I received the following today:

The 2007 grape harvest in Chablis: on the 9th September, the La Chablisienne co-operative began the grape harvest at Château Grenouilles
(Drinks Media Wire). Château Grenouilles is the only estate located at the heart of the Grands Crus vineyards. Discover the success of a co-operative with prospects.

Since 1923 in Chablis (Burgundy), the La Chablisienne co-operative and its 300 winegrowing-members have been producing great white wines from a mosaic of local soils, all marked by their own very particular minerals.

The La Chablisienne co-operative is present throughout the vineyard. Every year, they produce some thirty different vintages and crus, all boasting strong personalities: 6 Grands Crus, 11 Premiers Crus, Chablis wines and Petit Chablis wines. The very prestigious Château Grenouilles ranks first among these crus, and is the only estate to be located on the hill of the Grands Crus.

La Chablisienne is an exemplary and successful French co-operative. The figures on 31/07/07 confirm that fact with a 10% rise in the number of bottles marketed and a 16% rise in the turnover compared to 2006, which means La Chablisienne may well exceed its sales objectives with over 8 million bottles sold by the end of the year.

As a brand, La Chablisienne focuses its sales essentially on value and image-promoting sectors: wine merchants 9%, the café, hotel and restaurant circuit 32%, and export 59%.

Apart from promoting Chablis wines, this development also aims to enable as many family producers as possible to work the vineyard (with 180 member estates) and younger generations of winegrowers to settle there (25 young producers over a period of 5 years.)

Beyond its commercial success, La Chablisienne is more than ever a wine co-operative with prospects and a great future, preserving an exceptional heritage.

What didn’t make it into the cuvée

Today at the home domaine it’s villages Vosne-Romanée and Charmes-Chambertin on the triage table. Whereas the Charmes looks ‘okay’, the Vosne looks excellent – so much so that the vieilles-vignes have been separated into another cuvée and are going into the tank with a high percentage of whole clusters. The younger vines will be de-stemmed as normal, so it will be interesting to compare the two.

Tomorrow is a free day, or at-least free from sorting, and Monday will see the Corton Clos du Roi harvested. Tuesday might be Chambertin and Latricières, otherwise they will come on Wednesday. Maranges will also come on Wednesday, so this vineyard is a little behind its usual evolution.

A trip to Meursault and Puligny this morning showed quite a few people harvesting their chardonnay, but the home team’s Corton-Charlemagne is most likely going to be left until next weekend as the forecast is as good as the last dry days.

What of the fermenting cuvées? Well the Beaune 1er Cru Les Cras has already 98% completed its alcoholic fermentation. The colours are actually very good, but the tannins are a little on the low side so more extraction will be tried. It’s actually very hard to judge the balance as there is a lot of malic acid (tartaric also) so we will have to wait a while.

And some notes from our winemaker friend in Morey St.Denis:

“What a heterogeneous harvest.

I have brought in 4 ha of fruit, the sugars are all over the place. Even within an appellation, I have a variation of 1°! We also have a smaller yield than estimated, but the quantities are decent. I can’t stall the harvest like Dominique though, my team is going back to school, and my drivers back to work. I’m afraid of rain, but I might stall the whites until next week. The Vegetation is dormant now, the only degrees I’ll get is with evaporation.

I have an average of 12° for everything which is correct. We’ll see how it goes in the tanks…

Our tannins are low, acids are high, I think that with some good work though we’ll get a decent wine in, the must is tasty, wild strawberries, blueberries, iron, licorice. I am hoping to get some nice spices in the end of fermentation. I am in the beginning of fermentation, I’m favoring a cold extraction, and good news, no smelly grapes this year for me.
I’ll send in more profound tasting notes in a few days. 1 or 2 days of soak are not enough, and I did have some shot berries and raisining in some vines.”

The weather is amazing; the few drops of rain in Beaune yesterday came to nothing, but today it’s sunny, the north wind is blowing – and it’s cold! It really is like an an October harvest even though were are in the first week of September. The home team boss is even joking about making a ‘selection grains nobles’ from Corton-Charlemage!

As I mentioned the Charlemagne, what of the whites? Well apparently they are still not ripe enough – Dominique Lafon has put off his harvest to next week, many, if not most, will follow suit.

I asked a few more questions about the smelly Taillepieds:

“We looked at the grapes on the vines and they looked bad – we had this bacterial problem from the same parcel last year – so I really considered to pull out of the contract. The grower convinced us to test some of the grapes, and actually they seemed okay – so we went ahead. As the fruit from the first basket hit the sorting table the cry went out – ‘what is that smell?’. So we ended up having to smell every single cluster as a check – there is no other way – a perfect looking bunch can smell bad, an ugly one be perfectly okay – your eyes don’t help. Actually we had less than 5% botrytis in this parcel so it can’t be the main factor, but we still ended up throwing 30% away. It’s probably a mixture of site, viticulture and clone – certainly you get huge clusters from this parcel. Despite us all having sticky noses by the end, I think the effort should have been worthwhile, the must looks, smells and tastes fine – so let’s see.”

Today it’s a village Beaune that’s making the commute across the sorting table: though, earlier in the year the grapes had been hit by hail they have 13° natural and look almost good and homogenous – they will be fine. Although tomorrow will be villages Volnay and Beaune 1er Cru Les Avaux we are now starting to look more closely at the Côte de Nuits fruit. I hear that the Latricières doesn’t look so hot – but it didn’t in 2004 either yet Burghound bestowed 90-92 big ones! Villages Vosne looks good too – Friday or Saturday is anticipated for these – seems life will be much easier as the teams go deeper into Nuits.

Just to prove the weather was nice, Carel Voorhuis sent me the following picture:

He also sent a picture showing today’s Savigny 1er Cru Peuillets showing over 14°!

Next update Thursday or Friday.