2018 harvest – 3 september

3.9.2018billn

Our harvest day number 7…

What a way to start our day – Corton-Charlemagne – from a super plot of 0.35 ha, on the hill in the real Charlemagne sector. Acquired by the owners on 1993. A pleasure to watch on the triage table – some beurot in this (pinot gris) and just a few leaves and grilled berries to remove. It looked great…

Did I mention that there was a little more Chorey rouge? Well there was, but we finished it before lunch – at last! Though there’s still a little (relatively rare) white to come.

Lunch: 1978 Bouchard Père, Puligny-Montrachet 1er Pucelles
With the slightest touch, the cork disappears into the bottle – oops! So decanted!
A deep golden colour. The nose (fortunately) is clean, deep and round – and it keeps getting better with air too – always the best sign! Volume, depth of texture, long, slow-moving waves of off-sweet mineral flavour – excellent – a great bottle, and so robust!

Villages Beaune, Les Bons Feuvres comes in after lunch. There is a little under-ripe to triage, but only that. Interestingly the stems were much riper than than most – some were almost red. We will be staying with this tomorrow too as it’s quite a large parcel – approaching one hectare. The finish-line is in sight for us now though, we should be finished sometime on Wednesday! The domaine’s Pommard Vaumauriens, having been hailed twice, will need another couple of weeks as it’s a long way from ripeness…

The have been a couple of questions for recent posts that I’ll address here :

  • Acidity in whites: Is relatively modest – this vintage was never going to be like 2014 – but the amount of tartaric is relatively high, so pHs won’t reduce much during malolactic fermentations, as the sun burnt off much of the malic acidity.
  • Yields: I will restrict my comments to Côte de Beaune for now, and to those vines that were not hit by hail – the yields are very good, and below the limits for the appellations – but not very far below. Growers are very happy to have both volume and quality. Hail damage will have caused very wide discrepancies – some parts of southern Nuits have lost most of their fruit – it’s too early to say how much. Likewise it’s too early to gauge HOW well endowed some of the those Côte de Nuits vines were…

And outside of the Côte d’Or?
It’s one of those years where everything is happening at the same time – usually Beaujolais starts before Beaune, Chablis is a bit more variable – but Beaujolais is now well underway – only the early pickers were out last week. Chablis is a little later this year – Long-Depaquit started their harvest today, and assuming that they are not already finished, I hope I’ll be allowed in to take some pics on Thursday!
 

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