Pommard Les Chanlins Hautes…

I didn’t want to depress you (me actually!) with a picture of yesterday’s first day summer – low cloud and rain, indeed rain through the whole night of the the 20th too – but by mid-afternoon yesterday, there was blue sky and by 6pm the temperature had increased to t-shirt level!’ Luckily as it was the Fêtes de Music in Beaune, so some drinks and ‘dodgy’ live bands had to be experienced!

Whilst some places like Savigny are still behind the flowering curve, the majority of those later flowers will be open today and tomorrow – days forecast to be sunny with 29-30°C. Today I jogged around Pommard and Volnay – camera in hand! Here again not all the flowers are visible, but some have also clearly finished flowering too. As we might now expect, given that there have been no really settled periods so-far in 2016, the weekend is forecast to be ‘changeable,’ perhaps even stormy…

There’s plenty of work in the vineyards though – the weeds are massive – one thing that certainly wasn’t curtailed by the frost! Many a vigneron are saying that it’s one of the most obvious aspects of the growing season, so-far. There are also plenty of people spraying, despite the ongoing flowering, as there’s a lot of concern about mildew. Otherwise there’s weeding, de-budding and even some canopy trimming at the moment.
 

Vineyard Floraison

The weather is far from settled – or for that matter, warm – we have about 18-22° in the forecast for this week – more rain than sun, too!

But the first/early flowers can be seen, here and there, across the Côte de Nuits. It looks like we will be in ‘peak flowering’ by the end of the week, certainly the weekend. So, for argument’s sake, let’s say Friday for mid-flowering, add 100 days, equals harvesting from the 25th September(?) Let’s see…

I’ll keep you posted…

It was cool to see the first flowers of 2016 yesterday – even more-so to have the ‘buzzing’ accompaniment of the hover-flies too. I only had my phone with me, so I’m doubly impressed by this result!

This picture was taken in the southern Beaujolais Villages area – but truth be told it’s a semi-fake! These gamay vines are actually in a nice ‘garden’ in the city of Villefranche – the commercial capitol of the Beaujolais region – so they are not really in a ‘true’ vineyard area.

But they are real flowers – the outliners for the vignoble. They are a few days ahead of the ‘real vineyards’ as the city has a temperature advantage versus the vineyards – and remained ‘frostless’ this year. But yesterday was 28°C in the Beaujolais, so the real ‘floraison‘ is clearly not far away…

[EDIT:]The first flowers reported in a real Burgundy vineyard today by Jean-Philippe Bret in (chardonnay) Pouilly-Vinzelles!