Tuesday was a relatively quiet day at the home domaine, lucky considering the loss of a team-member, so I chose to roll it into Wednesday’s report. Incredibly given that every day for that last 10 was forecast to rain (two days out) the team remain warm and dry – only the short shower of Sunday morning remains in the memory. There is still rain forecast, but most are now ignoring those forecasts.

Tuesday: Pinot from Ladoix was the only delivery of the day; a very nice plot that’s 100% biodynamically farmed – maybe that’s why about 12% was eventually discarded for a combination of sins – rot or just clumsy bunches of grapes with questionable ripeness. It’s worth pointing out that (including those vines that follow) the average amount discarded this year has been at about the 5% level, spanning 3-12%. Only a couple of plots (Santenay Comme and this Ladoix) have gone over 10%, so this is historically very low, excepting the ‘exceptionals’ like 2005 and 2009.

Wednesday: Plenty of grapes today and ones that looked rather good too. You already saw a pic of the Lavaux St.Jacques in yesterday’s ‘Facebook bunches’ note, but they were nice clusters of small berries – similar to the Vosne vieilles vignes of last week. 7% were discarded after triage. Then came Charmes-Chambertin; the grapes looked just as good as the Lavaux, but were probably picked in the nick of time as they were completely ripe and the individual grapes were becoming a little fragile – because of that 8% were triaged.

Two whites also hit the triage table; Beaune Lulune and Meursault Les Luchets – clean and with good pH – a happy team.

In the cuverie some of the ferments are just about starting and the colour seems to be extracting relatively easily. In some cuvées there seems to be a bit more tartaric acid than usual – lower malic usually indicates a warm growing season – but there’s no point giving any detail at this stage as it’s only the free-run juice that has provided that glimpse – real numbers will come after extraction when the grapes have been pigeaged, remontaged, delestaged or just plain pressed – let’s see.

It’s become a bit of an ‘in-joke’ but let me introduce you to the concept of the Facebook Bunches.

Many producers have cottoned onto the fact that they can keep-up a stream of contact with people interested in their wines; past visitors to the domaine or enthusiasts, etcetera. It also seems that this is good for business – though let’s be clear, they need to have a good product in the first place! I think it started in an understated way with the 2008 vintage; pictures of happy vignerons clutching a basket of perfect grapes or giving updates on the progress of their own vintage trials – initially it was for a close circle of friends but it’s expanded every year since then. Of-course we have a bit of fun with each other; ‘how many days did it take you to find those three bunches?‘ queries another vigneron.

My home team’s contribution (so far) is the Lavaux St.Jacques, right (though, as far as I know, it’s not actually on Facebook…), but I also offer for your delectation a selection of contenders for the Facebook Bunch Of The Year 2011 – I’m thinking that Alexandrine’s bucket has it in the bag so-far – could your vote tip the balance…?

I’m sure that only a heartless cynic would describe any of this as ‘marketing‘ 😉

 Domaine Grivot’s 2011 Richebourg

Talk about rain gods – they must have benevolent eyes for the Côte d’Or – so-far anyway. Despite driving through two hours of rain on my way home on Sunday, the Côtes stayed dry – amazing.

Monday at the home domaine was a tough one, but not because of the grapes but because the home team were suffering; the boss has angina and another of the team broke his wrist (away from the domaine I think!) and is now ‘out’ for 6 weeks.

The Monday grapes were pretty good; I already mentioned the scruffy Santenay which had been picked on Sunday, but after triage the grapes that went to the tanks looked very good indeed – small berried clusters that optically had a lot in common with Saturday’s Vosne-Romanée. Marsannay was next up and this was a little more disappointing – not because of rot, but rather the berry size was a bit larger than the boss would have liked. Chassagne-Montrachet Les Vergers (chardonnay) was apparently a treat for the eyes – lovely grapes. Tuesday is a little Ladoix, but the pinot Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune grand crus will wait for the end of the week, as will some Maranges and Santenay Clos Rousseau.

The fermentations are rather slow – a good thing as everyone is busy with incoming grapes – some might even say that the fermentations are non-existant so far. The colour is coming through quite well but the combination of low brix (aka sugar) and high-ish pH has the boss questioning himself ‘how exactly am I going to approach my extractions(?)’ Well, we don’t want him to have TOO easy a life do we, angina and all…

And good news – vendanger Mark de Morey is back – the first installment from him very soon…

Finally, a very simple harvest message from Domaine Jean Grivot: “Vendanges 2011 terminées!!” – wow – that was fast!

 No glue was used in the making of this image!

Sunday was a day of rest – almost – so time to take stock of the first week.

The grander reds still wait in the vineyards, though a majority of the whites are now gathered. The lead image (above) gives you a stylised and sanitised example of what the early-picked pinots have looked like so-far.

