It’s become a bit of an ‘in-joke’ but let me introduce you to the concept of the Facebook Bunches.

Many producers have cottoned onto the fact that they can keep-up a stream of contact with people interested in their wines; past visitors to the domaine or enthusiasts, etcetera. It also seems that this is good for business – though let’s be clear, they need to have a good product in the first place! I think it started in an understated way with the 2008 vintage; pictures of happy vignerons clutching a basket of perfect grapes or giving updates on the progress of their own vintage trials – initially it was for a close circle of friends but it’s expanded every year since then. Of-course we have a bit of fun with each other; ‘how many days did it take you to find those three bunches?‘ queries another vigneron.

My home team’s contribution (so far) is the Lavaux St.Jacques, right (though, as far as I know, it’s not actually on Facebook…), but I also offer for your delectation a selection of contenders for the Facebook Bunch Of The Year 2011 – I’m thinking that Alexandrine’s bucket has it in the bag so-far – could your vote tip the balance…?

I’m sure that only a heartless cynic would describe any of this as ‘marketing‘ 😉

 Domaine Grivot’s 2011 Richebourg

Talk about rain gods – they must have benevolent eyes for the Côte d’Or – so-far anyway. Despite driving through two hours of rain on my way home on Sunday, the Côtes stayed dry – amazing.

Monday at the home domaine was a tough one, but not because of the grapes but because the home team were suffering; the boss has angina and another of the team broke his wrist (away from the domaine I think!) and is now ‘out’ for 6 weeks.

The Monday grapes were pretty good; I already mentioned the scruffy Santenay which had been picked on Sunday, but after triage the grapes that went to the tanks looked very good indeed – small berried clusters that optically had a lot in common with Saturday’s Vosne-Romanée. Marsannay was next up and this was a little more disappointing – not because of rot, but rather the berry size was a bit larger than the boss would have liked. Chassagne-Montrachet Les Vergers (chardonnay) was apparently a treat for the eyes – lovely grapes. Tuesday is a little Ladoix, but the pinot Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune grand crus will wait for the end of the week, as will some Maranges and Santenay Clos Rousseau.

The fermentations are rather slow – a good thing as everyone is busy with incoming grapes – some might even say that the fermentations are non-existant so far. The colour is coming through quite well but the combination of low brix (aka sugar) and high-ish pH has the boss questioning himself ‘how exactly am I going to approach my extractions(?)’ Well, we don’t want him to have TOO easy a life do we, angina and all…

And good news – vendanger Mark de Morey is back – the first installment from him very soon…

Finally, a very simple harvest message from Domaine Jean Grivot: “Vendanges 2011 terminées!!” – wow – that was fast!

 No glue was used in the making of this image!

Sunday was a day of rest – almost – so time to take stock of the first week.

The grander reds still wait in the vineyards, though a majority of the whites are now gathered. The lead image (above) gives you a stylised and sanitised example of what the early-picked pinots have looked like so-far.

• Temperatures were high in week 1 – approaching 30°C. Triaged grapes (the waste) in only a few hours had an acetic waft about them, so housekeeping, keeping the grapes cool after picking (refrigerated vans) then cooling them in their fermentation tanks were the highest priorities to avoid subsequent faulty wines.
• Very low levels of rot in the pinot; better than 2006, perhaps on a par or better than 2009 – maybe 2005 was marginally better(?) – but rare stuff!
• Despite those very low levels of rot the triage is challenging, as every bunch needs a workover – even the very best vineyards are delivering bunches with one or two unripened grapes that need to be plucked; quite easy when they present like those above, but a pain in the ass when there are verjus (tiny green grapes that never swelled) and always hiding between the ripe stuff
• The berry size is quite large – the middle bunch above would have been characteristic of 2010, though in itself that was an extreme
• Those parcels that favour whole clusters perhaps do so even more this year as the stems are browner than I ever saw – though whatever you read/hear, colour alone is a very poor guide. The counter-argument to whole clusters is that the pHs are already quite high – do you want to make them higher still by including stems(?) – and note that the stems also add more water into the mix – there’s a lot of that already! Don’t be surprised if some producers throttle back on the stems a little this year, and if they do, it won’t be because of the quality of those stems
• Because of their (big) berry-size, week 1 pinots might need an occasional saignée and, as the sugar levels are modest, chaptalisation of 0.5-1.0° might be relatively common. Of-course that may change for week two’s 1er and grand cru plots, but the wet weather is coming and you only need 20°C for rot to flourish. I think it could be a white-knuckle ride as there has been no sign of the north-wind – not yet anyway.
• Chardonnay grapes look rather good on the whole, if less robust (thinner skins) than most years; admittedly some had challengingly distributed rot, other parcels were fabulous. Below you can see some easy to remove rot from one of the few parcles of Montrachet still to be picked. pHs have been a middling 3.2 to 3.5 so without the benefit of analytics it’s way too early to conjecture on the level of freshness the wines will display post-malo

Of-course the elephant in the room – alone, they are tiny elephants I’ll concede – is the ladybird. I was stunned by how many were in the ‘waste‘ from our vibrating table, far more than in 2004. There seemed fewer than that vintage on the triage table (if not crawling on my legs!) but clearly some of them made it into the fermentation tanks. As the week drew on their quantity reduced, by Saturday the number seemed comparable to the 2004 vintage – I hope that their presence will continue to wane.

