2011 Vintage

2011 Spray program

2011-12-12T15:07:00.007+01:00

Last year I published a record of the fungicides we used to combat mildew and oidium during the 2010 growing season and since several readers contacted me with encouraging comments I’ve decided to make this an annual tradition.

2011 Spray dates and products

In Burgundy it’s a very rare year indeed which allows conscientious growers so much opportunity to reduce their chemical inputs and we are pleased to have taken full advantage of 2011’s favourable conditions.

April, May and June 2011 were exceptionally dry and remembering similar conditions in 2007 we decided to spray nothing until we observed the first symptoms of mildew or oidium. For an organic grower this isn’t as simple a decision as it sounds; the main organic fungicides are strictly preventative and most growers start spraying as soon as a few leaves have unfurled. I’m uncomfortable with such a systematic approach and prefer to spend time looking for the very first sign of disease. And here it is...

Somehow I’ve inherited an old microscope from my father’s days studying medicine at Edinburgh University (he tells me it was old even then!) and its 20x magnification is proving very helpful in making a definative early diagnosis. The photograph above was taken (down the microscope) on the morning of May 16th and by that evening our vines had received their first anti-oidium spray. For reference, by then almost all other vineyards, organic or otherwise, had received 3 to 5 sprays.

I believe that for the past two years I’ve been the first grower in the Cote d’Or to inform the Chambre d’Agriculture of oidium on Pinot noir (it has been pointed out that this isn’t necessarily a record I should be proud of!)

I didn’t observe any mildew until the 7th July by which time the grapes themselves were beyond risk and the temptation of an entire season without anti-mildew sprays (Copper) was so great that we decided to complete the season unprotected. It then proceeded to rain most of July and August which made the leaves look pretty tired by harvest, albeit without major impact on the quality of the wine!

Spring is on its way

2011-03-14T20:15:00.004+01:00

I finished pruning today and coincidentally also saw the first sign that the vines are coming out of their winter dormancy; when the sap starts to rise the vines weep ‘tears’ as shown in this photo. This will typically continue for another couple of weeks before the buds start to swell and eventually burst into life.

Tastings in Scotland

2011-01-04T13:33:00.002+01:00

Just wanted to let you know that I will be pouring all five of my 2009 wines at the following events:

Friday January 14th 7pm at Peckham’s, 61 Glassford St, Glasgow. A talk and tutored tasting (tickets £15 from 0141 553 0666)

Saturday January 15th 4pm to 7pm at Peckham’s, 21 Clarence Drive, Glasgow. A drop-in tasting of all 2009s.

Friday January 21st 4pm to 7pm at Peckham’s, 155 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh. A drop-in tasting of all 2009s.

Hope to see some of you there!

Direct sales to France and Scotland

2010-12-30T20:13:00.007+01:00

Those of you who have visited the domaine will know that up until now almost every bottle we produced was exported to a handful of excellent wine merchants in the UK, USA, Japan, Netherlands, Canada and Australia.

However the 2009 vintage is both delicious and (relatively) plentiful so we have decided to set aside a small quantity for sale directly from the domaine. To facilitate the logistics we are setting up an online shop where you will be able to purchase these 2009s en primeur.

Our 2009s were bottled in December 2010, but after bottling we age all our wines, unlabelled, for almost a full year. Therefore, any wine that you order now will be ready for collection from November 2011 onwards. Note that full payment is required to secure your reservation.

If you are unable to come to Morey-Saint-Denis to collect your order we are offering free delivery to any address in France or mainland Scotland. Unfortunately we cannot ship to any other region.

Happy shopping, and don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions.

2010 Spray Program

2010-09-10T12:43:00.031+02:00

I’ve written about protecting the vines from fungal disease before, but I thought some readers might be interested in what actually gets sprayed on the vines during the course of a year. But first a bit of context:

Grapevines are very sensitive to fungal diseases. In almost every wine producing region it is necessary spray fungicides to ensure a commercial crop. In Burgundy, with our rather damp summer climate, an unprotected vineyard would produce nothing most years. See below an intentionally unsprayed witness section of my Bourgogne vineyard; ravaged by Mildew and Oidium it will not make it into the wine!

More context: I have been farming organically since 2005. A significant implication of this is that it restricts the choice of fungicides to simple compounds which are assumed safe, because of their everyday nature. Since 2005 the only fungicides that I have used are: Sulfur, various salts of Copper, skimmed milk, whey, and Fenugreek flour.

Unsurprisingly these products are less effective than the synthetic fungicides available to non-organic farmers. In practice this means that an organic grower will spray more often to achieve the same result, and in a very difficult year (say roughly 1 in 10, in Burgundy) is likely to lose quantity and/or quality.

I am attracted to the effectiveness of the synthetic fungicides, but wonder whether we know enough about their effects on our health, and that of the environment, to justify their use? I have opened this blog to comments in case anyone wishes to voice an opinion.

In any case I feel more comfortable publishing this spray program than one which might contain molecules called dimethomorph, pyraclostrobin or tebuconazole!

I’ll leave you with a photo of the grapes as assurance that they are healthy!

Solar powered vineyard buggy

2010-07-19T22:18:00.017+02:00

Another year another vineyard buggy! (see 2008 and 2009 for previous models). However I am delighted to report that this year’s model has been a huge success and is definitely here to stay. The design team (Clark père et fils) will be able to move on to a new project next year!

The 2010 version straddles a row which obviously gives a much wider, more stable, wheelbase as well as leaving plenty of room for all the required motors and batteries. But the biggest advance is the addition of a solar panel which constantly recharges the batteries. Despite the twin 300 Watt electric motors I have only recharged the batteries once all year.

Here it is in action:

Vines in flower

2010-06-15T08:39:00.001+02:00

At last the vines are flowering.
So far this year we’ve ‘enjoyed’ a cold winter followed by a cool, cloudy spring so the vines are off to rather slow start. Today, June 15th, we've reached mid-flowering which puts us roughly equal with recent ‘late’ vintages like 2006 and 2008. A lot can change over the next 3 months, but at the moment I’d expect to be picking in early October. Generally a late harvest is promising for quality since there is a higher probability of the cool, sunny weather which seems perfect for ripening Pinot without cooking its delicate flavours and acidity. Unfortunately a late harvest also increases the risk of rain and rot so 2010 still has all to play for.

I'm back

2010-05-28T07:49:00.002+02:00

Apologies for the long silence, but I am now back!

