We finished lunchtime, praise be the lord, after another testing episode – it was so cold first thing back on that damn Haut Cotes de Nuit plateau, with a claggy mist exacerbating the cold, that my jacket had ice on the left arm (honestly) and you can imagine what one’s hands felt like – yes, blocks of ice. Really bad. Herve was shamed into a mid break before we turned back for a second pass with coffee and croissants supplied – sun out by then. Absolutely without a shadow of doubt THE most testing vendange one can imagine with a legacy of ailments for your’s truly who’s semi crippled. Cyprien agreed with me earlier this p.m the grapes from here were depressingly bad with rot, although deceptively looked good at the start . This is another new, first time for this year, terroir where Cyprien told me he had not had the ability to manage the vineyard how he’d have wished and that it was way too prolific. Flippin freezin again now sat typing here at the back of the cuverie and my RSI’d right arm is going bonkers – really painful. Hey ho !

Day 6 – Vosne Villages roadside along from Clos Vougeot – dragging Daniel on board to depart

Day 6 – Vosne Village roadside RN74 along from Clos Vougeot

Day 6 – Vosne in the mist from roadside RN74 plot of Vosne Village

Day 6 – Arlaud convoy en route thro Vosne to Petit Monts

Day 6 – Arlaud team commencing exit from Vosne Petit Monts (vines horizontal to the hill)

Day 6 – Looking down on Vosne from Petit Monts with R-L La Grande Rue, Romanee Conti & Richebourg

Day 6 – the relentless, impossible not to like, bundle of energy Mahmadoo celebrating exit of Petit Monts

Day 6 – Vosne 1er Petit Monts fruit

Day 6 – Vendangeur of another domaine in Vosne Petit Monts

Day 6 – Drouhin & Bouchard empty caisses en Petits Monts

Day 6 – Arlaud vendangeurs exiting Petit Monts 2

Day 6 – View down on Vosne with La Grande Rue right & Romanee Conti left

Day 6 – Arlaud vendangeurs exiting Petit Monts 3

Day 6 – Arlaud vendangeurs exiting Petit Monts 5

Day 6 – Arlaud vendangeurs exiting Petit Monts 6 with Herve phone in hand planning next move

Day 6 – Alice Chidaine, daughter of Francois Chidaine (Montlouis, Loire)

Day 6 – left to right Daniel, Dede & AN Other

Day 6 – Arlaud entering Bonnes Mares

Day 6 – Arlaud team splitting into botom & mid slope teams for Bonnes Mares, Alice Chidaine centre

Day 6 – Morey from Bonnes Mares vines

Day 6 – Bonnes Mares typical fruit

Day 6 – Bonnes Mares fruit in bucket

Day 6 – Arlaud team top of slope Bonnes Mares

Day 6 – Arlaud team descending Bonnes Mares

Day 6 – my favourite – Clos St Denis GC

Day 6 – confess cant recall where this is – Mazoyeres possibly

Day 6 – circa 8 pm cleaning triage set up one

Our intrepid vendangeur is now battling a little RSI, the cold, the wet…

Morey Village grapes

Bleep bleep long rows of Morey Village below RN74

Chambolle Village Wines before……

Chambolle Village Vine stripped by yours truly (grapes in shot are vine behind)

Serge checking his load & tired vendangeurs cleaning boots – that wet earth)

Vendangeurs in Chambolle Village

Romain – I want that coat !

Triage Waste – no ladybirds in sight

Gevrey 1er Combottes in tank

Arlaud Cuverie triage table late pm pause

Arlaud Cuverie triaging Chambolle 1er Sentiers

Arlaud Cuverie triage Chambolle 1er Sentiers

Arlaud Cuverie. Almost whole triage crew in shot

One week’s work!

After finishing last night, we tasted the juice from the Corton-Charlemagne we triaged on Tuesday – dark golden, almost viscous and really quite lovely for sweet grape juice 😉 An average ex-domaine price for Corton-Charlemagne is ~€50 (without tax) so the domaine would have to increase its price to €250 to make the normal return – it’s not going to happen is it…(?) Then we visited another producer who was just beginning to add a ‘traditional’ 0.5%. I thought it quite funny that it should be unrefined ‘organic’ sugar – but why not 🙂

I left Beaune this evening as I arrived 8 days ago – bathed in sunlight – that was rather improbable given how the day started. Sometime before 6:00am there was quite heavy rain, not for long, but wet enough, fortunately we were precipitation-less until at least 09:30 thereafter. I spared a thought for those pickers out in the cold, wet and wind this morning – including ours – and that was before it really did start raining again!