Back to Sunday. The forecast was bad so the home domaine chose to have a small parcel of Santenay 1er La Come picked, but for only two pallets of grapes there was no point to start up ‘the machine’ so those scruffy looking grapes (it seems there had been no selection at the vine) were placed in a refrigerated truck to be dealt with on Monday morning. There was maybe five minutes of heavy rain at 9am after which the rain gods chose to spare (at least) the Côte de Beaune. By 5pm, only a few more periods of drizzle had ensued. The Kiwis and Springboks joined us for a tour from Santenay through the villages back to Beaune; stopping in Puligny for coffee and a simple lunch; to check out the lyre-training in Auxey and to ‘test’ the occasional grape along the way.

Plenty of domaines/growers chose to to accept the rain free day and continue their harvest; some by hand, some by machine and some even dragging their triage table into the vines (see all below).

A really good day before we took the road home to Switzerland – masses of rain en-route and on through the night too. I hope the Côtes didn’t get it so bad!

Triage table in Santenay 1er Cru

Le Montrachet

Hand picking and machine harvesting – Meursault

2 metre high lyre training already picked, standard 1 metre high, not yet picked – Auxey

Pommard

Pommard 1er Rugiens (Haut)

Lunch was a stunner, duck salad, beef bouguignone, and though I dodged the cheese-course it meant there was room for the tarte tartin 😉

Wine? 2009 Beaune Les Avaux and 2006 Chapelle-Chambertin

Returning to the oldest vines part of the Vosne villages, the call was made – ‘okay, let’s remove the destemmer‘ Sixty percent went through this way, last year it was 100% but this year some of the bunches were big, fat and heavy. The remaining younger vines were destemmed. You can see the lovely bunches in the red-grey bin picture below – only one ladybird hiding in there. Afterwards we had grapes from Pommard, Clos des Vergers; just like the Gevrey and the Vosne, the level of rot was very, very low – not the smallest of berries but good stuff. A long day, of-course, last triage finished at 9:30pm, clean-up by 11:30; they say that wine-making is 90% cleaning…

Whilst surprised by the number of earwigs in the Gevrey, that seemed a one-off, more pressing for me was the ladybird quotient and today was certainly lower; plenty, but perhaps 20% of the peak level from the day before. Those that were in the head of the tanks were still visible after 24 hours but not 48 – I assume the CO₂ and the SO₂ had done for them…

Dinner was at midnight, but a fine quiche washed down with 2007 Vosne vieilles vignes and 2009 Morey 1er Chaffots made a nice mellow end to a long day.

Gevrey Villages

Vosne Vieilles Vigne

Pommard, Clos des Vergers

This morning, naturally we have sun again; though as the day wore on, the blue sky was replaced by high cloud and some spots of rain – somebody mentions 30mm of rain as the forecast. We no-longer have any indication of hail – long-range suggests cooler weather with plenty of rain next week though.

Taking stock of the whites and reds taken in so-far; the reds so-far are interesting in that the acidity is that of quite a ripe vintage yet the sugar levels are not particularly high – there might be quite some chaptalisation this vintage – the BIVB are suggesting average phenolic levels similar to 2010 – once more, let’s see. The whites are better than our picture of Meursault reveals, though even that wine looks okay in tank – pHs are about 3.3 with 12-12.5 degress of potential alcohol…

Over the road they had some Corton-Charlemagne yesterday – and it would have made the Meursault blush – grapes that needed no sorting and went straight to the press withoput sorting – that team is very happy. Here today, it is a day of red; Pommard, Vosne and Gevrey. The Gevrey villages is coming in two tranches – the old vines (from the lieu dit of Crais) were very nice – tons of earwigs though, I’ve never seen so many – they still needed the unripe berries removing but there was less of that than the previous Côte de Beaunes, and almost no rot. Lunch comes before the second part of this parcel – lovely, lovely lunch – hmm. The second tranche of Crais is younger vines and was reported as less good – the grower dropped some fruit but too late to make much difference – apart from the acetic smell in the vines as everything was left on the ground! The grapes are actually better than forecast – I think somebody worked very hard with the secateurs in the vines – larger berries, even a bit less green berries but a touch more rot – still very low levels.

Next-up is the villages Vosne-Romanée – a vieilles vignes cuvée that usually merits 89-91 or even 09-92 from Burghound. The quantity of grapes is a little less than the Gevrey already triaged. Ladybird-watch will come in part 2…

Yesterday’s collection:

2010 Bourgogne Chardonnay (direct from the tank)
2005 Carrick Excelsior
2009 Santenay Clos Rousseau

2008 Cremant du Jura
2007 Chardonnay du Jura
2008 Clos St.Denis

Some Saturday morning pictures, mainly in and around Beaune…

The Home Team 2011.