It’s taken me four months to migrate the blog to this new home ( http://domainedavidclark.blogspot.com/) but now that it is done I look forward to sharing our news on a more regular basis!

Odds and Ends

2010-01-02T19:05:00.007+01:00

Just a few brief bits of news I wanted to share:

I’ve just uploaded technical data sheets for my 2007 wines here. I’ve also included links to all lab analyses done on these wines.

Berry Brothers & Rudd open their Burgundy en primeur offer at 9am on Tuesday 5th January. If you want some of my 2008s don’t delay as quantities are particularly small in this vintage.

I’ll be at Berrys’ tasting on the 13th and look forward seeing some of you there.

Bottle Filling Machine

2009-12-16T17:15:00.006+01:00

My parents have just left Burgundy three weeks after arriving to help me bottle the 2008s. Now three weeks may seem like a very long time to fill 6000 bottles, but consider that we spent the first 2 weeks building this machine to fill those bottles in the gentlest possible manner!

We had to build this ourselves because I believe this concept isn’t commercially available – and presumably never will be given its top speed of 180 bottles per hour! Anyway, the objective of bottling is to transfer the wine to bottles with the minimum amount of disturbance or aeration and I think this concept is unsurpassed in that regard.

The bottles are filled by a tube descending to the bottom of the bottle - unlike a normal filling machine that fills from the top with inevitable aeration as the wine splashes to the bottom of the bottle. The second and perhaps more distinctive novelty is that the desired level in the bottle is achieved in the most simple possible manner – by equilibrium with the level in the vat being bottled. This means that the filling platform must be slowly dropped as the tank empties – hence the two threaded rods in the photo above. This avoids the need for pumps or indeed any unnecessary transfers.

A siphon is established at start of bottling and maintained by electrovalves which open and close as bottles are placed and removed. As shown in the video below, lights illuminate to show that the electrovalves are open and wine is flowing, as well as to help visualise the level in the dark glass bottles. To ensure that the wine is only ever in contact with inert materials we chose to use pinch valves, which stop the flow of wine by simply pinching the silicon tubing visible toward the top of the video below.

Whether this will make the 2008s even better that the 2007s I encourage you discover by tasting!!

Vineyard buggy Mk2

2009-09-13T10:43:00.005+02:00

Faithful readers of this blog will doubtless remember this post about the simple rolling seat I used last year for working on the vines. It worked a treat, mainly thanks to the smooth grassy band I was leaving between the rows of vines. Only trouble is, this year I wanted to change my ploughing scheme – eliminating the grass. A quick test showed that pushing a buggy through a ploughed vineyard was a non-starter so a new motorised version was born…

Once again my father is to be thanked for the meticulous construction, which even required learning to weld.

It’s a positive luxury compared to last year’s model with a steel chassis, twin electric motors, comfy seat and rear-wheel steering!

It was a godsend for the pink-harvest, not least because the temperature was in the mid-thirties Celsius, which is just about bearable under the shade of a parasol. However, as might be expected of our first motorized model, there are a few little bugs to iron out, so we are already dreaming up next year’s version (complete with solar panel!)

Vintage update

2009-08-20T13:40:00.002+02:00

Just a few quick words on how 2009 is shaping up.

We’re about a month (or less) away from harvest and so far so good. The first three weeks of August have been exceptionally hot and dry - a welcome change from the past three years. The vines are very healthy and the grapes are looking good with basically no rot at this stage.

Sugars are rising and the acidity dropping, perhaps a little faster than would be completely ideal. 1997 seems like the obvious comparison vintage at this stage, but as ever such speculation is just a bit of fun while we wait for harvest. Plenty time for change yet, not least because the forecast looks stormy.

Vendanges en rose

2009-08-18T08:14:00.009+02:00

Apologies that it’s been an age since my last post; I intend to be significantly more diligent over the coming months!

Anyway, for now I wanted to write about what I’m calling les vendanges en rose, or pink-harvest. Instead of a green harvest (which I’ve written about before here) this year I’ve decided to wait a bit longer before removing bunches from any over-loaded vines.

The advantage of waiting is that the colour change makes it very easy to identify (and remove) any bunches which are lagging behind. I do sometimes wonder whether arbitrarily dropping green bunches earlier in the season really serves much purpose – at least at this stage I feel confident that the average maturity has taken a step forward after what is a very time consuming task.

To illustrate see the animation below of one vine in my Côte-de-Nuits-Villages (Brochon) vineyard.
The often cited problem with dropping bunches so late is that the sugar they contain can turn to alcohol… and then vinegar. As well as making your vineyard smell terrible there is a small risk that the acetic acid bacteria spread to the grapes still on the vine and sour the future harvest. Thankfully I find the dropped bunches remain innocuous (and shrivel rather than ferment) on condition that they are not crushed – so once this job is done the vineyards are out of bounds for a couple of weeks.

I’ve even heard of people collecting these pink bunches – A bit of chaptalisation and a bit of deacidification, et voila,… house rosé!

Chèvre à deux becs

2009-04-29T18:56:00.002+02:00

We’ve just bottled the 2007 Morey-Saint-Denis, and since there was only one barrel of this wine I decided to do it the old-fashioned way, which is to say, straight from the barrel using a chèvre à deux becs (pictured below).

So a couple of months ago I carefully drilled a 22mm hole near the bottom of the front face of the (full) barrel and immediately pushed a clean cork into the freshly drilled hole (actually I used a DIAM composite cork to eliminate the risk of TCA tainting the whole barrel!) It’s surprising how little wine spills out of a hole at the bottom of a full barrel –maybe 20ml in the 3 or 4 seconds it takes to remove the drill and fit the cork.

Anyway, the point of this is so that when bottling day arrives I just fill the cone of the chèvre with wine, place it against the cork and give a gentle push. The cork is pushed into the barrel and floats harmlessly to the top, and the chèvre is in place ready to fill bottles. Done like this there is no disturbance to the fine lees at the very bottom of the barrel and the wine can be bottled crystal clear and with absolutely minimal processing.

The chèvre rather cleverly has a tap to direct the wine to just one of its two spouts at any time. Once the bottle on one spout is full you flip the tap over to the other spout and replace the full bottle with an empty, etc, etc (307 times for this barrel).

It takes a bit of practice to get the fill levels even approximately correct, so I just slightly overfilled each bottle before removing the excess with a depth calibrated syringe (as my mother is doing in the photo below).

As always the bottles are then corked by hand, although with the help of a new and improved machine that I shall write about next week.

