Pommard Les Chanlins Hautes…

I didn’t want to depress you (me actually!) with a picture of yesterday’s first day summer – low cloud and rain, indeed rain through the whole night of the the 20th too – but by mid-afternoon yesterday, there was blue sky and by 6pm the temperature had increased to t-shirt level!’ Luckily as it was the Fêtes de Music in Beaune, so some drinks and ‘dodgy’ live bands had to be experienced!

Whilst some places like Savigny are still behind the flowering curve, the majority of those later flowers will be open today and tomorrow – days forecast to be sunny with 29-30°C. Today I jogged around Pommard and Volnay – camera in hand! Here again not all the flowers are visible, but some have also clearly finished flowering too. As we might now expect, given that there have been no really settled periods so-far in 2016, the weekend is forecast to be ‘changeable,’ perhaps even stormy…

There’s plenty of work in the vineyards though – the weeds are massive – one thing that certainly wasn’t curtailed by the frost! Many a vigneron are saying that it’s one of the most obvious aspects of the growing season, so-far. There are also plenty of people spraying, despite the ongoing flowering, as there’s a lot of concern about mildew. Otherwise there’s weeding, de-budding and even some canopy trimming at the moment.
 

Vineyard Floraison

The weather is far from settled – or for that matter, warm – we have about 18-22° in the forecast for this week – more rain than sun, too!

But the first/early flowers can be seen, here and there, across the Côte de Nuits. It looks like we will be in ‘peak flowering’ by the end of the week, certainly the weekend. So, for argument’s sake, let’s say Friday for mid-flowering, add 100 days, equals harvesting from the 25th September(?) Let’s see…

I’ll keep you posted…

It was cool to see the first flowers of 2016 yesterday – even more-so to have the ‘buzzing’ accompaniment of the hover-flies too. I only had my phone with me, so I’m doubly impressed by this result!

This picture was taken in the southern Beaujolais Villages area – but truth be told it’s a semi-fake! These gamay vines are actually in a nice ‘garden’ in the city of Villefranche – the commercial capitol of the Beaujolais region – so they are not really in a ‘true’ vineyard area.

But they are real flowers – the outliners for the vignoble. They are a few days ahead of the ‘real vineyards’ as the city has a temperature advantage versus the vineyards – and remained ‘frostless’ this year. But yesterday was 28°C in the Beaujolais, so the real ‘floraison‘ is clearly not far away…

[EDIT:]The first flowers reported in a real Burgundy vineyard today by Jean-Philippe Bret in (chardonnay) Pouilly-Vinzelles!

Meursault 1er Clos des Perrières – today.

Well, having been away for 10 days, I though that my first job today should be to tour the vines of the Côte de Beaune – more particularly the place where flowering usually starts in the chardonnay. Two years ago I found the very first flowers in this nicely wind-shaded, south-facing spot in Meursault Perrières – on the 21st May. Today, a little over two weeks later-on in the year and the flowers are still waiting to open. It’s forecast to be warmer this week – and we do indeed have some nice sun today – maybe that will be a catalyst, but the weather forecast is far from settled…

The palissage, or training of the vines has been partly done – those shoots not affected by the frost are sufficiently large to train between the wires, but the new/second-growth is not quite developed enough to reach the wires yet – the wires protect the vine growth from the wind which can easily rip-off the shoots. Given the lateness of the growth, we need a beautiful summer to start very soon, or there will be zero chance of second-growth bunches reaching ripeness – even the first growth may not be ready before the end of September…

One vigneron I spoke to today related that the majority of his vines have responded quite well to the challenge of the frost, he won’t have much fruit this year but he’s pretty sure that he will have something to prune so that he has fruit next year – which was his biggest concern – though one of his vineyards in Savigny ‘still looks like winter…’

I will, of-course, keep you posted…
 

Perrières – flowers tight shut…

Perrières – palissage

Perrières – something furry……

Looking over Meursault Charmes to Puligny

‘Fallow’ Meursault Charmes du Dessus

Right: Pictured today in Marsannay Les Grandes Vignes – compare it to the picture at the top of the page – that’s what the growth looks like (this week) in an average year!

It was nice and warm just over a week ago in the Côte d’Or, but this week the weather is back into winter mode – well, winter 2015/2016 anyway. It’s been cool and wet for a few days now – 10-14°C – that really is the same as much of November to February. Marsannay also had two days in the last week with only 2°C in the early morning – pinot needs an average of 12°C over the day to grow. For the last week it probably hasn’t done much growing!

