The weather is amazing; the few drops of rain in Beaune yesterday came to nothing, but today it’s sunny, the north wind is blowing – and it’s cold! It really is like an an October harvest even though were are in the first week of September. The home team boss is even joking about making a ‘selection grains nobles’ from Corton-Charlemage!

As I mentioned the Charlemagne, what of the whites? Well apparently they are still not ripe enough – Dominique Lafon has put off his harvest to next week, many, if not most, will follow suit.

I asked a few more questions about the smelly Taillepieds:

“We looked at the grapes on the vines and they looked bad – we had this bacterial problem from the same parcel last year – so I really considered to pull out of the contract. The grower convinced us to test some of the grapes, and actually they seemed okay – so we went ahead. As the fruit from the first basket hit the sorting table the cry went out – ‘what is that smell?’. So we ended up having to smell every single cluster as a check – there is no other way – a perfect looking bunch can smell bad, an ugly one be perfectly okay – your eyes don’t help. Actually we had less than 5% botrytis in this parcel so it can’t be the main factor, but we still ended up throwing 30% away. It’s probably a mixture of site, viticulture and clone – certainly you get huge clusters from this parcel. Despite us all having sticky noses by the end, I think the effort should have been worthwhile, the must looks, smells and tastes fine – so let’s see.”

Today it’s a village Beaune that’s making the commute across the sorting table: though, earlier in the year the grapes had been hit by hail they have 13° natural and look almost good and homogenous – they will be fine. Although tomorrow will be villages Volnay and Beaune 1er Cru Les Avaux we are now starting to look more closely at the Côte de Nuits fruit. I hear that the Latricières doesn’t look so hot – but it didn’t in 2004 either yet Burghound bestowed 90-92 big ones! Villages Vosne looks good too – Friday or Saturday is anticipated for these – seems life will be much easier as the teams go deeper into Nuits.

Just to prove the weather was nice, Carel Voorhuis sent me the following picture:

He also sent a picture showing today’s Savigny 1er Cru Peuillets showing over 14°!

Next update Thursday or Friday.

Pinot Beurot (Gris) mixed amongst the Pinot Noir

Well September certainly seems to be carrying on where August left off – you can see (right) how cool August was vs the average – and today at 15:30 it is a cloudy 15°c, by 6pm there are a few spots of rain. If the Spring had not been so precocious we would certainly have seen a ‘classical’ late September, even October harvest.

My ‘home team’ brought in the Volnay 1er Cru Les Taillepieds on Sunday – and wow, what a mess. They made a selection of 30% i.e. they had to throw 30% away as the grapes were horrible. For the first time they even checked the smell of every single bunch too – why? See below. A quick tour of the Côte de Nuits parcels caused some relief, indeed optimism, but more of that tomorrow.

Credits again for Météo Savigny-lés-Beaune for the temperature graph.

I received a couple of updates from winemakers yesterday, so I include these too.

Winemaker 1. A view from Morey St.Denis:

I will be harvesting from Tuesday. My grapes are healthy and happily making sugar, I hope to avoid enriching the wines this year. Some wine makers have already started their harvests, perhaps they are right, but I wanted to wait as the fruit is healthy enough to go for another couple of days, I am keeping my fingers crossed for the nice weather that we were promised, another degree would be nice. The acidity seems to be a bit low, but we’ll see in the tanks. The color is more present than in 2006, I am counting on using a bit more new oak as the tannins are reportedly harder to extract. The seeds were still a bit green last week, but I noticed a beautiful brown yesterday in “Les Baudes.” This will be yet another tricky year, but I like challenges.

Winemaker 2. A producer making wine in both Côtes:

Regarding the update on harvest : I think I’ve never had as low expectations and as good surprises as this vintage. We’re only just started a couple of days ago, but the sugar levels are much higher than I thought they would be (I was really fearing things as low as 10,5 to 11), and the first grapes we got in reached some 12 – 12,5, which is really nice if not extraordinary. Botrytis isn’t too bad, even if sorting will remain one of the key issues to quality this vintage : botrytis of course, but also grapes that are affected by the starting to be sadly famous “gout moisi terreux”, which doesn’t seem to be all that related to botrytis. So far, everything we got in is perfectly clean, and shows wonderful fruit. Pretty ripe fruit, and a nice colour also : my first two tanks started fermenting, and to see the colour during a remontage this morning was really a nice surprise : the “service technique du BIVB” had announced little anthocyanins, and maybe even fewer tannins to bind and protect the colour, but obviously, we’ll have quite nice colours as well as the rest.

So over all, I’m quite confident, if not enthusiastic, about the vintage : it certainly won’t be a great keeper like 2005 indeed, but the wine made by serious producers should be really very nice. The main issu will be the amount of efforts people will be willing to do for the triage.

At our domaine, we’ve had a big discussion about whether to start early and pick under ripe but healthy grapes, or pick later, being aware that we would have to sort and that we would lose volume. We’ve taken the second option, and I’m glad we did, even more now the weather is pretty good and weather forecast remains optimistic.

It’s very interesting that the note above about “gout moisi terreux” comes out, because it was referred to also by the producer in Morey who said they would be sniffing every bunch to check everything is in order – now you know what was happening with the Taillepieds – apparently it’s easily spotted, if you care to look. Interesting because I’ve never noted a grower openly introduce the subject before, yet here are three together.

The quote refers to a bunch of highly odorous compounds – amongst which geosmin is the most well-known – that impart an earthy or beetroot smell to wine that even in small concentration would classed as a ‘fault’: “One of the consequences of rot on grapes is the development of volatile compounds giving fungal, mouldy or earthy odours. Among these compounds, (-)-geosmin (trans-1,10-dimethyl-trans-9-decalol), a powerful aromatic compound with an earthy smell is a persistent defect in grape juice and wines made with at least partially rotten grapes.”