New Sprayer

2009-03-26T18:36:00.005+01:00

If you happen to have watched “Wine:The Firm” on BBC4 last month, you might have noticed a brief reference to my new vineyard sprayer. I’ve actually been using it for almost a year, but since I haven’t written about it before I thought I’d take this opportunity.

If I had a marketing department I’m sure they’d tell me that writing about spraying vines is bad PR, but it is a sad fact that grapevines are very sensitive to fungal diseases and need protected in any climate, not least Burgundy’s. Anyway, this isn’t the point of this post, but I should recall that I am certified organic and as such never spray with synthesised chemicals – this year I am using powdered milk and flax seed oil!

So now on to the point of my post. The traditional Burgundian sprayer is a 6-row tractor mounted mist generator, which I used until 2007 (as shown below).

It has the advantage of being fast and relatively simple, but the disadvantages of relatively poor spray penetration and of being mounted on a 2.5 tonne tractor. Many of the top domaines in Burgundy are recognising that minimising soil compaction is one of the keys to wine quality and so I wanted to do better.

Hence the switch to this:

It weights 99kg and contains a large turbine that blasts air and spray out of the 8 nozzles located at the front. As result the spray coverage is irreproachable and soil compaction almost negligible. It does have the disadvantage that now I have to walk rather than ride, but I won’t be going back to the old system any time soon (not least because I’ve just sold it!).

Lève-fût

2009-02-16T20:06:00.005+01:00

I’ve spent the day racking the 2007 Passetoutgrains, to get it ready for bottling next month. I’ve written about racking before (here) so I won’t repeat myself, but I did want share a few photos of the ingenious lève-fût (barrel lift) that I use to recover the last few litres of clear wine, once the barrel is almost empty.
Hopefully the photos make the principle clear – turning the ratchet handle pulls the hook attached to the rear of the barrel. That pulling force is reacted by the ‘legs’ that push down on the front of the barrel and a horizontal arm that pushes against the wall. The net result is that the rear of barrel very slowly lifts and wine starts to flow from the spigot. The barrel is tipped further until the wine starts to run very slightly cloudy at which point the spigot tap is closed and the few litres of cloudy liquid left in the barrel are sent to the distillery.

15 minutes of fame

2009-02-12T17:49:00.002+01:00

I haven’t seen it yet, so 15 minutes might be an exaggeration, but at 9pm on Monday February 16th BBC4 will be showing the first episode of a new three-part documentary series about wine.

The first episode, entitled “Wine: The Firm”, focuses on Berry Bros. & Rudd, London’s oldest and arguably most famous wine merchant. Since Berrys also happen to be the exclusive UK importer of Domaine David Clark wines I understand I will be making my TV debut. (Actually the back of my head has been on ITV many times during stressful moments on the WilliamsF1’ pit wall, but I don’t think that counts.)

“Wine: The Firm” has been getting excellent reviews in the press, and if I owned a television I would definitely be watching!

Ploughing by horse

2009-01-11T12:23:00.010+01:00

Two years ago Jancis Robinson wrote a very flattering article about my small domaine that ended with the sentence

“He has not yet acquired this season’s must-have accessory among the Côte d’Or’s swelling band of organic and biodynamic wine farmers – a horse – but this is surely not too far away”

I laughed heartily at the absurdity. I have never denied that horse ploughing is the ultimate luxury one can provide for a much-loved vineyard, but I figured I’d never reach the point of being willing to do so much work for that last iota of perfection. Well, fast-forward two years…

…and I have committed to ploughing my parcel of Vosne-Romanée by horse in 2009.

In many ways it is the logical next step in respecting the health of my soils: in 2008 ploughing was the only vineyard task I did by tractor, everything else (including hedging and spraying) was done by hand. By avoiding compaction the soil develops a structure and life that is truly beautiful to observe.

Before Christmas I did a light sous-solage with my friend Oronce de Beler and his magnificent Percheron named Prosper. For those who read French I include a link to the website of photographer Jean-Léo Dugast who recorded the occasion for his blog. For those who don’t read French there are lots of photos!

In 2009 I’ll be ploughing with another friend, working towards the goal of learning this traditional skill myself and applying it to the whole domaine.

Experimenting with harvest dates

2008-12-06T17:44:00.010+01:00

Most winemakers will tell you that the precise date you choose to harvest your grapes has a fundamental effect on the quality of your wine. I don’t really doubt that, but I’m not sure now to reconcile this with the fact that there are quality-minded domaines (say Clos de Tart, Charolpin or Ponsot) which sometimes pick as much as 3 weeks later than other, equally quality-minded, domaines (say DRC, Lambrays or M&P Rion). When I was musing over this prior to harvest I came to only one clear conclusion – I should do an experiment.

And so I set aside one row of my Bourgogne vineyard for an experiment. On seven dates between 21st September 2008 and 17th October 2008 I picked all the grapes from every seventh vine in the experimental row. The objective was to obtain samples that were as representative as possible of the entire row at seven different dates ranging from a very early harvest to a very late harvest.

I was interested in analytical parameters of each sample (notably sugar and yield) but particularly in how harvest date would affect flavours in the finished wine. Hence I fermented the seven samples separately, attempting to maintain identical conditions for each. Since these were micro-vinifications (about 10kg each), and I didn’t want any unnecessary variability, I chaptalised everything to 13% and added cultured yeast for the fermentation and cultured bacteria for the MLF. Oxygen is the enemy of tiny batches so I was keen to bottle these as quickly as possible, which I did yesterday. I now have enough half bottles to do comparative tastings about 10 times in the future, perhaps once per year.

Although I did taste through everything as I was bottling I don’t want to draw any results from that yet, but there is already one conclusion that is hard to avoid:

The later pickings gave significantly lower yields of finished wine.

This result is perhaps not entirely unexpected given that the period was generally dry (with the exception of 4mm of rain on the 3rd October and 15mm of the 16th October), but I do find the magnitude of the drop interesting (almost 30% over the month).

Vintage 2008

2008-11-13T16:17:00.004+01:00

There’s a saying one hears occasionally in Burgundy:

les millésimes se suivent mais ne se ressemblent pas

which is basically to say that consecutive vintages are never alike.

The pair 2004 / 2003 make a strong case for this:
2004 – cold and wet with very generous yields
2003 – hot and dry with very low yields

The pair 2008 / 2007 are less convincing
2008 – cold, wet summer saved by a fine September
2007 – cold, wet summer saved by a fine September!

