Finally! you say – a bit of Côte de Nuits action!

Today, a small tour around Gevrey centre, followed by an excellent lunch in the bistro of Rôtissèrie du Chambertin (good value too) and then a walk through Clos de Bèze to recover. Although only about 21°C today, the sun was hot – only later in the afternoon was there more cloud and a threat – but no more – of rain.

Clos de Bèze – despite its lofty status – is a great place to get an average view of how the grapes are progressing; it starts low but goes quite high on the hill, there are dark areas by the forest too – very different to the sunny, lower and mid-slope vines. The grapes look very clean, very small and the clusters have the weight and hardness of small hand-grenades – all seem very clean of rot so-far. The leaf colour of first vines of each row that face the sun already have the look of autumn (see right), but behind, as the rows continue, they seem pretty normal. In just a few places – for instance the first vines next to the road (Route des Grands Crus) as you approach Morey St.Denis, the lowest leaves are brown like November – yet like elsewhere, the vines along the rows seem fine.

Overall the veraison is a little more advanced than some of the Côte de Beaune vineyards I’ve seen, but not 100% done. The taste of these (€100/kg?) grapes is largely sweet and round – like the whites – probably because malic acid seems relatively low in this vintage. Clearly there’s plenty of skin this year though, and it has quite a good taste – so-far…

Building-site Gevrey-Chambertin:

Clos de Bèze:

A clos in the clos…

A long way down

A long way down 2

Darker near the forest…

Some ‘not so green’ harvesting…

Is that a toilet?

Looking up to the trees…

No no he’s not dead, he’s, he’s restin’!

Not possible to take pics of Bèze without this…

This one, defintely dead!

Perfectly cut for the sun…

Well, nobody else was doing it!

It’s been a pretty rainy week – there was a little this morning too, but mostly just cloud after about 10h00. Indeed we’ve had more than 60mm in the last week, which is such a contrast to basically nothing in July! It’s been hard for the young vines – you can see some with yellowing leaves, but nothing (yet!) like the vines stripped of leaves that we saw in 2003 when in certain vineyards the roots couldn’t go deep enough to slake their thirst – Beaune Clos du Roi springs readily to mind.

May 2015 started cool and wet and ended up almost 30°C. June had 2-3 days of heavy rain, July, depending on where you were in the Côtes had 1mm to 10mm – but only on the one day. The vineyards largely looked in super condition before this August rain, despite the dry weather, but the recent rain has eased vigneron’s concerns considerably.

As you can see (below) veraison is not yet finished in this part of the Côte de Beaune – we have potential alcohols of about 8-9% at the moment. So-far in August, despite the odd spike approaching 40°C it’s been relatively cool versus July. As veraison is not yet, or only just, finished and the weather is now more changeable, it’s still much too early to conclude anything meaningful on the character of the wines that will come – but in about 3 weeks we’ll be harvesting and all will become clearer. So-far, and as you can see, the berry size is rather small – like 2010 or less – and the sanitary conditions look very clean indeed. Let’s see how the weather progresses and whether it will stay this way, or if the grapes will get the chance to suck up a little water…

Ladoix – below the road…

Looking towards Corton

Pinot Noir – almost full veraison…

Pinot Noir – less advanced

Pinot Noir – more advanced

Chardonnay

Recently treated…

Pinot Gris

Clos de Meil 😉

Looking towards Bressandes…