• A nice report from Domaine de la Vougeraie.
• A message and pics from Domaine Lafarge:
  

  Les vendanges, débutées le 24 Septembre, se déroulent sous le soleil malgré la fraîcheur matinale. Le vent du Nord qui a soufflé ces derniers jours a favorisé la concentration et la pleine maturité est atteinte partout. Les degrés en rouge se situent entre 11,8 et 12,8 %. Du fait de la grêle, la récolte est relativement peu importante et lres rendements en jus sont peu élevés. Les poudrage à l’argile et les pulvérisations de silice après la grêle, nous permettent de rentrer une vendange très mûre et saine.
  Merci la biodynamie!
  Chantal, Domaine Michel Lafarge

• Pictures from Domaine Lafarge:

Wow – harvesting in October – that’s getting rarer!

I would take the weather forecast with a pinch of salt as we’re coming out of a settled period and it seems to change every few hours, but it is what it is right now.

Anyway, as soon as you leave they get all sorts of stuff;

• Santenay which needed plenty of unripe stuff removing
• Beaune 1er Avaux which had more rot in it
• Corton Clos du Roi which was better than the previous two
• and best for last, Vosne-Romanée, superb grapes, almost no sorting and absolutely good enough to justify the inclusion of 60-70% whole clusters!

Just a little rain this afternoon, but it was light stuff. The vintage was very scary for growers two weeks ago, but it really has been saved by the weather. The grapes are a little more fragile than 2005 (less thick skins), in that respect they are similar to 2006, but sugars are okay; one cuvée was down at 11.7° but most are 12-13 and a couple are over 13°. Fermentations have already started on some and colour extraction looks not bad.

Anyway everything is in at this domaine except the Corton-Charlemagne and the Gevrey grand crus – a forecast of a fine weekend has delayed picking these until Monday!

Alas, ‘Mark de Morey’ seems lost in action, I hope he didn’t slip into the destemmer…

Who stole the sun?

The sun has been the backdrop to everything in the Côtes for almost two weeks, but a little cloud-cover yesterday potentially heralded a change, and today it is emphasised – complete cloud-cover until about 10am when some blue sky re-appeared, it even looked like we had some slight precipitation overnight; perhaps it was a heavy dew. The forecast is a mix of sun, cloud and rain for the rest of the week – and getting colder again!

Today Gevrey (villages) Les Crais and perhaps later, Beaune 1er Les Avaux. I chided our proprietor that Les Crais wasn’t really Gevrey villages standard – it’s a giant 20+hectare vineyard way out east over the N74 – he was adamant that it was and that he would let me taste the 2007 to see, but of-course we didn’t have time for that

• 11:30am: Slow going. The Gevrey grapes are quite super almost nil rot and good ripeness – shame our de-stemmer has suddenly developed an electrical problem – all stop! Anyway, as for the grapes, nothing in 2005 was easier to triage – though maybe those 05 grapes had a little thicker skins and were also maybe more concentrated(?) – let’s see what the analytics say.
• 8:30pm: So, sad to say I arrived back home after close to 4 full days of triage. The weather is starting to change – it remained dry in the Côtes but I had a little rain while driving home – it was drizzly stuff, that unless you’re bothered by the clay building up on your boots, will be inconsequential to the grapes. Those that expect to finish their harvest by Thursday probably managed to achieve the maximum ripeness and the minimum of rain effects, but maybe the weather still has a surprise or two! This afternoon, for info, Freddy Mugnier picked the Clos de la Marechale.

More tomorrow including a double-update from ‘Mark de Morey’, aka Mark Gough.

Domaine de la Vougeraie have their harvest log now online.

Moving on, let’s start with today’s update from Mark in Morey:

Bonjour,

Petit dejeuner day 3 a Domaine Arlaud vendange 08.

Thought we had done a fair chunk of Bourgogne Rouge on day 1 mais non !!

We started there again at 7.30 yesterday for another hard morning’s graft. My back was feeling day 1 quite badly and by lunch I was an object of some amusement for my fellow vendangeurs. Am starting to get to know them better now. 2 brothers, Georges et Fernand are in their 70’s but incrdiedibly fit – and so quick along the rows. The peer pressure to keep up is quite something. Tremendous roast pork lunch after rice salad and salade tomatoes from Berthilde Arlaud who’s mass catering is very impressive – a bit different from her dayjob ploughing the rows of vines with one horsepower employee, Nougat, for Arlaud and other domaines – am not allowed to say which, honestly, the family were most concerned it is a secret – bit odd but I recognised a couple of Gevrey names. She seems to have fair demand for her and Nougat’s services .

Tremendous sunny day, really warm a day wore on. After lunch we picked really great looking grapes in 1er cru Millandes (some one said Aux Combottes but Romain corrected this for me in the evening over dinner). He agreed the grapes from the 1er cru pleased them greatly – exceptionnel. We
then went back again to the Borgogne Rouge !!!! And by 5.30 we still haven’t finished it.

Over dinner I fascinated Romain and German stagiste Peter (just started a course at Geisenheim – his parents have an estate in the Rhiengau) with Clive Coates latest book. Fortunately Arlaud gets a strong, favourable mention !!!!

And then to bed before this morning.

Gotta go – 7.10am and still quite dark but v clear sky with star formations visible. My muscles are a bit stiff but the back seems a lot better. We’ll see soon. No idea where we go today yet – variety would be nice.

The Bourgogne Rouge large plot is going north from the village a mile or so – opposite near the top of the slope is a large concrete retaining wall. I’ll try and get a better fix soon.

Mark. G

• 1:15pm: Lovely grapes from Nuits 1er Les Vaucrains this morning. Still had to remove some rot and under-ripe bunches, but good enough that we even put the ‘prettiest’ bunches to one side to add to the tank stems’n all. Later we have our first whites and some red Corton.
• 2:15pm: After a morning of cloudless blue sky, we have some cloud cover – are we seeing a change?
• 4:30pm: Just finished the triage of some Corton grand cru from just out of the village centre. Not that much rot to remove, more concentrating on the unripe – complicated by the presence of quite a bit of pinot gris (pinot beurot) in the mix – but the grapes are not quite as nice looking as those from Nuits this morning. The sun returned, and it’s actually the first time I worked only in a t-shirt. It’s freezing indoors by comparison!
• 7:45pm: Did I mention the whites? They came in as must (already pressed juice direct from the owner) so not much I can tell you. Anyway, we’ve just completed triage of Beaune 1er Les Cras. I’ve seen this come across the table since the hail-damaged 04 and this was not bad at all – some of the most consistently ripe fruit we’ve seen yet, some big chunks of easy to cut rot and again (like the Vaucrins) a couple of bins of perfect whole clusters for depositing at the bottom of the fermenting tank. Another hour or so of clean-up and we’ll be ready for lasagne, Brunello, Clos St.Denis Tres Vieilles Vignes and an (as yet) unchosen white or two – purely for winding-down you understand 😉

News from Domaine Vincent et Denis Berthaut:
We started the harvest last Friday by Fixin Les Crais.
We save quality and quantity thanks to good weather, no rain and sunny days with 18°C tempreratures, who will last till we end …
Best regards, Denis Bertaut

Until tomorrow…