Sylvain Pabion, winemaker at the Château de Marsannay – who own 28 hectares of vines in Marsannay – says “Marsannay has been one of the villages most affected by the frost. Depending on the plot, as much as 90% has been lost.”

Two years ago I saw the first flowers in Meursault on the 21st May – so that’s unlikely to happen before June this year.

Right, you can see a mix of normal buds, not frosted with their latent flowers, you can also see the new buds, replacing those that were frosted. The way the weather is going, it could easily be another October harvest – and for the first buds – which would certainly put paid to hopes of harvesting something from the second buds. More importantly the next two weeks will show whether there is life in the cordons or not – if the only new growth is from the old wood rather than the cordons, then this is largely sterile, so there will also be no grapes in 2017! One grower shared with me “You know when there’s hail, after the initial shock we jump into the vines to save what we have, but this year we will still have to work the whole year in the vines, already knowing that in some cases there will be no harvest…”

From Jasper Morris at Berry Brothers & Rudd
http://bbrblog.com/2016/05/06/burgundy-struck-frost-hail/

And from a merchant:
http://www.thomascalderselections.com/posts

Lots of good info, though with respect to the second link, Burgundy is not ahead of an average year, despite a relatively warm winter, because average temperatures were insufficient for growth in most of March and April – up until 1 week ago it was considered ‘average.’ Indeed, since then it has continued rather cool – I noted the first flowers about the 18th May 2 years ago – at this rate they may not open before the 18th of June! Which won’t be helpful for anyone thinking they might get crop from the newly moving ‘dormant buds…’

As promised, I also toured around the vines of the Côte de Nuits on Friday and inspected vines ‘here and there’ along the way.

As-ever, it seems that the Côte de Nuits has the lighter of the frost damage – though I’m definitely talking ‘on average’ because:

• Marsannay – most producers are desolate – it’s very bad here – plenty of reports of 80%+ losses
• Gevrey – on the hillside it mainly looks okay, but occasional crus such as Fontenys are cooked. Clos Varoilles and La Romanée are not so bad, but it’s complicated, because one producer will report that their Charmes is 100% okay, another will point to about 20% losses – Chambertin and Bèze are equally hit and miss – mainly the lower sections had problems here.
• Morey and Chambolle are similarly affected to Gevrey – mainly the lower vines having problems, but the crus not so much in Morey, more-so in Chambolle.
• Musigny (Petits Musigny) and the kings of Vosne look hardly affected (see the pics) though I noted some crisped leaves between Echézeaux and Grands Echézeaux.
• The real issue is that, like in the Côte de Beaune, it is the ‘bulk’ wines, those regional and village level plots that have been very badly affected. Really it’s too early to say, but in some places, like Marsannay, potentially well over 50% seems to have been lost.

Any improvements on ‘hearsay’ estimates will come only after fruit-set – so in about 4-8 weeks more…

Some are asking why candles were not used in the Côte d’Or to avoid damage – and ‘are they legal?‘ Well, yes, they are not particularly environmentally friendly, but they are legal. I even saw a nice ‘facebook picture’ of one producer’s square block of vines in Les Amoureuses, filled with candles. The problem is that nobody is ‘prepared’ to deploy them, and for two reasons:

• Unlike in Chablis, there’s no automatic alarm system to wake everyone at 4am when a trigger temperature is reached.
• Also, the last small frost damage (whites mainly) was 2010, you have to go back to 1991 for the last significant episode of damage.

So it’s really not on the radar of most producers – and just like in Chablis, it would be the important vineyards that were protected, not the vast majority. So really there would have been little difference in the volume of vine-growth that was lost.

The night in question (last Tuesday) was actually not that cold, rarely reaching as low as -2°C, but the ground was damp after plenty of weekend rain. If it had been dry, the vines would hardly have been troubled at that temperature…

Anyway, I showed enough pictures of singed leaves last week – so no more of those are required. From Friday:
 

Clos de l’Arlot

Romanée-Saint Vivant

Romanée-Conti

La Romanée

RC monument…

Gevrey villages clos – walls protected from frost…

Château de Gevrey – replanting

Crouching dragon(?)

Half replanted Vosne villages – behind the camera is the wall of the Clos de Vougeot