Les Hervelets

By the skin of its teeth, the Côte d’Or has largely escaped the frost travails of much of France (& Switzerland).

If relatively few had set light to their straw last Friday morning, it was easy to spot the difference as soon as you left the house last Saturday morning – the air in Beaune smelled of grass-fires. Many, many bails of hay and stray were set alight at 5am – to burn next to the vineyards, hoping to ward off temperatures of at least -2°C. I noted varying degrees of local commitment – there were plenty of burning bails on the route des grands crus in Gevrey, but nothing was to be seen in Morey or Chambolle – that said, Cyprien Arlaud used candles in his Clos St.Denis vines – Chablis-style.

In Vosne there was a good team effort with burning straw dotted around the commune and a good group of vignerons working together – Charles Lachaux doing the ‘belts and braces’ approach by having both bails of burning straw around his Romanée St.Vivant and candles between the rows too.

Beaune saw conspicuously little organised attempts to ward off the frost, but over 50 vingeron(ne)s gathered at 04h45 in Volnay to make some fires, it was the same further south too – not to mention some domaines hiring helicopters in the white grand crus of Puligny/Chassagne. Not everybody was unscathed – poor Savigny lost some production (again!) as did St.Aubin, St.Romain and a number of ‘Haute’ locations, though it wasn’t just the high spots, some small amounts of bourgogne at the bottom of Volnay was lost.

Afterwards the weather became cold and wet, but largely avoiding the negative temperatures. Yesterday, however, there were reports of isolated hail storms across the Côte d’Or – as far apart as Chassagne and Premeaux – though maybe in this case ‘storm’ is a little overstated as only a little damage has been reported. The main impact of the weather seem to have been to retard the growth of the vines – 2 weeks ago we were almost 2 weeks ahead of an average schedule – similar to 2007 and 2011 – but the cold has stripped that back by over a week – we are much closer to the average now – but the last days’ rain will have been welcomed by all those who didn’t have to go out in it – the start of 2017 has been very dry…

As for Beaujolais, the most affected area is in the south of the region – the Azergues valley – which was affected relatively early (21 April) by the frost. As it was quite early, it is mainly the chardonnay which was affected – so maybe a little less cremant will be made this year, but so-far, the gamay has survived intact.

Pics from Saturday 29th:
 

Villages Fixin

Fixin Au Herbues

Over Fixin Clos Napoleon to Fixin Clos de la Perrière

Over Fixin Clos Napoleon

Fixin Les Hervelets

Baby Fixin…

A pyre between RSV and Romanée-Conti

A Romanée St.Vivant pyre…

Fiery image from Caroline Parent-Gros

Whilst very few of the hay-bails in the Côte de Beaune were lit on Friday morning – temperatures only hovered around zero – the Côte de Nuits saw more hot-hay-bail action. One example was the Clos St.Jacques in Gevrey-Chambertin which was ringed by the smoke making pyres.

The skies have been clear during the night, and 45 vignerons re-convened in Volnay at 04h45 this morning, and many pyres have been lit. The weather during the days is beautiful, but still with chilly ‘bize‘ – the cold north wind – the vigneron(ne)s, however, would prefer that the wind continued in the night, but it was absent.

I’ll be out in the vines later today to see how effective the actions of the grower ‘syndicats‘ have been.

Yesterday in the vines, including a tented approach to protect vines in Corton-Charlemagne:
 

Always a favourite view – Chevalier-Montractet

The view over Pernand

Pernand from the hill of Corton

A block of Pernand Corton-Charlemagne under tent!

Above, via Regis Rossignol in Volnay…

For the past week or-so, the Côte d’Or has been relatively protected from the frost seen in other parts of Burgundy, indeed the wider France. But this morning, starting before 5am, groups of vignerons in multiple villages, began lighting bails of hay, in and around their vines, with the aim take the cutting edge from the frost. Some individual producers are trying to keep air moving with helicopters.

It’s the first time I’ve seen such a team ethic here in Burgundy and across multiple appellations. I’ll be out in the vines to see how this is working – but the vignerons might need to order more hay – it could be that a similar event is required overnight tonight too! Of-course the fight in Chablis has hardly stopped for over a week now…

I got up early today to visit Chablis – an 08h30 producer appointment before tasting a range of wines from Irancy (2015).

I often encountered temperatures of 1-2°C whilst on the autoroute, but nothing lower – the skies were clear blue and the sun was shining.

As I approached Chablis I could see that it was just about the only place with some overhead cloud – but I noted it wasn’t the usual white-grey, it was brown-grey – it didn’t take me long to work out that this was the accumulation of the smoke from all the vineyard candles that are used to guard against the frost – there was no wind, so the smoke simply stayed put.

After my visit in La Chapelle-Vaupelteigne, the direct route back to Chablis took in the Chablis 1er Cru of l’Homme Mort – a cru that for many years made up a percentage of many Fourchaumes. It was now 09h30 but I was greeted by the water-cannons still working in the vines – I decided that it was time to get wet! What was instantly clear was that, in this location, if the vines weren’t getting a good soaking, then they were brown and already lost to the frost – those covered by the cannons looked normal and green. Driving further round to the grand crus, clearly here the preferred protection was the aforementioned candles, allowing the vines and earth to stay dry – which endows 2-4°C more protection from the frost.

Having discussed with Frédéric Drouhin on Saturday, I had the chance to ask a couple more producers what they though – both were non-commital, and had a very similar message;

“Clearly some places have lost at least 50%, and a little rain in Maligny and Lignorelles at the start of last week means that those areas were much more sensitive to the frost. But the difference between the plots are so marked that it won’t be before the end of the week before I have a decent idea, myself, what is lost and what is saved. I need to see how some of the opposing buds come through this, and we have cold and wet forecast for the end of the week – so it’s really not over yet!”