Am actually starting to type this Friday a.m after breakfast as the crew gather . Interestingly the Poles havr arrived which means we must be going local as on our away trips they have met us en route e.g Pommard centre.

Cloudy today and cooler – no bad thing maybe but hope it doesn’t rain as I’ve left my wet weather gear a la maison. Quick question :- why do my trousers seem to get dirtier than everyone else’s ??

If there’s a consistency in all 3 of my vendanges it’s breakfast and the initial gathering which have been the same exactement other than the place and the personalities. The French are nothing if not creatures of early morning habit – and nowt wrong with that. As last year I’m fascinated by their love affair with the cigarette – smoking (which I don’t have a problem with) seems much more prevalent than in the UK.

Am starting to get hazy already (need to write things down) having got behind. BUT !!! Wednesday a.m I think I went to heaven (pardon the sacreligous ref) and it was called Beaune Montrevonots !!! What an absolutely beautiful site cum terroir up a little rocky combe. I’ll admit I have always neglected the Beaune vineyard sites – which has been a mistake !!! This was stunning – the topography, the early morning light, warm morning – all why I love Burgundy for more than just it’s wine !

From here we went south to what was more Beaune on flatter land or possibly. Pommard. After this parcelle we moved more towards what I think was the North East corner of the clos of Chateau du Pommard . Soil here quite sandyish and like most of the Dubreuil sites so far all very ‘clean and tidy’ underfoot. No weeds or grass of consequence – maybe reflects the neat and tidy personas of Christine Dubreuil and huband Nicolas – everything about them and the domaine shrieks orgainised neat and tidy – no bad thing.

Une incident tres amuse here as we finished the plot hard up against the wall of someone’s clos. – just realised I haven’t said this plot or the one before was Pommard 1er cru Les Epenots. Back to the amusement – what other use can one put a vineyard tractor to – in this case a serious Bobard model, a 570 XD 4 x 4 other than the usual ? +n this case enabling the driver to reach up into a fig tree and / or get on to the top of the clos wall to get into tree to harvest figs. All very amusing with several vendangeurs joining in. I declined the offer of a fig (didn’t fancy it !!).

After lunch we went to Pernand Ile des Vergelesses 1er cru – just at the end of the plot before it becomes Savigny and were a very minor road goes off to the right coming from Pernand. More super grape quality here – large pendulous, mainly uniform, bunches of Pinot. Sorry if constant references to great grapes is boring but that’s the way it is. Moving on we finished for the day with what was to become the first of many sessions in Aloxe Corton villages – long rows and tiring, hard work.

Next instalment Volnay, wines tasted, and helping in the cuverie.

Latent Meursault 2009

Impeccable timing marked my arrival – just 20minutes triage of Volnay villages before clean-up then lunch! Our team is once again a united nations of wine; Californian, Antipodean (Aus + NZ on the same team!) and South African – a small contingent that would best be described as French too!

Big changes at the home domaine this year – we have a sound-system!!! Oh and also new destemmer, and a bladder press for the whites (minor detail after the stereo…!)

Back to the Volnay which had almost perfectly clean bunches – our triage table ran at full speed with a minimum of intervention – perhaps one bunch in 10-15 needed a little rot cutting from its core exactly as the 2005s were. The grapes have decent thick skins and a little more juice than the 2005s – you do not stick so readily to the table – apparently the analysis of the early Côte de Beaune grapes shows 12.5° or more, so the annual ‘sale’ (it’s only for 2 months of the year) of 20kg bags of sugar at the local Leclerc supermarket is not so successful 🙂 The phenolics/tannins are on a lower order than 2002 and 2005, typical pHs being 3.3-3.5. In other words, very clean and balanced.

Lunch – ah we have ‘catering’ – and a high standard too; very nice salad with home-made mayonaise, boeuf-bourguignon and home made apple-tart, all suitably washed down with 06 Monts Luisants blanc, 07 Corton-Charlemagne and 06 Corton Clos du Roi. Mmmmm…

Après-midi, the delivery was of Meursault villages (blanc). So clean we didn’t need our triage table, the fruit went straight onto the conveyor up to the new bladder press – we were only looking to remove the occasional leave. The juice from the press was fat and sweet, pH 3.3 with 12.5° potential.

The 2009 fauna watch from a relatively low number of tonnes, was 2 spiders only! The team mentioned that they spotted a few ladybugs in the first cases of Volnay fruit, but there was nothing in the last part that I saw.

Enough for today, I’m already becoming hungry thinking of dinner 😉

Who needs to triage?

Okay – just make sure to remove the leaves…

No leaves!

