Time seems of the essence this week; more tastings than makes sense if you get entrance to them all, but the BIVB have been careful to spread people out. Still, you might not have thought so with the throng of people at the Vosne-Romanée tasting yesterday morning! In the end, it’s hardly possible to taste all the wines from all the exhibitors, it makes more sense to taste ‘all x in the room’ and go for this surgical-strike option.

Of-course a full-packed program means disappointments too. Arriving for the Morey-Chambolle tasting at 15h30 I found close to half of the exhibitors had already left – it was scheduled from 09h00-17h00. Oh-well. I didn’t taste, I just went to my hotel in Gevrey and a little jog before dinner.

First some jogging pics from my phone; hopefully you can make out the vines ‘crying’ (the sap rising and forming drops) on the picture taken in Clos St.Denis…

And more pictures taken during the day :

Of-course it’s Grands Jours de Bourgogne week, and you know that there was a bit of early jogging – but it was worth it, despite the freezing hands 😉

Tastings in Chablis today, and the it’s an impressive undertaking to get so many producers and tasters together, so much so that it can be rather difficult to get near many producers’ wines – I expect it will be no easier for Chambolle and Vosne, tomorrow, either! Anyway, I set myself the simple target of making notes on 50 1ers from 2012 and 15 Grand Crus from 12, the latter selected by the Union des Grands Crus – no easy task as it turned out. Still, by tasting GCs when many people were eating lunch, life proved easier – less elbowing required!

Back to Beaune for a tasting this evening – and it was such a let-down that I gave up! I have 15 notes, but I won’t be bothering to publish them. The problem wasn’t the wines, rather the small, thick glasses that were provided. Nothing smelled of anything – so what’s the point(?) Such a shame, a nice selection of bottles and wonderful surroundings. Oh-well!

I returned to type for a couple of hours, then another jog, check emails, do this, shower and …. BED!

Awake at 6:30am, so I decided to go out for a run. Virtually 7:00am, on the nail, the first rays of sun penetrated the frosty morning:

A lovely day Spring day, where I am mainly (but not completely, obviously!) in Chablis.

Let’s just do the portrait-shaped ones…

It was already cloudy by about 10:30 today, but what a beautiful start we had.

Growers remain concerned that the buds on some south-facing vines are starting to swell a little, and there is no end in sight to the mild weather (10°C and sun at 10am!), though we are still just behind the precocious beginning to 2007.

Anyway, enjoy…

No Pommard today, and not so much blue sky either, but a cancelled appointment left time to walk the remparts of Beaune – I haven’t done that for years!