines with one horsepower employee, Nougat, for Arlaud and other domaines – am not allowed to say which, honestly, the family were most concerned it is a secret – bit odd but I recognised a couple of Gevrey names. She seems to have fair demand for her and Nougat’s services .

Tremendous sunny day, really warm a day wore on. After lunch we picked really great looking grapes in 1er cru Millandes (some one said Aux Combottes but Romain corrected this for me in the evening over dinner). He agreed the grapes from the 1er cru pleased them greatly – exceptionnel. We
then went back again to the Borgogne Rouge !!!! And by 5.30 we still haven’t finished it.

Over dinner I fascinated Romain and German stagiste Peter (just started a course at Geisenheim – his parents have an estate in the Rhiengau) with Clive Coates latest book. Fortunately Arlaud gets a strong, favourable mention !!!!

And then to bed before this morning.

Gotta go – 7.10am and still quite dark but v clear sky with star formations visible. My muscles are a bit stiff but the back seems a lot better. We’ll see soon. No idea where we go today yet – variety would be nice.

The Bourgogne Rouge large plot is going north from the village a mile or so – opposite near the top of the slope is a large concrete retaining wall. I’ll try and get a better fix soon.

Mark. G

• 1:15pm: Lovely grapes from Nuits 1er Les Vaucrains this morning. Still had to remove some rot and under-ripe bunches, but good enough that we even put the ‘prettiest’ bunches to one side to add to the tank stems’n all. Later we have our first whites and some red Corton.
• 2:15pm: After a morning of cloudless blue sky, we have some cloud cover – are we seeing a change?
• 4:30pm: Just finished the triage of some Corton grand cru from just out of the village centre. Not that much rot to remove, more concentrating on the unripe – complicated by the presence of quite a bit of pinot gris (pinot beurot) in the mix – but the grapes are not quite as nice looking as those from Nuits this morning. The sun returned, and it’s actually the first time I worked only in a t-shirt. It’s freezing indoors by comparison!
• 7:45pm: Did I mention the whites? They came in as must (already pressed juice direct from the owner) so not much I can tell you. Anyway, we’ve just completed triage of Beaune 1er Les Cras. I’ve seen this come across the table since the hail-damaged 04 and this was not bad at all – some of the most consistently ripe fruit we’ve seen yet, some big chunks of easy to cut rot and again (like the Vaucrins) a couple of bins of perfect whole clusters for depositing at the bottom of the fermenting tank. Another hour or so of clean-up and we’ll be ready for lasagne, Brunello, Clos St.Denis Tres Vieilles Vignes and an (as yet) unchosen white or two – purely for winding-down you understand 😉

News from Domaine Vincent et Denis Berthaut:
We started the harvest last Friday by Fixin Les Crais.
We save quality and quantity thanks to good weather, no rain and sunny days with 18°C tempreratures, who will last till we end …
Best regards, Denis Bertaut

Until tomorrow…

Picked up for a song in a recent auction. The thought should see us through the cold but sunny morning – talk about a carrot and stick…

• 11:45am: Just finished triaging the first consignment of Savigny 1er Les Peuillets. Hail damaged so needing much more triage versus yesterday – it’s a much slower process. I would characterise the work as slightly easier than 2004 – but it’s a close call, and I didn’t see how much ‘fruit’ was left at the vines. On the positive side the grapes are ripe, on the negative my fingers started to go numb – the grapes were picked at only 6 or 7°C! Yesterday’s cuvées are characterised by their acidity, 2.98, 3.05, 3.18. The BIVB Bulletin confirms that there is a high degree of malic acid (so the overall acidity should go down quite a bit after malos) but estimates the vintage acidity could be similar, or even in advance of 1996. Let’s see. Did someone mention lunch?
• 3:15pm: That’s the last of the Savigny done, and that’s all we will have today – tomorrow is a mix of white and red, including Chassagne, Meursault, Nuits 1er and Corton. The rest of the Savigny was just a little easier than the morning’s batch. Lunch was lobster, ’87 Meursault Perrières and 55 Volnay – well it was Sunday 😉
• 6:45pm: I decided not to snooze after today’s triage (it would have been easy), rather I decided to take a walk in the sunshine in Pommard. Out of the village centre in the direction of Beaune you can easily lose yourself in the patchwork of vines: steep, flat, trellised, always walled though with quite some variation in both height and maintenance. Today at least, the late afternoon sun showed them at their immaculate best; sharply pruned and still a majority waiting to be harvested. Even at 6pm a few pickers are bringing in their fruit, but given our experience with the Epenots yesterday and the look of most of the grapes now, it should be quick and easy triage – perhaps they will finish by 9pm…

Cool photo reportage from the harvest.