Quoting winemaker #2 again:

Their genesis is not very clear either : botrytis and some strains of penicillium are known to be able to produce them, but they’re not the only ones. This makes it a quite difficult problem at the moment.

Harvesting Beaune 1er Cru Teurons on Friday

Although I had to leave, I’ll keep up the contacts.

Today it started very cloudy – until lunch when it rained – “just enough rain to wet the dust”. It’s dry in the afternoon and the team are now triaging Pommard 1er cru Les Epenots. These grapes are again just a little better than before, but equally are needing a heavy selection at the triage table. These will be the only grapes of the day. Tomorrow perhaps, there will be some Volnay 1er cru Taillepieds but that’s all. It’s forecast to rain tomorrow evening so now may be the best time to get the Côte de Beaune reds in.

Although the first cuvées are now already turning from murky brown to medium-pink, from a wine-making perspective everything may be tried this year, from saignée, to sugar or powdered tannins – all depends on the quality of the triage work.

Next info: Monday

PS: The ille flotant turned out bad preparation for the ping-pong; last year I came 4th, this year 5th

Tightly cut rows in Meursault

After finally crawling into bed at close to midnight, and with the distinct impression that crocque monsieur and ille flotante were perhaps an unwise supper combination – at least with a 2003 Barolo and a 22 year-old Volnay – I survive to report that the sky is again cloudless and things are a couple of degrees warmer: At 10am it’s 18°C in the shade – the equivalent was 16°C yesterday – still, it’s hardly August.

Apart from one or two tractors giving the chardonnay vines a final haircut, the ‘white domaines’ of the Côte de Beaune seem a long way from considering it appropriate to bring in their chardonnay – probably starting next week said one grower. The Côtes look at their best at this time of year when the vines take on different leaf colours, yet, closely cropped, they define the hillsides. Reds may be altogether different; some in Volnay already picked a few of their 1er crus, others e.g. d’Angerville might wait until Thursday. Many had plans to bring in the bulk of their crop towards the end of next week but this sunny interlude has the sugars soaring – 11.6 on Wednesday, 11.9 today…

More Savigny 1er Peuillets

Our second parcel of Savigny 1er Peuillets arrives, this is from a different clone that has bigger bunches – so just more places for rot to hide. It’s slow work; there’s a little less rot than 2004 but it’s burried deeper in the bunches so actually takes longer to deal with.

By lunch the sky is cloudy, but no rain threatens. This afternoon there will be a different Beaune; 1er cru Cent Vignes to contend with. The grapes were better than the Savigny and perhaps a little better than the previous ‘Cras’ – all apart from the last boxes which came from a different section – all required hard work though.

Unfortunately I have to leave Beaune now for family visits and a ping-pong final…

Harvesting in La Tâche

I left Switzerland at 7:00am – accompanied by thunder and lightening.

It’s 240km to Dijon where the BBC assured me I would find unbroken sunshine, but for the first 200 of those kilometres it rained – sometimes biblically. 40km to go and the rain stopped, 25km to go and we even have traces of blue sky and flashes of sun – amazing! It’s obviously rained overnight in the Côte d’Or and it’s hardly unbroken sunshine either but I’m not complaining.

I started my tour of ‘vine inspection’ in Marsannay, slowly working my way south. Lunch at La Maison Vigneron (Chambolle), after lunch an appointment with a producer before continuing south to my harvest ‘home’ in Beaune.

The grapes in the Côte de Nuits look rather good, there are some shrivelled ones and an occasional bunch with rot, but this cursury inspection implied grapes way better than 2004 and possibly also 2006 – but inspection at the ‘table de trie’ will be the real judge as these are the grapes round the edges of the vineyards – I didn’t go deeper for fear of sinking in the wet red clay!
Eye-witnesses tell me the Côte de Beaune pinot noir is less well blessed – I decided not to check in the rain – Beaune and Savigny will apparently be ‘challenging’.

There is some small evidence of harvesting already done – piles of stems discarded outside cuveries and at the side of vineyards, but it’s clearly the exception so far. This morning I found only three groups of harvesters, the first surprisingly were in La Tâche; I thought at first it was La Grande Rue, but the LGR vineyard is only about 50 metres wide and these harvesters confirmed to me that they were working on the other side of the ‘line’ – you can not a slight colour change on the picture above. This central area of La Tâche is planted to a higher density – I assume this accounts for the difference in ripeness. The harvesting of a parcel of Vosne Les Beaux Monts (at least that’s what it looked like from the road) and also part of Les Petits Vougeots were the only others in full swing.

Whilst in the cellar of my afternoon appointment there was was thunder and heavy rain – it’s still raining now (6pm) about 3 hours later. I’m glad we didn’t start harvesting today.

Forecasters seem to agree that we have about 10 days of clear weather starting tomorrow, we will start with some Beaune 1er Cru, – let’s see how bad it can be.

Tomorrow I’m in the Côtes.

My normal harvest ‘home’ will start with minor appellations on Thursday so I will have plenty of time tomorrow to look around the vineyards and see the plight – or not – of the grapes. I know that some have already started their harvests, while others tell me:

“We will begin the 4th of September, we must wait, it’s not enough ripe everywhere. The weather forecasts are not bad so we take the risk …”

Certainly the weather was poor last week, but this week and next it is set fair (allegedly!) but still rather cool for the time of the year, exemplified by the graph above (which I stole from Météo Savigny-lès-Beaune) that shows you how much colder August has been vs the average!

Updates over the next couple of days.