La Léproserie de Meursault…

So, late yesterday afternoon we had the first hail of the growing season. I linked Thibault Morey’s hail video (on Facebook) yesterday, and today I spoke with some growers and looked at the vines.

The spread of hail was a little wider than was first reported (by me), with vines also in Blagny and Meursault touched – mainly high on the hill – I even heard that a little Pommard was hit but I couldn’t verify it.

Essentially it was the canopy that was peppered with holes, and that canopy overwhelmingly protected the latent clusters of flowers below, I did see a few damaged parts to the clusters but it was minimal and will have no impact on either volume or quality – this time. You see the extent of the ‘shot’ in the images below.

Meursault-Blagny…

Meursault-Blagny…

Meursault-Perrières…

As it turns out, hail is not the only concern just now; it’s much colder this week, but cloud-cover ensured that temperatures didn’t drop below 6°C yesterday evening, though in Arnay le Duc (on the plateau above the Côte d’Or) the ground was white with frost this morning, after a 0°C night. Nobody wants to see that! I did a small tour of the wall of Meursault Clos des Perrières this morning as the south-facing part had the first flowering I found last year, but still nothing yet…

The southern wall of Clos des Perrières…

Hail in Clos des Perrières…

Lastly, The Léproserie in Meursault is very soon to open its doors to tourists and I find the combination of the old with the new visitor reception to be really excellent – maybe it helped the sky was quite moody today!