Les Hervelets

By the skin of its teeth, the Côte d’Or has largely escaped the frost travails of much of France (& Switzerland).

If relatively few had set light to their straw last Friday morning, it was easy to spot the difference as soon as you left the house last Saturday morning – the air in Beaune smelled of grass-fires. Many, many bails of hay and stray were set alight at 5am – to burn next to the vineyards, hoping to ward off temperatures of at least -2°C. I noted varying degrees of local commitment – there were plenty of burning bails on the route des grands crus in Gevrey, but nothing was to be seen in Morey or Chambolle – that said, Cyprien Arlaud used candles in his Clos St.Denis vines – Chablis-style.

In Vosne there was a good team effort with burning straw dotted around the commune and a good group of vignerons working together – Charles Lachaux doing the ‘belts and braces’ approach by having both bails of burning straw around his Romanée St.Vivant and candles between the rows too.

Beaune saw conspicuously little organised attempts to ward off the frost, but over 50 vingeron(ne)s gathered at 04h45 in Volnay to make some fires, it was the same further south too – not to mention some domaines hiring helicopters in the white grand crus of Puligny/Chassagne. Not everybody was unscathed – poor Savigny lost some production (again!) as did St.Aubin, St.Romain and a number of ‘Haute’ locations, though it wasn’t just the high spots, some small amounts of bourgogne at the bottom of Volnay was lost.

Afterwards the weather became cold and wet, but largely avoiding the negative temperatures. Yesterday, however, there were reports of isolated hail storms across the Côte d’Or – as far apart as Chassagne and Premeaux – though maybe in this case ‘storm’ is a little overstated as only a little damage has been reported. The main impact of the weather seem to have been to retard the growth of the vines – 2 weeks ago we were almost 2 weeks ahead of an average schedule – similar to 2007 and 2011 – but the cold has stripped that back by over a week – we are much closer to the average now – but the last days’ rain will have been welcomed by all those who didn’t have to go out in it – the start of 2017 has been very dry…

As for Beaujolais, the most affected area is in the south of the region – the Azergues valley – which was affected relatively early (21 April) by the frost. As it was quite early, it is mainly the chardonnay which was affected – so maybe a little less cremant will be made this year, but so-far, the gamay has survived intact.

Pics from Saturday 29th:
 

Villages Fixin

Fixin Au Herbues

Over Fixin Clos Napoleon to Fixin Clos de la Perrière

Over Fixin Clos Napoleon

Fixin Les Hervelets

Baby Fixin…

A pyre between RSV and Romanée-Conti

A Romanée St.Vivant pyre…

Fiery image from Caroline Parent-Gros

Whilst very few of the hay-bails in the Côte de Beaune were lit on Friday morning – temperatures only hovered around zero – the Côte de Nuits saw more hot-hay-bail action. One example was the Clos St.Jacques in Gevrey-Chambertin which was ringed by the smoke making pyres.

The skies have been clear during the night, and 45 vignerons re-convened in Volnay at 04h45 this morning, and many pyres have been lit. The weather during the days is beautiful, but still with chilly ‘bize‘ – the cold north wind – the vigneron(ne)s, however, would prefer that the wind continued in the night, but it was absent.

I’ll be out in the vines later today to see how effective the actions of the grower ‘syndicats‘ have been.

Yesterday in the vines, including a tented approach to protect vines in Corton-Charlemagne:
 

Always a favourite view – Chevalier-Montractet

The view over Pernand

Pernand from the hill of Corton

A block of Pernand Corton-Charlemagne under tent!

Above, via Regis Rossignol in Volnay…

For the past week or-so, the Côte d’Or has been relatively protected from the frost seen in other parts of Burgundy, indeed the wider France. But this morning, starting before 5am, groups of vignerons in multiple villages, began lighting bails of hay, in and around their vines, with the aim take the cutting edge from the frost. Some individual producers are trying to keep air moving with helicopters.

It’s the first time I’ve seen such a team ethic here in Burgundy and across multiple appellations. I’ll be out in the vines to see how this is working – but the vignerons might need to order more hay – it could be that a similar event is required overnight tonight too! Of-course the fight in Chablis has hardly stopped for over a week now…

I got up early today to visit Chablis – an 08h30 producer appointment before tasting a range of wines from Irancy (2015).

I often encountered temperatures of 1-2°C whilst on the autoroute, but nothing lower – the skies were clear blue and the sun was shining.

As I approached Chablis I could see that it was just about the only place with some overhead cloud – but I noted it wasn’t the usual white-grey, it was brown-grey – it didn’t take me long to work out that this was the accumulation of the smoke from all the vineyard candles that are used to guard against the frost – there was no wind, so the smoke simply stayed put.

After my visit in La Chapelle-Vaupelteigne, the direct route back to Chablis took in the Chablis 1er Cru of l’Homme Mort – a cru that for many years made up a percentage of many Fourchaumes. It was now 09h30 but I was greeted by the water-cannons still working in the vines – I decided that it was time to get wet! What was instantly clear was that, in this location, if the vines weren’t getting a good soaking, then they were brown and already lost to the frost – those covered by the cannons looked normal and green. Driving further round to the grand crus, clearly here the preferred protection was the aforementioned candles, allowing the vines and earth to stay dry – which endows 2-4°C more protection from the frost.

