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…
