The ‘second-set‘ fruit that shouldn’t have been harvested vs far right, an unripe bunch (that also shouldn’t have been harvested!) – This is why we triage!

The wall-to-wall sunshine of the last days had left us this morning, but it was still dry with some flashes of blue sky.

Sunshine was coming to Beaune though, in the form of grapes from Vosne-Romanée – always a great cuvée, and almost always one where we do a high percentage of whole clusters. Like all the previous grapes, generally high ripeness , dark berries with crunchy thick skins. Here was the same amount of dried material to remove, more second-set fruit to discard, but also some oïdium too – not lots, but I never like the look of that stuff!

 Vosne!

In the end it was Vosne for the whole day – nice to have a bit of volume from somewhere – we will have some days without grapes this year as we’ve lost habitual cuvées from Volnay and Marsannay, all frost-related.

It might have taken longer to warm today – t-shirt weather really only from the late afternoon, but it was a good day…