I received the following today:

The 2007 grape harvest in Chablis: on the 9th September, the La Chablisienne co-operative began the grape harvest at Château Grenouilles
(Drinks Media Wire). Château Grenouilles is the only estate located at the heart of the Grands Crus vineyards. Discover the success of a co-operative with prospects.

Since 1923 in Chablis (Burgundy), the La Chablisienne co-operative and its 300 winegrowing-members have been producing great white wines from a mosaic of local soils, all marked by their own very particular minerals.

The La Chablisienne co-operative is present throughout the vineyard. Every year, they produce some thirty different vintages and crus, all boasting strong personalities: 6 Grands Crus, 11 Premiers Crus, Chablis wines and Petit Chablis wines. The very prestigious Château Grenouilles ranks first among these crus, and is the only estate to be located on the hill of the Grands Crus.

La Chablisienne is an exemplary and successful French co-operative. The figures on 31/07/07 confirm that fact with a 10% rise in the number of bottles marketed and a 16% rise in the turnover compared to 2006, which means La Chablisienne may well exceed its sales objectives with over 8 million bottles sold by the end of the year.

As a brand, La Chablisienne focuses its sales essentially on value and image-promoting sectors: wine merchants 9%, the café, hotel and restaurant circuit 32%, and export 59%.

Apart from promoting Chablis wines, this development also aims to enable as many family producers as possible to work the vineyard (with 180 member estates) and younger generations of winegrowers to settle there (25 young producers over a period of 5 years.)

Beyond its commercial success, La Chablisienne is more than ever a wine co-operative with prospects and a great future, preserving an exceptional heritage.

What didn’t make it into the cuvée

Today at the home domaine it’s villages Vosne-Romanée and Charmes-Chambertin on the triage table. Whereas the Charmes looks ‘okay’, the Vosne looks excellent – so much so that the vieilles-vignes have been separated into another cuvée and are going into the tank with a high percentage of whole clusters. The younger vines will be de-stemmed as normal, so it will be interesting to compare the two.

Tomorrow is a free day, or at-least free from sorting, and Monday will see the Corton Clos du Roi harvested. Tuesday might be Chambertin and Latricières, otherwise they will come on Wednesday. Maranges will also come on Wednesday, so this vineyard is a little behind its usual evolution.

A trip to Meursault and Puligny this morning showed quite a few people harvesting their chardonnay, but the home team’s Corton-Charlemagne is most likely going to be left until next weekend as the forecast is as good as the last dry days.

What of the fermenting cuvées? Well the Beaune 1er Cru Les Cras has already 98% completed its alcoholic fermentation. The colours are actually very good, but the tannins are a little on the low side so more extraction will be tried. It’s actually very hard to judge the balance as there is a lot of malic acid (tartaric also) so we will have to wait a while.

And some notes from our winemaker friend in Morey St.Denis:

“What a heterogeneous harvest.

I have brought in 4 ha of fruit, the sugars are all over the place. Even within an appellation, I have a variation of 1°! We also have a smaller yield than estimated, but the quantities are decent. I can’t stall the harvest like Dominique though, my team is going back to school, and my drivers back to work. I’m afraid of rain, but I might stall the whites until next week. The Vegetation is dormant now, the only degrees I’ll get is with evaporation.

I have an average of 12° for everything which is correct. We’ll see how it goes in the tanks…

Our tannins are low, acids are high, I think that with some good work though we’ll get a decent wine in, the must is tasty, wild strawberries, blueberries, iron, licorice. I am hoping to get some nice spices in the end of fermentation. I am in the beginning of fermentation, I’m favoring a cold extraction, and good news, no smelly grapes this year for me.
I’ll send in more profound tasting notes in a few days. 1 or 2 days of soak are not enough, and I did have some shot berries and raisining in some vines.”

The weather is amazing; the few drops of rain in Beaune yesterday came to nothing, but today it’s sunny, the north wind is blowing – and it’s cold! It really is like an an October harvest even though were are in the first week of September. The home team boss is even joking about making a ‘selection grains nobles’ from Corton-Charlemage!