Of course the devil is in the details, but I can’t shake the feeling that the last two vintages have much in common. That said, perhaps I should highlight some of the important differences:

Most notable perhaps is that due to an exceptionally hot April 2007 flowering occurred 3 weeks earlier in 2007 than in 2008. So although it is convenient to say 2007 was saved by a fine September in reality many grapes were picked before benefiting fully (the weather took a turn for the better around the 24th August, and I would estimate the ‘median’ picking date around the 1st September). In 2008 the rain ceased on the 13th September and I reckon the ‘median’ picking was around the 29th. (For the record we started on the 8th Sept 2007 and 1st Oct 2008).

Also important: the weeks before harvest 2007 were sunny and hot while the weeks before harvest 2008 were sunny and cold. As a result there was less botrytis and higher acidity in 2008.

As for the wines I can only speak with confidence (and even then…) about what I taste (and spit!) almost daily in my own cave. The 2007s are lovely – very pure and tender with decent (not exceptional) concentration. The 2008s of course haven’t started their malolactic fermentations yet and so are harder to judge, but they have an excellent concentration of again beautifully pure, bright fruit flavours occasionally with a very slight (and, to me, rather attractive) vegetal hint.

Since you can’t taste the wines yet I’ll leave you with a photo of the two Bourgognes (2008 on the right)…
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Vintage update II

2008-08-26T08:01:00.003+02:00

A month ago I wrote that August and September were the all-important months in making the quality of a vintage. Well, August is almost done and to be honest, it has been grim – about 2ºC cooler, and already 40% wetter, than average. Thank goodness the forecast is perfect for at least the next week.And the longer-term forecasts seem to suggest that our weather is going to be dominated by high pressure until at least the 8th September, so there is hope yet!

The vines themselves are coping pretty well with the weather. Depending on the vineyard the bunches are between about 70% and 95% black, which I reckon is almost 4 weeks behind last year. There is also notable variation from vine to vine, within the same vineyard, which is hardly the hallmark of a great vintage.

However, there is far less botrytis (grey rot) than the equivalent stage last year, or even in 2006. Also the grapes are no longer susceptible to the two other major fungal threats (oidium and downy mildew) so all spraying is long finished. That’s not to say oidium and mildew weren’t an issue this year! In particular the late-season invasion of oidium was impressive for its virulence – in my experience second only to 2004 (the Burgundian gold-standard for oidium).

I’m expecting to harvest somewhere between the 27th September and 5th October, and am delighted to have large, flexible team ready to pick when the grapes demand!

Vintage update

2008-07-25T17:07:00.005+02:00

Just a quick update on how the 2008 vintage is shaping up:

Basically the weather has been consistently inconsistent since bud-break; very roughly we've had a few of weeks of cool rainy weather followed by a few of weeks of hot and dry weather repeatedly since April.

The overall effect is that the vines are more or less on a normal schedule and harvest will be around the long-term average of late September.

Flowering coincided with a cool and rainy period so the fruit set has been relatively poor and total quantity is likely to be quite low. I have never before seen so much millerandage (small, unfertilised grapes – see below, and note the 2 normal-sized berries in the bunch). Millerandage is bad news for quantity, but excellent for quality since the smaller the grape the sweeter the juice and also the greater the skin/juice ratio.On the less positive side the regular rain has meant there is a bit of mildew on the young leaves. Unless it gets significantly worse it won’t have a negative effect of the grapes, but it does mean I’m spraying Bouille Bordelaise (Copper Sulphate and Lime) every 10 days to keep everything healthy.

So overall 2008 is looking very promising as we enter the two most critical months.

New vineyard

2008-06-25T23:08:00.002+02:00

Good news: I’ve just acquired another vineyard – 4 ouvrées of old vines in appellation Vosne-Romanée. An ouvrée is the old Burgundian measure of vineyard area, and is apparently defined as the amount of land that one man can hoe in a day (or for those who have already gone metric 428 m² – which seems like a hard day’s work to me?!) Anyway, it should produce 2 or 3 barrels of Vosne-Romanée, which will make a nice addition to the cellar.

Vineyard buggy

2008-05-08T17:54:00.002+02:00

I wasn’t going to write about this, because, well, I didn’t want you to think I was going soft, but the little vineyard buggy pictured below has been such an unqualified success that I feel compelled to share!

I’ve written about de-budding (or shoot thinning) the vines before… when the vines start to grow they produce a huge number of unwanted shoots that need to be removed to ensure a open, airy environment for the future grapes to ripen in. Physically I find this the single hardest job of the year since it involves spending about 30 seconds either crouching or bent double in front of each of my 20,000 30cm-high vines. Ideally this needs to be finished before early June, which doesn’t exactly leave much idle time… so when my parents were here in March I asked my father whether he could build a buggy so that I could de-bud while seated! And here is the result…The key is the row-straddling concept that allows each of the 3-wheels to run in the centre of a row, which in my vineyards are conveniently smooth and grassy. Equally fortuitous, almost all my vineyards are on a very slight slope so rolling from vine to vine is basically effortless. The construction in copper was merely a matter of convenience since I had some leftover from a plumbing project, and no one I know has any experience welding steel!

As far as I know the concept is unique in Burgundy, and certainly I feel acutely self-conscious in the enquiring gaze of hardened pros, but my comfort is such that I can live with that!

Finished re-trellising

2008-05-04T18:01:00.003+02:00

Just a quick update on progress here…

The past month has generally been cold and wet, in marked contrast to last year’s record-breaking April. As a result the vines are getting off to a very slow start so I’ve had plenty time to finish off the winter work of pruning, etc.

Indeed I have just finished running new wires in the Côte-de-Nuits-Villages vineyard, which is already looking much tidier than it did last year. As the photo also shows the weeds are loving all this rain so I’ll be out early next week doing my first ploughing of 2008. Ideally when you plough you want a long dry spell to follow so the weeds dry out and don’t have the chance to re-root. April was so wet that this was never the case, but the current forecast promises sun for the next 10 days so conditions should be perfect.Once the ploughing is done I’ll start the major task of de-budding, which will keep me occupied full-time for about a month.