• Before Lunch: So far this morning we triaged grapes from Ladoix that are destined for a Côtes de Beaune. Far, far better than my expectation; almost no rot – I may have worked only 5 vintages, but I’ve not seen cleaner grapes from such a ‘lowly’ appellation – the rub is that we still have to work hard to remove the unripe, and it’s a significant amount. The grapes are far from consitent in size, and despite returning to the table de trie and finding it sticky (like in 2005) there’s not quite the same number of drier/dried grapes as that year so I have the impression they are not quite so concentrated.
• 3:30pm:The Volnay villages this afternoon, followed on from the Ladiox of this morning: nice ‘hand-grenade’ clusters, very rarely showing rot, but again plenty of unripe ones to remove – these less ripe clusters will make a great rosé! Now we’re waiting for our Pommard Epenots…
• 7:10pm: Just finished our Pommard Epenots. More rot, but still less than 2006 or 2007. To balance the fruit was riper and visibly bluer than the Volnay but still some under-ripe stuff to throw away.

I won’t make any big summaries based on fruit from just 2 vineyards, but safe to say I’m positively surprised versus my expectations. Not just the fields of Pommard were full of pickers; the densely planted section of La Tâche was picked today, as was at least some of La Romanée – Louis-Michel Liger-Belair has over 50 pickers this year, and should be finished by Tuesday.

Nice report here from Mark Gough in Morey:

Deuxieme jour pour le vendange Arlaud.

Arrived Friday after leisurely drive from off the ferry at Zeebrugge circa 9.00 am. Noted lots of activity on the Montagne de Reims and the Aube vineyards from the autoroute.

Sharing a rustic (basic – very !!) flat with 6 mature French guys who have been coming to Arlaud for yrs – but 4 of them do only driving and chais work!!! Also one brave Belgian girl Sophie shares with us.

Tricky first morning in 5 hectare plot of Bourgogne Rouge (for Arlaud’s Roncevie) after far too much ‘sampling’ of the product on the first evening. Herve Arlaud kept us hard at it until 12 dejeuner in increasingly warm sunshine and same again afternoon until ‘Arret’ at 6 when most of us had just about had it !! No mid morning and mid afternoon’s breaks here as at Magenta in 06. We have almost finished the Bourgogne – not sure where we go after this. Grapes look better than I expected but I have been amazed at the savage selection on the table even for the Bourgogne. Romain Cyprien, Arlaud’s chef de cave, tells me only circa 10% kept from 2 tries. He also told me the grapes had improved massively in the run up to the vendange and that drying wind had helped concentration.

Got to go now, les autres vendangeurs locale arrivee noisily ! I love the camaraderie of the vendange and the banter.

Musnt forget my bottle of water tomorrow!!!

1. ALAIN BURGUET
   Currently planning to start on 4th October!
2. ALEX GAMBAL
   “In the middle of grapes. Non stop. Yields VERY low to nothing. Bizarre. Wind and cool has dried everything out and has concentrated the juice. Quality is hopeful but not very economic.” – Sounds mainly like Côte de Beaune(?)

Plus a few online things to read:

• Gumball Rally, Burgundy Style
• Seeing is believing
• Long Lunches

The weather is holding, so now it’s time to get serious. Here are a few early reports:

1. DOMAINE LOUIS CHENU ET FILLES
   We started this morning with (Savigny-lès-Beaune 1er) Les Talmettes. We did a grapes selection, we have very few rotten grapes, but we have to check maturity. I will let you know…It is very sunny and a bit cold, perfect weather for the harvest…
2. DOMAINE JOSEPH DROUHIN
   Today under this brilliant sunshine we pick a small parcel of (Beaune 1er) Clos des Mouches white and Chablis premier cru Secher, both have delicious, ripe grapes to eat…
   More to follow as harvest progresses!
3. REMOISSENET PÈRE ET FILS
   “Ici la Bourgogne Libre. Le retour du grand beau temps depuis le 14 septembre a d’ores et déja sauvé le millesime 2008. Nous avons décidé ce matin de repousser encore le debut des vendanges chez Remoissenet pour ne démarrer que le 1er octobre. Les rendements vont etre très bas . Une bonne acidité notamment malique pour un millésime inedit, de belle garde, aux antipodes des vins raplaplas…” [always a lot of style from Bernard!]

More to follow…