As I mentioned the Charlemagne, what of the whites? Well apparently they are still not ripe enough – Dominique Lafon has put off his harvest to next week, many, if not most, will follow suit.

I asked a few more questions about the smelly Taillepieds:

“We looked at the grapes on the vines and they looked bad – we had this bacterial problem from the same parcel last year – so I really considered to pull out of the contract. The grower convinced us to test some of the grapes, and actually they seemed okay – so we went ahead. As the fruit from the first basket hit the sorting table the cry went out – ‘what is that smell?’. So we ended up having to smell every single cluster as a check – there is no other way – a perfect looking bunch can smell bad, an ugly one be perfectly okay – your eyes don’t help. Actually we had less than 5% botrytis in this parcel so it can’t be the main factor, but we still ended up throwing 30% away. It’s probably a mixture of site, viticulture and clone – certainly you get huge clusters from this parcel. Despite us all having sticky noses by the end, I think the effort should have been worthwhile, the must looks, smells and tastes fine – so let’s see.”

Today it’s a village Beaune that’s making the commute across the sorting table: though, earlier in the year the grapes had been hit by hail they have 13° natural and look almost good and homogenous – they will be fine. Although tomorrow will be villages Volnay and Beaune 1er Cru Les Avaux we are now starting to look more closely at the Côte de Nuits fruit. I hear that the Latricières doesn’t look so hot – but it didn’t in 2004 either yet Burghound bestowed 90-92 big ones! Villages Vosne looks good too – Friday or Saturday is anticipated for these – seems life will be much easier as the teams go deeper into Nuits.

Just to prove the weather was nice, Carel Voorhuis sent me the following picture:

He also sent a picture showing today’s Savigny 1er Cru Peuillets showing over 14°!

Next update Thursday or Friday.

Pinot Beurot (Gris) mixed amongst the Pinot Noir

Well September certainly seems to be carrying on where August left off – you can see (right) how cool August was vs the average – and today at 15:30 it is a cloudy 15°c, by 6pm there are a few spots of rain. If the Spring had not been so precocious we would certainly have seen a ‘classical’ late September, even October harvest.

My ‘home team’ brought in the Volnay 1er Cru Les Taillepieds on Sunday – and wow, what a mess. They made a selection of 30% i.e. they had to throw 30% away as the grapes were horrible. For the first time they even checked the smell of every single bunch too – why? See below. A quick tour of the Côte de Nuits parcels caused some relief, indeed optimism, but more of that tomorrow.

Credits again for Météo Savigny-lés-Beaune for the temperature graph.

I received a couple of updates from winemakers yesterday, so I include these too.

Winemaker 1. A view from Morey St.Denis:

I will be harvesting from Tuesday. My grapes are healthy and happily making sugar, I hope to avoid enriching the wines this year. Some wine makers have already started their harvests, perhaps they are right, but I wanted to wait as the fruit is healthy enough to go for another couple of days, I am keeping my fingers crossed for the nice weather that we were promised, another degree would be nice. The acidity seems to be a bit low, but we’ll see in the tanks. The color is more present than in 2006, I am counting on using a bit more new oak as the tannins are reportedly harder to extract. The seeds were still a bit green last week, but I noticed a beautiful brown yesterday in “Les Baudes.” This will be yet another tricky year, but I like challenges.

Winemaker 2. A producer making wine in both Côtes:

Regarding the update on harvest : I think I’ve never had as low expectations and as good surprises as this vintage. We’re only just started a couple of days ago, but the sugar levels are much higher than I thought they would be (I was really fearing things as low as 10,5 to 11), and the first grapes we got in reached some 12 – 12,5, which is really nice if not extraordinary. Botrytis isn’t too bad, even if sorting will remain one of the key issues to quality this vintage : botrytis of course, but also grapes that are affected by the starting to be sadly famous “gout moisi terreux”, which doesn’t seem to be all that related to botrytis. So far, everything we got in is perfectly clean, and shows wonderful fruit. Pretty ripe fruit, and a nice colour also : my first two tanks started fermenting, and to see the colour during a remontage this morning was really a nice surprise : the “service technique du BIVB” had announced little anthocyanins, and maybe even fewer tannins to bind and protect the colour, but obviously, we’ll have quite nice colours as well as the rest.