Malolactic fermentation

2008-03-31T18:41:00.009+02:00

Every Spring, as the weather starts to warm up, the young wines which have been ageing peacefully in barrel since October suddenly start to change; their acidity softens and they become temporarily cloudy and a little fizzy. Incredibly the reason for this was totally unknown until explained by professors at UC-Davis in the late 1960’s…

The alcoholic fermentation had been well understood since the 19th century; yeast convert sugar to ethanol and CO2, but the professors at UC-Davis discovered that the mysterious Springtime changes were also due to a fermentation, this time conducted by bacteria, converting malic acid to lactic acid and CO2. Initially this ‘malolactic’ fermentation was considered a spoilage, and indeed if it takes place in bottle the wine is certainly spoiled (fizzy, with unpleasant sulphurous aromas). Conversely, if the fermentation takes place in barrel the CO2 and sulphurous aromas can escape and the wine is positively improved by the softer lactic acid. Now almost all red wines complete malolactic before bottling, and wineries everywhere follow the progress of their malolactic fermentations by paper chromatography...

A drop of each wine is placed at the bottom of a sheet of chromatography paper before the paper is stood up with its bottom edge in a thin pool of butanol, acetic acid and pH indicator solution. As the butanol wicks up the paper it carries with it the organic acids contained in the wine; the lighter acids being carried faster (and hence further up the paper) than the heavier acids. Once the butanol has reached the top the chromatogram is ‘developed’ by drying the paper. The drying process evaporates the acetic acid leaving the background blue and the acid spots yellow.
The developed chromatogram above shows the results for wines from 14 different barrels of my 2007 harvest. Reading from the left, first 5 barrels have finished malolactic, the 6th has just started, the next 3 are approaching completion, and the last 5 have also just started.

Filming

2008-03-15T11:59:00.000+01:00

I enjoyed an interesting break from pruning yesterday when Jasper Morris MW turned up complete with camera crew in tow. Jasper and I tasted through the 2007s which are still slowly bubbling their way through malolactic fermentation, but are none-the-less showing plenty of promise.

Next week I’ll explain what a malolactic fermentation is for those who wish to know!

Stephen Liégeard

2008-02-10T16:32:00.000+01:00

Just a quick update on the re-trellising work. As you can see the vines are pruned and the wires and posts all removed. Now just the new taller posts and wires to install.
The large building in the background is the Château Stephen Liégeard de Brochon. Built by the eponymous 19th century poet it is basically a modern copy of the rather more famous Chateau d’Azay-le-Rideau and is now home to the local Lycée (high school).

Stephen Liégeard doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact as a poet, but he does have one small claim to fame… He introduced the expression Côte d’Azur for the French Riviera!

Sécateur électrique

2008-01-24T17:09:00.000+01:00

The weather has turned surprisingly mild (for a Burgundian mid-January) so I am taking the opportunity to do a bit of pruning. I can hardly believe this is already the 5th year I have pruned certain of my vineyards!

The first 3 winters I struggled through with the old fashioned tools of the trade…
... and I have huge respect for anyone who continues to prune with these hand tools, because I found it very tough on the tendons (both wrist and elbows). So I suppose it is no surprise that most vignerons (myself included) now prefer these very impressive battery powered sécateur
They are not cheap, but then they are a pretty serious piece of engineering. The blade position is perfectly proportional to the trigger, so even very precise control of the blade quickly becomes second nature. Perhaps more impressive is the cutting power: the standard salesman’s demo is to slice a broom handle into discs in a matter of seconds! Energy is provided by a 0.9kg lithium-ion battery worn on the back which lasts for at least 3 days between chargings.

And, best of all, no more tendonitis!

Re-trellising

2007-12-11T12:51:00.000+01:00

I haven’t written about this before, but last winter I acquired a new vineyard: 0.47 hectares (1.17 acres) of appellation Côte-de-Nuits-Villages, situated in the village of Brochon. It’s a lovely vineyard, with old vines and perfectly situated at mid-slope (actually on the route des grands crus). The only drawback is that the trellising (posts, wires etc) is pretty shoddy; in particular the post are very short which makes it impossible to train the vines’ summer growth up to the height which I want.So this winter’s project is to change all the posts and wires. First job is to collect all the old wires (19kms worth!)…Next I’ll prune the vines, then remove the old posts, plant the new taller posts and finally run new wires. Plenty of work… which hopefully will be repaid by the quality of the 2008 harvest!

Racking the 2006s

2007-11-27T18:03:00.001+01:00

The 2006 harvest has been in barrels for 14 months now, the wines are tasting good, full of fresh fruit flavours, and so I’m planning to put them in bottle relatively early, probably before Christmas.

Traditionally Burgundy was bottled barrel-by-barrel, but since no two barrels ever taste quite the same most producers now prefer to blend, and thus bottle a single homogeneous lot. Hence I’ve spent today racking the wines from barrel to the stainless-steel tanks from which I will bottle in a few weeks time.

The racking needs to be done extremely gently; the wine is crystal clear (since it hasn’t moved for 14 months) but the bottom of the barrel is covered in a thick sludge of dead yeast cells (called lees) and the lees can all too easily be stirred up, making the wine cloudy (mostly harmless but quite unattractive!)
Rather than use a pump I use the device pictured above to ‘push’ the wine gently out of the barrel. Compressed air is pumped into the top of the barrel (via the lower hose) creating a positive pressure which pushes wine from the bottom of the barrel up and out through upper hose. I find this a much more gentle and controllable method than even the slowest pump.

Berry Bros

2007-11-08T10:22:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post to let you know that UK readers can now buy my 2005 vintage online from Berry Brothers & Rudd...
Click here to visit their site.

Shipping the 2005s

2007-10-30T14:04:00.001+01:00

Now that the 2007 harvest is safely in barrels (where it will remain for at least 14 months) there is a slight lull the viticultural calendar before the vines loose their leaves and pruning can commence; this typically happens around mid-November.

Conveniently this relatively quiet period is an excellent time of year to be shipping the harvest of two years prior (2005 in this case). The 2005s have been in bottle for 5 months so they have fully recovered from any bottling shock, and the weather has turned cool so there is no risk of exposing the bottles to damaging heat during their transportation. (In fact, since I am working with conscientious importers the wines are transported in air-conditioned containers, so there should really be no risk in high summer either…)

The 2005s had been stored un-labelled since bottling, so preparing them for delivery means: labelling, fitting a tin capsule, packing into cardboard boxes, stacking these boxes on a wooden pallet, and finally wrapping the whole stack in lots of Clingfilm. Here’s a photo of one of the six pallet-loads that left last week, all ready bar the Clingfilm…

Into barrels

2007-10-30T14:00:00.000+01:00

Since my last post the new wines have been resting in their vats to allow the yeast and other sediment to settle out. Once this is done I siphon the clear wine into empty barrels waiting in the cellar. Credit to whoever built this house some 200 years ago since the cellar is located directly below the vat room, and there are two 10cm diameter holes running through its metre-thick vaulted ceiling. This makes filling the barrels as simple as passing a hose though the ceiling and opening a tap… not even any need for a pump.
The 2007 harvest fills just 23 barrels, which equates to a distressingly low 28 hectolitres per hectare. The better news is that at this early stage the quality appears excellent. Above is a recent photo of the cellar, which now contains both the 2006 and 2007 harvests, a total of 42 barrels (the equivalent of about 12600 bottles).

