I asked a couple of producers this morning if it was bad, or really bad, both said the latter.

Without doubt it is a very important event, though I’m sure it’s better to wait until after the fruit-set to see if 30% or 75% of the potential harvest is lost. But however we look at it, it’s a massive loss, which (so far anecdotally) is a loss shared equally between the Côte de Beaune and the Côte de Nuits – for once!

Whilst it’s still a tiny snapshot, I walked in a lot of the Côte de Beaune vineyards today:

• Santenay hillside – looks 90%+ okay
• Chassagne 1ers Morgeot and Maltrioe – some vines totally blitzed, other maybe lost only 25% of buds
• Chevalier-Montrachet (lower) and Montrachet – the same as in Chassagne
• The bottom of Meursault wasn’t good, the bottom of Perrières, including the Clos des Perrières, looked okay.
• The top of Volnay and Beaune looked not bad, the bottom of both was not good – Grèves included in that.
• Bottom of Corton on Pernand side, not good
• Mid-Charlemagne (below the cross) looked fine, likewise mid-Bressandes too.

From what I looked at, the top vines did better than the bottom vines, but a couple of vignerons told me it was the reverse in some places. The leaves ‘burned’ by the frost are obvious – already silver grey and crispy dry versus the green of healthy leaves. Pinot often looks okay, probably because it is a little behind chardonnay in the growth cycle, but there were also pinots with tiny but clearly frosted buds…

I will be charging around the Côte de Nuits tomorrow…
 

Whilst in ‘relatively’ warm Beaujolais this week, I’ve watched all the pictures of ‘candles’ and water-sprays to combat the frost in Chablis, but this morning it seems the Côte d’Or has been touched – and it seems to have been more severe than a ‘touch.’

“I think I lost 90% in the villages and regional appellations. For the 1er crus in the order of 40 to 60%…”
Jean Pierre Charlot – Joseph Voillot, Volnay

I’ll be in Côte d’Or vines in both côtes over the next two days looking at the potential damage. I’ll keep you posted…

Checking frost damage from last night:
Our Chablis Grand Cru Ok
Our Chablis Ier Cru Ok at 85… https://t.co/7jMYUYdHap

— christian Moreau (@chidotakumo1) April 27, 2016

https://twitter.com/Patrick_Essa/status/725269404796260352

Last night many of our parcels have been touched by the #frost. Too early to assess the damages but probably more than 50%. #Burgundy

— Caroline PARENT GROS (@cparentgros) April 27, 2016

Puligny, this afternoon.

The weekend in Switzerland was okay – half sun, half rain, but to quote an unsmiling vigneron in Puligny-Montrachet today, “The rain was much more consistent than that here!” Indeed, the TGV took me through many a flooded area this morning.

The vines look fine though, the first chardonnay leaves starting to unfurl from their buds. It’s such a shame to see all the herbicide-laced plots in Puligny though…

Picture (crop) ex-Faiveley…

Since last Easter Friday we have seen all aspects of ‘life’ in Burgundy:

First, something to celebrate! Today was the 80th birthday of one of Volnay’s great characters – Regis Rossignol (right), who I visited in February; he’s still going strong, indeed, as far as I can tell, he’s actually still making the wine. He loves nothing more than disappearing into the cellar find yet another ‘older’ bottle to discuss!

On the other side of the same coin we lost Bernard Dubreuil of Domaine Dubreuil-Fontaine in Pernand-Vergelesses on Friday. He’d been unwell for a while but was seemingly in remission, that changed all too quickly. My thoughts are with his daughter Christine. Here is a fine image of Bernard from Jon Wyand.

Lastly, for today, pictures of the first vines with swelling buds were put out by Faiveley yesterday, from their vines in Mercurey. Actually I checked the chardonnay up and down the Côte de Beaune today, and many of the sheltered vines are in a similar state the picture (at the top), many bagettes are showing at least 2-3 buds swelling up. The chardonnay is much more ‘precocious’ so the pinot noir usually needs 3 to 4 weeks more, so don’t hold your breath for those!

Okay, perhaps not all the seasons – the amount of sun was a little more limited – but there was a little in Beaune today!

It seems bizarre that we have had 10-12°C for most of the winter, and then in the last days, flurries of snow – only a flurry this morning in Beaune and nothing remains. In the Côte de Nuits it was a little more than a flurry and all was white!

This time last year, it was more like 20°C…

Le Roi Chambertin.

Harvest day 16, but only our 12th day with grapes…

As we say, it’s only over after the Chambertin is in – and today, finally, it was. Despite the wait, no complaints about the cleanliness and presentation of the grapes. More info after a short (maybe long) Paulée… 😉

Hooray! At 16h00 today, the rain stopped – so that was only 23 hours of rain…
That said, the sky remains very dark with just a few patches of blue – in fact it’s averaged several hours of rain per day since Saturday!

At the home domaine there is nothing to report – our last grapes are still on the vine, and it’s not certain if they will be picked on Friday or Saturday.

I’ll be signing-off from this series of reports just as soon as those grapes are sorted, but for info on the ferments, and something of the analytics of the 2015 vintage, I’ll include that in my September report.