I don’t have much info for you today, though tomorrow I will be ‘on-location’ in sunny Beaune. However, to slake your thirst for new stuff, here’s a little (slightly old) news from Domaine de la Vougeraie who have now started their harvest updates…

Today’s update:

To be honest, the sun is causing some problems – I may have to resort to sunscreen! At Maison Giroud we brought in some 1er cru Beaune yesterday – a little ahead of most of our other vines because there is some disease – oïdium on one side of the parcel – but the main reason was the ripeness, 13% potential alcohol and, more important, pH at 3.5 + skins and seeds are ripe. From what I’ve seen so far, that may be the only serious triage of the vintage. Today we brought in the first grapes for Domaine des Croix – Beaune 1er Cent Vignes – they look fantastic, we’ve definitely not seen this quality since 2005. I’m watching the whites very carefully and will probably bring in my first parcel tomorrow – the acidities are currently fine, but the sun is causing it to drop quite quickly, it will take care to balance the ripeness and acidity. For the majority of parcels the only negative about harvesting today would be that the pinot currently has quite a lot of juice – possibly due to last week’s rain, but just as much a characteristic of the vintage. So it will be the weekend before we have the big push and hopefully a little of that liquid will have evaporated – certainly it will mainly be next week for the Côte de Nuits vines.
David Croix, Maison Camille Giroud, Domaine des Croix

My home team will kick-off today (without me) bringing in the Beaune 1er Les Cras. It looks like we will have a very orderly harvest – no urgent dashes to the vines – also, despite daytime temperatures approaching 30°, the overnight temperatures are nice and cool (though not close to the 3° we had last year) so no worry about the grapes being too hot.

For your wider reading, Alex Gambal is running his blog during the harvest, and short message from Morey St.Denis:

The grapes are looking great. We picked our first little bit this morning (Monday): some Puligny village that we buy for Dujac Fils & Pere. Waiting on the analysis to confirm numbers. It should be around 12°5 and just looked and tasted ripe. I don’t think it will be a year to really wait on the whites, with the possible exception of Monts Luisants (it really holds acidity). Our latest sampling shows very uniform sugars at all appellation levels. All are between 12°3 and 12°5. We’ll begin on Thursday with the ones ripest, using other indicators such as stems, pips, etc.
Jeremy Seysses, Domaine Dujac

More as I have it…

Okay maybe Champagne and even a little Chablis has already been cut from the vine, but for the Côte d’Or, the 2009 vendanges start here. Mark à Morey, our correspondent during the 2008 vintage is this year ‘en-place’ in Pernand-Vergelesses – he should, once more, come ‘online’ in a day or two – once we’ve thought of a new name for him!

The weather is set for dry and warm after last week’s cool and wet. It really wouldn’t surprise me if the harvest was drawn out over a two to three week period if the weather remains good. I don’t have the millimeters for the three and a bit days of rain of last week, it was not very heavy but at times rather incessant – which can be the worst kind of rain as heavy downpours mainly wash into the drains – but vignerons I’ve spoken to remain cautiously optimistic (actually not that cautious!) given the fine weather that followed and the forecast of fine weather to come. Here are some selected quotes:

It still looks great. Basically no botrytis, and with the weather of the last days, sugar level remained stable, as berry size increased a little. The good thing was that as the rain came, temperatures decreased, so it hasn’t been a problem really. It might have been more of a problem if the weather would have been warmer , but given the excellent shape of the vines, I’m not even sure of that. So I’m still really excited about the vintage to come – it definitely looks like it’s going to be the best since 05, even if it’s always dangerous to be too positive, as long as the grapes are still hanging out there!
Carel Voorhuis, Domaine d’Ardhuy

I’ll be starting tomorrow (Tuesday) with my two parcels of Volnay 1er Cru (Pitures and Taillepieds), which are already above 13%. The grapes are in wonderful shape, as the soil here was dry enough to absorb most of the water without it getting into the grapes. In fact, I did maturity sampling on 1 September (before the rain) and again yesterday, the 6th (after the rain). There was very little change in the weight of 100 grapes, and some parcels even showed a concentration, with the weight falling. That says most of the water was absorbed by the soil. My sugars yesterday ranged from just under 12% to 13.3% potential alcohol, with no pH above 3.3, and most below. As the weather is forecast to be good over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to harvest over a more extended period of time, with some days off between pickings and processings. That will allow the grapes, which are all in rude health, to complete their phenological maturation, and as a result allow me to do my first whole-bunch red vinifications this year (only a percentage, not 100%). The sugars are rising, the acids are holding fairly steady, and the pHs remain low, so everything is in balance for a spectacular vintage. No rot anywhere in my parcels.
Blair Pethel, Domaine Dublère

Well that’s the message from the Decanter newsfeed anyway.

Decanter is the best source of wine-related news, but notes like this do them no service. We, (the readers here anyway) already know that things look great, but if Decanter really want to be taken seriously as a news service, rather than repeat, verbatim, industry-body prognostications (marketing communications), they should do some additional investigation of their own – it’s not hard to check the weather forecast is it?

For the record, the vines seem in at least as good health today, as they did at the same stage of maturity in 2005. But it rained quite a bit yesterday and look at the next days’ weather forecast… Looking on the bright side, the cooler temperatures will, to an extent, mollify the opportunity for rot outbreaks.