Le vin est fait…

2007-10-03T13:40:00.000+02:00

… but not yet in barrels.

During fermentation I taste each wine several times per day to assess the amount of colour, flavour and tannin that has been extracted from the skins. Then after 2 or 3 weeks, when I decide there has been enough extraction, I draw off the new wine into an empty vat. The mass of skins that is left behind (called la gène) still contains a significant amount of wine (about 20% of the total volume), so la gène is transferred to a press and squeezed to recover this final 20%.
Once all the wine has been extracted I am left with about 1500kg of relatively dry skins and pips to dispose of. In the past I’ve sold these for processing into industrial alcohol, but this year I delivered them to a local artisan distiller who makes a type of rustic brandy (Marc de Bourgogne). Pictured below is his still, which has been in continuous use since 1860…
I am delighted to see my waste skins being distilled into brandy, but this new arrangement does have one very minor ‘downside’…. Didier, the distiller, is passionate about his product, and of course a polite visitor can hardly decline to join him in assessing its many merits…
I’ll definitely be delivering to Didier next year, just maybe not at 9am!

Pigeage et Remontage

2007-09-21T20:49:00.000+02:00

When I last posted the vats were filled with sweet crushed grapes, but it is now 12 days since the harvest ended and the smell of fermenting wine pervades every corner of my house and winery.

The grapes were surprisingly slow to start fermenting this year, but now that the yeast are busy I too have lots of work to do. My main job is keeping the grape skins in contact with the wine. The carbon dioxide released by fermentation carries all solids (skins, pips, etc) up to the surface of the bubbling liquid. The colour of Pinot Noir is contained exclusively in the skins so these need to be submerged regularly to maximize pigment extraction. There are basically two methods for submerging the skins…
Pigeage, shown above, simply involves pushing the floating skins back down into the fermenting wine. Traditionally this is done by climbing into the vat, naked, and splashing around with one’s hands and feet. I prefer to remain fully clothed, outside the vat, and to submerge the skins with the stick pictured (un pigeou)

The second method, remontage, is to draw the wine from the bottom of the vat and pump it to the top, above the skins. It the photo I am also allowing the wine to splash into a small tub to aerate the wine and give the yeast a breath of air.

Early days yet, but the colours are actually surprisingly deep considering the cool, damp summer we ‘enjoyed’.

Harvest

2007-09-12T22:15:00.001+02:00

Well it’s done, the grapes are all safely in the winery and we are waiting patiently for the fermentations to start.

Harvest is normally a stressful time, but this year was actually good fun. We were lucky enough to have a great group of helpers (please ALL come back next year!) and we somehow managed to get 2 hectares picked and sorted in just 2 days.

Thankfully the past two weeks have been dry and reasonably sunny, which has at least partially redeemed our rather cool and wet summer. I think that waiting late to harvest was probably the right decision, and certainly what we picked looked beautifully ripe and relatively rot free. The sugar levels are not sky high, but I should be able to avoid chaptalising (adding sugar) and I’m reasonable confident the wines will reflect all the hard work that took place in the vineyards.

Updates to follow as the wines ferment…

Baby pigeons

2007-09-04T21:24:00.000+02:00

The past few days have been quite windy which is good news for the grapes, but bad news for baby birds… they have been falling like rain from the tree in my courtyard. Two baby blackbirds and this little pigeon in the past 24 hours!

Harvest dates

2007-08-28T18:48:00.000+02:00

The harvest is starting. I am going to wait before picking my grapes, but a couple of domaines in the village have started already. The photo shows the Grand Cru Clos des Lambrays being picked on Sunday (26th).

The anxiety at this time of year is horrible. Most of the stress comes from worrying about the choice of harvest date. Grapes have a narrow window of perfect ripeness and how fast they reach that optimum depends on the weather. Identifying the ideal moment to pick is easy in hindsight, but in reality organisational considerations mean I need to commit to dates at least a week in advance… so all my Internet favourites are currently weather forecast sites!

I am expecting to start on the 8th of September. I suspect that will put me amongst the latest pickers in village, but I think the grapes badly need a bit more sun. The risk of waiting is that rot is spreading fast and one heavy rainfall could seriously compromise quality.

In general this vintage is beginning to look potentially a little mediocre. The summer has been cool, but more significantly wet. The soil has been damp almost continuously throughout the summer and the grapes are beginning to show the effects. Perhaps there will be pleasant surprises when the wine is made, but at the moment pessimists are a little easier to find than optimists.

Mi-véraison

2007-07-20T11:20:00.000+02:00

Just an update on the vines, which are still looking good; on average the bunches are now about halfway through changing from green to black (called véraison).

Weather-wise it’s been a very strange year so far. April was hot and dry, which got the vines off to a record early start. May was wet; June was wetter. It seems close to miraculous that the vines have come through these two months without more problems. The national news is reporting how catastrophic this year will be for wine producers across France, particularly in Bordeaux; with up to 90% crop losses to mildew. Obviously Burgundy has been spared the worst and I can’t find too much to complain about. That said, it’s really the weather from now to harvest that will determine the quality and style of this year’s wines; we want 50 consecutive dry, sunny days please!

Escargots de Bourgogne

2007-07-01T13:06:00.000+02:00

July 1st, the official start of the hunting season. Snail hunting that is.I’m not making this up; apparently snails breed in June and there is a local by-law that prohibits collecting them before July 1st. They also need to be a minimum of 32mm in diameter, so these two won't be swimming in garlic butter this year.

I’m told the brown upper snail is an ‘escargot de Bourgogne’ while the lower black snail is a ‘foreign’ invader, which (naturally!) doesn’t taste nearly as good.

To tell the truth I’m quite indifferent to both the flavour (earthy) and texture (rubbery) of snails so I have no plans to supplement my diet with any species of gastropod.