• Temperatures were high in week 1 – approaching 30°C. Triaged grapes (the waste) in only a few hours had an acetic waft about them, so housekeeping, keeping the grapes cool after picking (refrigerated vans) then cooling them in their fermentation tanks were the highest priorities to avoid subsequent faulty wines.
• Very low levels of rot in the pinot; better than 2006, perhaps on a par or better than 2009 – maybe 2005 was marginally better(?) – but rare stuff!
• Despite those very low levels of rot the triage is challenging, as every bunch needs a workover – even the very best vineyards are delivering bunches with one or two unripened grapes that need to be plucked; quite easy when they present like those above, but a pain in the ass when there are verjus (tiny green grapes that never swelled) and always hiding between the ripe stuff
• The berry size is quite large – the middle bunch above would have been characteristic of 2010, though in itself that was an extreme
• Those parcels that favour whole clusters perhaps do so even more this year as the stems are browner than I ever saw – though whatever you read/hear, colour alone is a very poor guide. The counter-argument to whole clusters is that the pHs are already quite high – do you want to make them higher still by including stems(?) – and note that the stems also add more water into the mix – there’s a lot of that already! Don’t be surprised if some producers throttle back on the stems a little this year, and if they do, it won’t be because of the quality of those stems
• Because of their (big) berry-size, week 1 pinots might need an occasional saignée and, as the sugar levels are modest, chaptalisation of 0.5-1.0° might be relatively common. Of-course that may change for week two’s 1er and grand cru plots, but the wet weather is coming and you only need 20°C for rot to flourish. I think it could be a white-knuckle ride as there has been no sign of the north-wind – not yet anyway.
• Chardonnay grapes look rather good on the whole, if less robust (thinner skins) than most years; admittedly some had challengingly distributed rot, other parcels were fabulous. Below you can see some easy to remove rot from one of the few parcles of Montrachet still to be picked. pHs have been a middling 3.2 to 3.5 so without the benefit of analytics it’s way too early to conjecture on the level of freshness the wines will display post-malo

Of-course the elephant in the room – alone, they are tiny elephants I’ll concede – is the ladybird. I was stunned by how many were in the ‘waste‘ from our vibrating table, far more than in 2004. There seemed fewer than that vintage on the triage table (if not crawling on my legs!) but clearly some of them made it into the fermentation tanks. As the week drew on their quantity reduced, by Saturday the number seemed comparable to the 2004 vintage – I hope that their presence will continue to wane.

Back to Sunday. The forecast was bad so the home domaine chose to have a small parcel of Santenay 1er La Come picked, but for only two pallets of grapes there was no point to start up ‘the machine’ so those scruffy looking grapes (it seems there had been no selection at the vine) were placed in a refrigerated truck to be dealt with on Monday morning. There was maybe five minutes of heavy rain at 9am after which the rain gods chose to spare (at least) the Côte de Beaune. By 5pm, only a few more periods of drizzle had ensued. The Kiwis and Springboks joined us for a tour from Santenay through the villages back to Beaune; stopping in Puligny for coffee and a simple lunch; to check out the lyre-training in Auxey and to ‘test’ the occasional grape along the way.

Plenty of domaines/growers chose to to accept the rain free day and continue their harvest; some by hand, some by machine and some even dragging their triage table into the vines (see all below).

A really good day before we took the road home to Switzerland – masses of rain en-route and on through the night too. I hope the Côtes didn’t get it so bad!

Triage table in Santenay 1er Cru

Le Montrachet

Hand picking and machine harvesting – Meursault

2 metre high lyre training already picked, standard 1 metre high, not yet picked – Auxey

Pommard

Pommard 1er Rugiens (Haut)

Lunch was a stunner, duck salad, beef bouguignone, and though I dodged the cheese-course it meant there was room for the tarte tartin 😉

Wine? 2009 Beaune Les Avaux and 2006 Chapelle-Chambertin

Returning to the oldest vines part of the Vosne villages, the call was made – ‘okay, let’s remove the destemmer‘ Sixty percent went through this way, last year it was 100% but this year some of the bunches were big, fat and heavy. The remaining younger vines were destemmed. You can see the lovely bunches in the red-grey bin picture below – only one ladybird hiding in there. Afterwards we had grapes from Pommard, Clos des Vergers; just like the Gevrey and the Vosne, the level of rot was very, very low – not the smallest of berries but good stuff. A long day, of-course, last triage finished at 9:30pm, clean-up by 11:30; they say that wine-making is 90% cleaning…

Whilst surprised by the number of earwigs in the Gevrey, that seemed a one-off, more pressing for me was the ladybird quotient and today was certainly lower; plenty, but perhaps 20% of the peak level from the day before. Those that were in the head of the tanks were still visible after 24 hours but not 48 – I assume the CO₂ and the SO₂ had done for them…

Dinner was at midnight, but a fine quiche washed down with 2007 Vosne vieilles vignes and 2009 Morey 1er Chaffots made a nice mellow end to a long day.

Gevrey Villages

Vosne Vieilles Vigne

Pommard, Clos des Vergers