We ‘manned’ the triage table early because there were Santenay villages grapes to triage that we didn’t get around to the night before, a 21:45pm finish was quite late enough, thank-you 😉 It was palpably colder today, probably not much more than 10°, but by 09:00 there was a sneaky wind too, and damn cold it was – by 10:00 I’d added a fourth layer of clothing – dancing by the triage table had little to do with the quality of the grapes, or the selection from the team iPod! For an hour or so, rain returned to accompany the sorting. The grapes were pretty awful it must be said – the ripeness and taste were mainly fine enough, but again there had been little resembling triage at the vines – I could only describe some of what was cut as resembling turds – I flinched even to pick them up from the triage table (yuk!) Occasional cases of ‘fruit’ seemed to contain turds and unripe fruit in equal measure, yet others seemed fine enough – we earned our crusts triaging today – I even had to stop the table once while we sorted what was before us – I haven’t done that since 2004…

Lunch was über-welcome by 12:45, a French dish resembling Shepherd’s Pie, to accompany we started with Cloudy Bay 2006 Pinot, then (finally) the La Tâche 2000, we were then tempted by an 04 Latricières (had to look very hard for the P, only faintly spotted it, quite fleetingly too), a 1997 Volnay Pitures and a 1976 Volnay Champans – a tough last lunch – and that’s without mentioning the starter, the cheese and (of-course!) the tarte aux chocolat…

Back to the table; more Santenay – will it ever end? At least we were seeing a better average quality of fruit, despite the occasional turd! Finally the Santenay was finished after nearly 5.5 hours of triage – medals should have been awarded – but let’s be fair, we were awarded a pain-au-chocolat with a coffee at 10:30 🙂 Next up came grapes that I’d been looking forward to – the (traditional) Facebook grapes from Maranges from the Monday. These were also no saints, as there was a little rot here too, but we were able to make the trie at a minimum of 3x faster than before. They tasted nice too.

Finally I had to leave, at least for this week – I couldn’t stand any more Van Morrison. Maybe more next week?

That’s better – Maranges Clos aux Moine

Soft-focus dinner ladies with Shepherd’s Pie

An antidote to all those perfect Facebook bunches that take so long to find. NB. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the Domaine 😉

We are building up to a crescendo of action here, and it’s hard to believe I’ve been here a week already – tomorrow will be my last day…

We started with more Vosne-Romanée villages this morning – the same, pretty fruit as yesterday – I pulled out an extra case of whole clusters so, overall we did 1/3 of the cuvée with stems – lovely, fruit and really tasty. Next was some Lavaux St.Jacques; times are getting harder and harder – despite expecting enough fruit for three barrels, we got barely enough for two. Some new negociants are actually driving the price spiral that many end-customers are complaining about – paying way more than the going rate, but finally, all the prices are averaged by the BIVB to calculate the ‘going rate’ for grapes, so as you can imagine, just one new buyer who is prepared to pay 40% more for fruit means we will all be paying more next year! Still, the fruit from Lavaux was good stuff – some rot but easily triaged and we did some whole clusters too – the grapes tasted completely different to the Vosne, thicker, with almost crunchy skins too!

Lunch, what can I tell you about lunch(?) Well, we ‘played away’ for wine, but I think I can say for everyone, that we felt completely stuffed afterwards – I suppose it was luck that no grapes were scheduled before 16:00 – personally, I managed a little ‘down-time’ to recover from our repast!

At just after 16:00 hrs, our Santenay Clos Rousseau came in waves of trucks – the pickers clearly had a joke at our expense as there was absolutely no sign of selection at the vines – a whole lot of hard triage to be done – rot mainly, hardly any unripe stuff. Such was the triage that our table had to run quite slowly – still at least 4 pallets of fruit remained after 8:00pm, and with the hired hand looking bleary-eyed, the pallets were consigned to the back of the refrigerated truck – we will tackle those at 08:00 hrs tomorrow – but a ton more stuff is expected – I’ll feel sad leaving the team at 17:00 hrs tomorrow, but places to go, people to see… 😉

Lovely Lavaux

Ouch – this is going to take some work – Santenay Clos Rousseau

More and more cuvées…