Having discussed with Frédéric Drouhin on Saturday, I had the chance to ask a couple more producers what they though – both were non-commital, and had a very similar message;

“Clearly some places have lost at least 50%, and a little rain in Maligny and Lignorelles at the start of last week means that those areas were much more sensitive to the frost. But the difference between the plots are so marked that it won’t be before the end of the week before I have a decent idea, myself, what is lost and what is saved. I need to see how some of the opposing buds come through this, and we have cold and wet forecast for the end of the week – so it’s really not over yet!”
 

Last night in the Côte d’Or there was nothing to report – unlike the devastation in my Swiss domicile – not just vines but the fruit industry too. The corridor to Burgundy – the Jura – is likewise terribly affected.

Here in the Côte d’Or, the last days saw lit candles in the vines in Volnay and St.Romain – I hear that there was damage in both Savigny-lès-Beaune and St.Aubin, but for the moment I’ve no more info. There has been a relatively strong north wind and the vineyards were very dry so damage has been relatively minor. The Hautes Côtes have seen at least -4°C and some vignerons re-purposed the ‘chariots’ used for burning the pruned material, making fires from pulled out old vines – they say that they definitely save some buds.

I caught up with Frédérick Drouhin this morning in Beaune’s market and asked him how it was for him in Chablis, where it was colder than here. The grand crus were of-course well-protected, but losses in premier crus were ‘not too bad’ – say 10-15%, and the villages wines had lost more like 30% – “But it’s not yet over” he counsels…

Anyway, to brighten the picture, there was the produce of Beaune’s market in the sunshine this morning – the strawberry aroma was fabulous – though it looks like there wont be many from Switzerland this year!
 

April 2016…

To be honest, I hardly remember frost in Burgundy – I began tasting here in 1997 (the 1996s), and I’ve rarely seen much – but there was a sense of deja-vu to this week’s weather forecast.

Typically, back home in Switzerland, I brought out my non-hardy plants last week after literally weeks without rain and often-times temperatures above 20°C – this week whilst in Beaune, there are weather warnings back in Bern, already some snow and -6 to -8°C forecast for Thursday and Friday night – there go the plants! It could also be the second year running that the second half of April sees colder temperatures than much of the deep winter. Note that most of the Côte d’Or is close to two weeks ahead of the growth schedule of an ‘average’ year – so potentially there is as much growth to lose today, as there was at the end of April last year.

In Chablis yesterday evening there was plenty of damage as temperatures dipped below -3°C. Here in the Côtes it rarely got below -1°C and there was virtually no damage reported – last night at-least – it’s not yet over. The water sprays and ‘candles’* were out in action in Chablis – but many areas are unprotected and saw loses – it was worse in the Châtillonais – between Chablis and Champagne – here were much bigger losses. It would have been worse-still had there been any rain to speak of in the last week or two – any damp exacerbates the effect of the frost such that plants might survive -3°C in very dry conditions – but succumb to -1°C when wet/damp – chardonnay at least, pinot is less hardy…

I asked one producer from the Côte de Nuits ‘So if you already knew that on Friday evening the vineyards would touch -5°C, could you actually go out and protect your vines with, for instance, candles?’ Their answer:

“The problem is that we have 15 hectares, so you can multiply that by at least 3 or 4 to come to the actual number of parcels – it’s actually physically impossible for us to be in all those parcels to light candles as required – not even taking into account the cost of doing so. Ideally if you’ve great relations with some fellow producers, you could let them be responsible for one vineyard while you take responsibility for another – and so on. Frankly, such cohesion and organisation would be a remarkable thing!”

Fingers crossed for the next days…

*‘Candles’ really doesn’t give you a true idea – rows of 5 kilo cans that have more to do with petrochemicals, with dark smoke – not a bit like the domestic candles in your house – and environmentally friendly they are not…

#bougies et #aspersion pour lutter contre le #gel.
We have been fighting against frost with candles and spray.#williamfevre#chablispic.twitter.com/iWNaiMKdIs

— William Fèvre (@williamfevre_) April 19, 2017

It’s very early in the season, and I’m not aware of very much damage – so far! – but there was hail in Savigny yesterday, reported by both Maison Harbour and Nicolas Rossignol. See the video below (via Instagram) that Nico posted from Les Lavières:

A post shared by Nicolas Rossignol (@nico_rossignol) on Apr 10, 2017 at 1:40pm PDT

Yesterday Volnay, today Moulin à Vent’s (Jadot’s) Clos du Grand Carquelin – all here is clearly a week or-so ahead of the Côte d’Or, and apparently we are about 2 weeks ahead of a ‘normal year‘ – whatever one of those is…

Despite the blue sky and sunshine, today was markedly chilly – a strong north wind – it felt much colder than the 15°C on the thermometer. Beaujolais doesn’t seem to be suffering from all those bud-eating caterpillars in the Côte d’Or. I can see a day in the Mâconnais coming tomorrow – all in the interests of science – oh, and drinking wine! 🙂