So over all, I’m quite confident, if not enthusiastic, about the vintage : it certainly won’t be a great keeper like 2005 indeed, but the wine made by serious producers should be really very nice. The main issu will be the amount of efforts people will be willing to do for the triage.

At our domaine, we’ve had a big discussion about whether to start early and pick under ripe but healthy grapes, or pick later, being aware that we would have to sort and that we would lose volume. We’ve taken the second option, and I’m glad we did, even more now the weather is pretty good and weather forecast remains optimistic.

It’s very interesting that the note above about “gout moisi terreux” comes out, because it was referred to also by the producer in Morey who said they would be sniffing every bunch to check everything is in order – now you know what was happening with the Taillepieds – apparently it’s easily spotted, if you care to look. Interesting because I’ve never noted a grower openly introduce the subject before, yet here are three together.

The quote refers to a bunch of highly odorous compounds – amongst which geosmin is the most well-known – that impart an earthy or beetroot smell to wine that even in small concentration would classed as a ‘fault’: “One of the consequences of rot on grapes is the development of volatile compounds giving fungal, mouldy or earthy odours. Among these compounds, (-)-geosmin (trans-1,10-dimethyl-trans-9-decalol), a powerful aromatic compound with an earthy smell is a persistent defect in grape juice and wines made with at least partially rotten grapes.”

Quoting winemaker #2 again:

Their genesis is not very clear either : botrytis and some strains of penicillium are known to be able to produce them, but they’re not the only ones. This makes it a quite difficult problem at the moment.

Harvesting Beaune 1er Cru Teurons on Friday

Although I had to leave, I’ll keep up the contacts.

Today it started very cloudy – until lunch when it rained – “just enough rain to wet the dust”. It’s dry in the afternoon and the team are now triaging Pommard 1er cru Les Epenots. These grapes are again just a little better than before, but equally are needing a heavy selection at the triage table. These will be the only grapes of the day. Tomorrow perhaps, there will be some Volnay 1er cru Taillepieds but that’s all. It’s forecast to rain tomorrow evening so now may be the best time to get the Côte de Beaune reds in.

Although the first cuvées are now already turning from murky brown to medium-pink, from a wine-making perspective everything may be tried this year, from saignée, to sugar or powdered tannins – all depends on the quality of the triage work.

Next info: Monday

PS: The ille flotant turned out bad preparation for the ping-pong; last year I came 4th, this year 5th

Tightly cut rows in Meursault

After finally crawling into bed at close to midnight, and with the distinct impression that crocque monsieur and ille flotante were perhaps an unwise supper combination – at least with a 2003 Barolo and a 22 year-old Volnay – I survive to report that the sky is again cloudless and things are a couple of degrees warmer: At 10am it’s 18°C in the shade – the equivalent was 16°C yesterday – still, it’s hardly August.

Apart from one or two tractors giving the chardonnay vines a final haircut, the ‘white domaines’ of the Côte de Beaune seem a long way from considering it appropriate to bring in their chardonnay – probably starting next week said one grower. The Côtes look at their best at this time of year when the vines take on different leaf colours, yet, closely cropped, they define the hillsides. Reds may be altogether different; some in Volnay already picked a few of their 1er crus, others e.g. d’Angerville might wait until Thursday. Many had plans to bring in the bulk of their crop towards the end of next week but this sunny interlude has the sugars soaring – 11.6 on Wednesday, 11.9 today…

More Savigny 1er Peuillets

Our second parcel of Savigny 1er Peuillets arrives, this is from a different clone that has bigger bunches – so just more places for rot to hide. It’s slow work; there’s a little less rot than 2004 but it’s burried deeper in the bunches so actually takes longer to deal with.

By lunch the sky is cloudy, but no rain threatens. This afternoon there will be a different Beaune; 1er cru Cent Vignes to contend with. The grapes were better than the Savigny and perhaps a little better than the previous ‘Cras’ – all apart from the last boxes which came from a different section – all required hard work though.

Unfortunately I have to leave Beaune now for family visits and a ping-pong final…