So every year there are new cast of players at the home domaine:
– Kiwi Anna, sauvignon blanc winemaker at Oyster Bay
– Kiwi Blair, vineyard manager at Carrick
– Springbok Nathaniel, from Nederburg in Paarl
Plus, of-course, the more regular crew – naturally there is no discussion whatsoever about the up-coming rugby world-cup, only how fetching England look in their new black strip!

Today we started with pinot from Beaune 1er Les Avaux – the vines are a good age, but unfortunately they normally deliver quite a large berry size – big surprise this year when I was expecting cherries, the grapes if anything smaller than the Savigny-Peuillets and Aloxe-Valozières of yesterday; virtually nil rot, but again the annoying 1-3 unripened green berries which need to be removed – from almost every bunch – tsk! Still, I expect a good cuvée from this.

By 11:30 we were ready for our first tranche of Meursault – not quite as tough to triage as yesterday’s (which actually tastes quite okay in the settlement tank), but not fun either – it turns out that there had been hail in this vineyard and whilst there was no obvious hail damage, we had to run the table pretty slow.

Ladybird quotient is perhaps a hint lower than yesterday but there are still many.

Lovely lunch…

Of-course when doing whites you have to wait for the press to finish it’s run before you can start the next lot of triage – it was close to 4pm before we started to remove (just the same amount of) rot; very slow table and and the mercury touching on 30°C. I think in my 8th consecutive year of harvesting, that’s a temperature record. The storms and hail have been put back a day, just like every day for the last 3 – we are certainy lucky compared to Bordeaux…

Just for the record, and as an hommage to the ladybirds, yesterday we consumed:

04 Griotte
04 Latricières
04 Clos St.Denis
04 Carrick Pinot Noir (screwcapped, no ladybirds – like the Griotte – and perhaps the best!)
08 Chassagne Morgeot (red)

Another lovely, sunny and warm day – storms were forecast but they’ve been put back to friday (tomorrow) let’s see. Today we triaged a mountain of Savigny 1er Les Peuillets and a small hill (3 barrels) of Aloxe 1er cru. To follow was Meursault; I asked ‘villages?’ yes was the answer, but then with a smile the boss says ‘but not just any villages Meursault, these are from just under Poruzots!’ – there can never be enough delimitations in Burgundy 😉

And what of the the grapes? I hear you ask…

Pinot noir: Well, so-far, comparing the vineyards that I’ve triaged almost every year, the level of rot is rather low, 2006-levels. The grape sizes are, however, relatively large – rare are the small bunches of tiny grapes delivered by 2010. But despite the lack of rot, triage is important as almost every bunch has some verjus/unripe green berries – all must be removed. Decently ripe, clean but large grapes – we’ll wait for the results of the analytics, but I can see the word ‘saignée’ is on some people’s minds. Early days yet…

Chardonnay: Just too early to say. One vineyard has offered some of the best looking fruit I’ve ever seen – varying degrees of ripeness but perfectly clean with tiny berries – some were so small that there was no room for pips. Our second batch of chardonnay was less inspiring; good ripeness, but the grapes were fragile and shot-through with plenty of botrytis – so much for ‘just below Poruzots’! Still, two more cuvées of Meursault tomorrow, so I’ll have a slightly better data-set after that.

The elphant in the room is the quantity of ladybirds. The photos are not in any way staged, but represent what has been triaged through the vibrating table. This piece of kit has removed about 99% of the beetles from the clusters so it’s relatively rare to see them on the moving belt triage table, but of-course they fly and we certainly have them in the fermentation tanks. Versus 2004 there are definitely more of them this year, however, less are within the clusters which was quite common in 2004, so we see less on the table this year. Comparisons of how many were and are in the fermentation tanks – I don’t have. It is certainly of concern to me.

Jasper popped in to say ‘hi’ today…

There have, of-course, also been some wines. To protect the innocent and guilty alike I’ll keep the list minimalist…

Yesterday:
09 Chassagne Tête du Clos
03 Bourgogne
03 Beaune
02 Gevrey Lavaux St.Jacques

02 Aloxe Boutières
02 Beaune Pertiusots

Today’s list might not yet be complete!

I haven’t had chance to have a read yet, but the Domaine de la Vougeraie has also started their page of vintage reports which you can find here.

Just a few snatched photos, taken on my way into ‘the office’ this morning…

A beautiful sunny day today – and what a lots of grapes – we finished triage just after 9pm – the start was before 9am; pinot from Volnay Caillerets, Volnay Lurets and a couple of Volnay Villages lieu-dits, Beaune Cras and the chardonnay of Chassagne Tête du Clos.

The harvest quality was looking a little dodgy about 10 days ago following lots of rain and high temperatures – the rot was starting to appear. The ‘traditional’ north wind didn’t come to save the day, but the last days of quite hot weather, despite the moist wind of the south-west seem to have delayed any major onset of rot. Today was a mere 23°C, but it is forecast to get warmer, and wetter – rot can still be a big problem for later ripening vineyards. As for ripening, it’s clearly site specific as I understand that Leroy have already picked their Richebourg…

A few pics from today, and I’ll talk more about the grapes and those little red critters tomorrow – one of which is walking across my laptop screen…