CORRECTION : JULY 2nd

I don’t want to be spreading misinformation so I’m updating this post with newfound knowledge... Apparently BOTH the snails above are impostors, but this one below is a true Escargot de Bourgogne (Helix pomatia). Obviously much more appetising!

Wasp spider

2007-06-30T15:48:00.000+02:00

Yikes, I don’t think I’ll bother de-leafing this vine. That object at the top of the photo (which looks a bit like a big white grape) is in fact her egg case… so I’ll soon have a whole family of menacing spiders. Great!

De-leafing

2007-06-25T22:14:00.000+02:00

To de-leaf or not to de-leaf? A divisive question in the viticultural world.
De-leafing means removing the two lowest leaves from each vertical shoot, and thus exposing the developing grape bunches to direct, rather than filtered, sunlight.

Proponents cite the following advantages…

1) Improved ripening and flavour development, probably due to the increased temperature as the berries absorb direct sunlight.
2) Reduced risk of bunch rot due to reduced humidity in the fruit-zone. This is a big plus if you want to avoid using anti-rot sprays (which are anyway prohibited by organic certification)
3) Reduced risk of Powdery mildew (Oidium).
4) Faster harvest since the bunches are clearly visible

While opponents cite the following disadvantages

1) Increased risk of ‘sunburn’ – where on a hot, bright day fully exposed grapes simply shrivel and die.
2) Fewer remaining leaves to photosynthesise sugars.
3) Increased losses in the event of hail – since the leaves provide a small degree of physical protection.
4) The time and hence cost involved; I take about 80 hours to de-leaf two hectares, which if I were to pay someone minimum wage (it’s not rocket science!) would add about 0.13€ per bottle.

As the photo shows I am in a very small minority (in Burgundy) who decide that the pros outweigh the cons. To minimize the sunburn risk I only de-leaf the north (or east) side of each row and I start immediately after flowering so the grapes can acclimatize to exposure before they are fully-grown and at their most vulnerable.

One more good day’s work and I’ll be done with this job, and I won’t be sorry to see it finished! I figure I’ve de-leafed 20 kilometres of vine rows, or removed approximately 280000 leaves.

Early harvest

2007-06-16T19:21:00.000+02:00

I haven’t written about the vines for a little while, but in this case no news is good news. In fact everything is looking excellent and harvest is likely to be exceptionally early, probably late August. The first photo below was taken on June 16th 2006 while the second was taken today, exactly one year later. Hopefully the difference is clear. In 2006 the vines were in full flower when this year flowering finished 4 weeks ago and the bunches are now almost fully formed.The main danger at this time of year is hail damage. The past two weeks have been very worrying… big thunderstorms wandering around every other evening. So far Morey has been spared, but my nerves are frayed.

Bottling

2007-06-09T13:04:00.001+02:00

My parents are here for a week and we’ve been busy bottling the 2005 vintage. A few months ago I racked the wine out of barrels into the stainless steel storage tanks shown in the background of the photo (left). After a couple of months settling in these tanks the wine is clear and ready for bottling. The bottles are then filled by gravity and corked by hand (below left). Of course the wine is never filtered, nor fined, nor even pumped in order preserve all its qualities.

April’s weather

2007-05-09T20:45:00.000+02:00

So we have just experienced the warmest April on record. Fully 4ºC above average and with a mean daytime maximum temperature equal to that of August 2006 (21.8ºC). Unbelievably the vines are about 4 weeks ahead of their normal stage at this time of year. The rate of growth has been so rapid that everyone here is swamped by vineyard work that all needed done yesterday, and I am no exception. Thankfully May is starting off rather cool which should allow us to more or less catch up before flowering.

Confusion sexuelle

2007-04-20T22:20:00.000+02:00

Sorry this post isn’t half as interesting as the title suggests! In fact it is about moths, or more precisely two particular genera of moth Cochylis and Eudemis.They might look innocent enough, but in late summer they have a regrettable fondness for laying their eggs in ripening bunches of grapes. When these eggs hatch the young larvae particularly enjoy feeding on sweet grapes. The problem isn’t the quantity of grapes that these caterpillars consume, but rather the fact that nibbled grapes are an open invitation to grey rot. If the climatic conditions are right (should that be wrong?) a damaged grape will become infected, and rot can then quickly spread to destroy the whole bunch. Untreated, in a bad year, these caterpillars can destroy a sizeable percentage of the crop. The normal solution is to spray the grapes with a chemical insecticide, but of course this blog is about the organic alternative, which is called confusion sexuelle...

I spent one morning last week spreading pheromones. In Morey this is a communal effort since a good percentage of the vineyards are protected by confusion sexuelle and indeed the method needs to be applied to a large surface area in order to be effective. At the start of each season about 500 of the diffusers pictured left are placed per hectare of vines. The small blisters are filled with synthesised female moth pheromones (one blister per species) which diffuse into the air throughout the year. The air becomes so saturated with female pheromones that come mating season the poor male moths (who navigate by smell) get all confused and unable to locate a mate. Of course no mating means no eggs, which means no caterpillars, which means no damage, which means no rot, which means good wine!

PS. Don’t feel too bad for the moths – I’m sure they just go mate in someone else’s vineyard.

Early Spring

2007-04-18T22:07:00.000+02:00

The weather in Burgundy has been glorious for the past few weeks. So far April has been 3ºC above average and devoid of rainfall. As a result the vines have burst into life three weeks earlier than normal which should mean an early harvest if they aren’t checked by frost. Interestingly the consensus of local traditional wisdom (based on the lunar cycle and flowering dates of various plants) forecasts a late harvest (in October) and a frost on the 2nd of May. Thought I’d put that in writing now just in case!

The photo shows an apple tree I planted last year in full flower on the 14th of April.

Ploughing

2007-04-18T21:22:00.000+02:00

I’ve just finished the first ploughing of 2007. As the first photo below shows I leave a grassy strip between each row and only turn the soil directly under the vines. Leaving grass is uncommon in Burgundy, but I tried this in one vineyard last year and liked the results. This year all my vines are ploughed this way.
The second photo shows the plough in action. The two discs define the edge of the grassy band (not yet very grassy in this vineyard!) while two blades slice through the soil cutting weed roots at a depth of about 5cm. Here I’ve raised one of the blades for the sake of the photo. Normally the blade is held solidly in the position shown, but just in front of each blade, and above soil level, is a sensing rod with a large mechanical advantage over the blade. When the sensor is lightly pushed back by a vine the blade follows and so narrowly avoids decapitating the vine. The whole system works surprisingly well and ploughs very close to each vine with a low risk of damage.

