Vintage 2013

bottling…

By billn on April 21, 2015 #vintage 2013

My ‘home domaine’ has attacked the bottling this week – the soundtrack to the week will be incessant clinking of glass bottles. The chief is very happy about the conjunction of the calendar and the fine, calm weather. He’s also very happy with his wines 😉

a vendangeur’s (pictoral) tale… (part dix)

By Marko de Morey et de la Vosne on October 29, 2013 #harvests#vintage 2013

But actually, days 11 and 12 – 11 being the last harvest day.

The wood burning stove thing looked like something out of an illicit still operation from the backwoods Southern USA. Très bizarre! Romain A was using it to heat ‘pure’, for bio purposes, very hot water although the initial lighting of the wood using a blow torch(!) A large vessel containing the water being heated sat on top of the stove with a plastic pipe running from it to draw off hot water. Romain was using the hot water to clean the screw thread mechanism thingie from the destemmer which was caked in a black gunge. Using the hot water and a scraper he got the metal parts back to clean, bare, metal using the wood stove heated hot water – this took up most of the day I think.

I could quite easily have brought Mystique home with me. Reckon he enjoyed the vendange as much as anybody & a return to quiet and no occupation at the Arlaud village maison & yard will be a little odd for him at first – doubtless his bird and rodent hunting activities will fill his days !

a vendangeur’s (pictoral) tale… (part neuf)

By Marko de Morey et de la Vosne on October 24, 2013 #harvests#vintage 2013

And whilst this is part nine, note it’s not day nine – it’s day ten as we had one day off…

a vendangeur’s (pictoral) tale… (part eight)

By Marko de Morey et de la Vosne on October 23, 2013 #harvests#vintage 2013

Day 8, the Thursday, 10th Oct 2013, one week after the start of the Arlaud vendange saw us experience the worst weather to date by some margin, and for me, to then the most seriously unpleasant weather I’d ever experienced in a vendange. It had rained heavily overnight and was much colder. We commenced under dark, cloudy, skies c 7.30 a.m. by finishing Morey 1er cru ‘Cheseaux’ from the previous afternoon.

About 8.30 a.m. it started to rain and gradually got heavier. I carried on picking keeping low to the vines for shelter without realisingI’d been abandoned, not understanding the en francais calls to do so. By the time I was shouted in to join the others and got to one of the double cab trucks with a vacancy I was extremely cold and wet and with a full realisation I had not dressed that morning with enough layers. I really feared for my subsequent health. Things were so bad Herve Arlaud went back to base for unheard of coffee (none of which made it to our camion) and also boxes of gloves of some sort as many of the younger vendangeurs were picking gloveless which must have been horrific.

The grapes in Cheseaux were actually pretty nice, unlike the weather. Once the rian eventually stopped, although it was sort of in the air all morning, we finished Cheseaux and moved on to Blanchards. I remained cold and wet all morning – it really was a gritted teeth, shivering, exercise to get through to lunch – before I started to eat I spent betwen 5/10 minutes leaning on the refectory log stove getting warm again. A very, very, very testing and most unpleasant morning – partly my own fault for not being more appropriately dressed but looking back count myself fortunate not to derive at least a cold if not something more serious.

As the song says “Things could only get better”. They did for the sunny afternoon concentrating on the 5 ha plot of Bourgogne Roncevie (5 passes by the full team), but little did we know it that Day 8 was a precursor of worse horrors for Day 10 & 11 on the Hautes-Cotes.

a vendangeur’s (pictoral) tale… (part seven)

By Marko de Morey et de la Vosne on October 22, 2013 #harvests#vintage 2013

Onwards…

decuvage…

By billn on October 17, 2013 #harvests#vintage 2013

Waiting for the pressings
Waiting for the pressings…
Decuvage: Emptying the fermentation tanks, digging out the cap from those tanks and pressing the cap.

The day after our Paulée seems more Spring-like than Autumn; there’s a cool-ish blue sky, but bright sunshine too. I thought I was going to get my hands (and probably a lot more!) dirty this afternoon, as we planned to start the first ‘decuvage’ after lunch, but the boss decided to wait one more day – shame, my TGV awaits!

The whites are looking really good, so-far no surprises have lain in wait. The reds have extracted their colour rather easily and seem to offer very nice aromatics. Fermentations are well under-way here, with many temperatures closing in on to 30°C now. Despite apparently high potential alcohols (lots of people quoting 12-13+ at harvest), the truth is in the detail – these quoted figures are almost always based on the ‘legal’ potential alcohol, which deviates from the (different calculation) actual (analytical) alcohols achieved by as much as 0.8% this year – many are the domaines that planned to add 0.3-0.5% sugar (pretty-much as ‘usual’) but are finding that 0.5-1.0(+)% is required.

Very early days of-course, but the wines look surprisingly good after the harvest and triage travails. Let’s see how this continues…

a vendangeur’s (pictoral) tale… (part six)

By Marko de Morey et de la Vosne on October 15, 2013 #harvests#vintage 2013

We finished lunchtime, praise be the lord, after another testing episode – it was so cold first thing back on that damn Haut Cotes de Nuit plateau, with a claggy mist exacerbating the cold, that my jacket had ice on the left arm (honestly) and you can imagine what one’s hands felt like – yes, blocks of ice. Really bad. Herve was shamed into a mid break before we turned back for a second pass with coffee and croissants supplied – sun out by then. Absolutely without a shadow of doubt THE most testing vendange one can imagine with a legacy of ailments for your’s truly who’s semi crippled. Cyprien agreed with me earlier this p.m the grapes from here were depressingly bad with rot, although deceptively looked good at the start . This is another new, first time for this year, terroir where Cyprien told me he had not had the ability to manage the vineyard how he’d have wished and that it was way too prolific. Flippin freezin again now sat typing here at the back of the cuverie and my RSI’d right arm is going bonkers – really painful. Hey ho !

a vendangeur’s (pictoral) tale… (part cinq)

By billn on October 13, 2013 #harvests#vintage 2013

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