Labelling

2007-04-04T20:18:00.000+02:00

It’s been a bitterly cold day so I took a break from pruning to prepare a shipment of my 2004 Pinot Noir, which is leaving for the UK next week. It’s only about 500 bottles, but each bottle needs washed (they’ve been in the cellar for a year), labelled, capsuled, hand numbered (what was I thinking!?) and then packed into boxes.

At least the labelling goes quickly thanks to machine pictured below.
.

More vineyard flora

2007-02-26T21:27:00.000+01:00

Well, Spring appears to be on its way, so I thought I would share a photo of one the first flowers to appear amongst the vines each year.

These are the flowers of Tussilago farfara or Colt’s Foot. Strangely the flowers appear before the leaves, which themselves don’t emerge until May. Apparently smoking the dried leaves is a folk-remedy for curing coughs (Tussilago is derived from tussis, Latin for ‘cough’). I'm looking forward to next time I have a cough!

Bottle cellar commissioned

2007-02-26T21:25:00.000+01:00

Just a photo to show that the new bottle cellar is being put to good use. These bottles are what remains of 2004 harvest. I’ll be bottling the 2005s in April… only another 8 full cages to fit in.

Note the steps to the right of the photo… last time my father was here he built ‘furniture’ (basically a series of ramps) to enable full cages to be moved in and out of the cellar. The system is quite breathtaking in its complexity, but it does seem to work. Certainly better than carrying in bottles a dozen at a time (especially since that lintel is about 4’8" and made of very hard stone!)

Fertilizing snow

2007-01-24T15:57:00.000+01:00

It is snowing here.

One of the locals tell me this is a good thing, because snow is “le fumier des pauvres” (poor man’s compost) and “full of nitrogen”. I was initially sceptical, but searching the web I’ve found a number of studies that confirm the surprising fertilizing value of snow.

Of course this same man told me in October that we were going to have a mild winter because the skin of his onions was so thin…. I didn’t ask how this fit with the 12” of snow outside.

Burning prunings

2007-01-22T18:18:00.000+01:00

I’ve been busy in the vines of late. After the vines are pre-pruned the next task is to dispose of all the prunings. There are various options, but I burn them in this very high-tech incinerator/wheelbarrow…
Note the cunning reuse of old oil barrels… both for the body and the wheel!

Pre-pruning

2006-12-18T15:42:00.000+01:00

It has turned cold here, so I’m starting to do a bit of pre-pruning. There’s an old French saying

Taille tôt,
Taille tard,
Rein ne vaut la taille de mars.

Prune early,
Prune late,
Nothing’s better than pruning in March.

Perhaps it loses a little something in the translation, but I do like to make the final cuts in March (the pruning wounds are less prone to infection when the sap is rising).

However pre-pruning allows me to gather and burn most of last year's growth during the quiet months of winter. This photo shows last year’s shoots cut back to about 20cm. In March I’ll return and cut these shoots down further, to one bud, removing the potentially infected old wound in the process.

November was quite wet in Burgundy, so there is quite a proliferation of mushrooms in the vineyards. This one is my favourite… apparently it’s called the bird’s nest fungus.

Floor finished

2006-11-08T13:15:00.000+01:00

The new floor in the bottle cellar is now complete, and my father is back home working on his own projects. Next time he visits we’ll be installing air-conditioning before filling the cellar with bottles.

Freed from DIY I am back to the vineyard. Digging out dead vines. I do it the traditional way, with a spade. It’s much easier with a tarière (a tractor mounted soil auger), but my tractor is banished from the vineyards in winter. A heavy tractor on damp soil just causes too much compaction, at a period of the year when the soil’s wildlife is at its most active. Of course the fact that I can’t afford the €5000 for a tarière might be a factor too!

Bottle store

2006-10-31T18:47:00.000+01:00

My father is here for a couple of weeks to help with a few winery improvement projects. The main job is to convert the smaller of my two cellars into a bottle storage area. For ease of handling I’ll be storing bottles in forklift compatible cages. Step one is to pour a smooth concrete floor so that these cages can be moved around by a pallet truck…Here’s my father preparing the ground, and then the floor partially poured…

Harvest

2006-10-22T13:40:00.000+02:00

Well the harvest is finished and the wines are now all fermented and safely resting down in the cave. It was really hard work this year… Hail in late July and then a wet August meant that grey rot was a big issue by harvest time. Thankfully we are well equipped with a sorting table and were blessed with a great harvest team (thank you all!) who put in the hours necessary to separate the good grapes from the bad. The net result is that grapes in the vats were perfect and we are well on the way to making good wines in a difficult year.
Picking started on Friday 22nd September and ended on Friday 29th with just the Sunday off to watch the rain. For the third year in a row the heavens opened the day after we finished picking. After sorting, the grapes were 100% de-stemmed and then gently carried to the vats by a conveyer belt. The aim was to get a large percentage of whole, uncrushed berries in the vats, as this enhances primary fruit aromas and minimises harsh tannins. Since the grapes were ripe and well sorted we just added 5g/hl of SO2 (the ubiquitous wine anti-oxidant) and cooled the must down to 15ºC. Truth be told I’m a little proud to have grown organic grapes which didn’t need any of the ‘assistance’ which modern enology can offer (such as additions of sugar, colour extraction enzymes, clarification enzymes, yeast, yeast nutrients, tannins etc). With nothing added our 2006 wines are all between 12.5 and 12.8% alcohol with perfect acidity (pH 3.2 to 3.3).
Ultimately I suspect 2006 will be seen as a good vintage for those who sorted well, but far short of the excellent quality of 2005. At the moment the 2006s are beautifully aromatic and well balanced, but less concentrated than the spectacular 2005s (which are still in barrels and tasting fabulous!). Of course vintage differences are part of what makes Burgundy so fascinating.

Green harvest

2006-08-28T15:32:00.000+02:00

I’ve just finished the green harvest, where excess grapes are removed to allow the remainder to ripen fully. It is slow, tedious work, but certainly important in making good wine. The vineyard in the photo escaped the hail and is about a week ahead of my others. Note the grass growing between the rows… it competes for nutrients, which encourages the vines to ripen their fruit rather than growing more leaves.
Harvest is about a month away. There isn’t a huge amount to do in the vines at the moment so I’m just praying for warm, dry weather. It really doesn’t seem to be helping…

Hail

2006-07-28T20:40:00.000+02:00

Well the good new is that the powdery mildew I reported a couple of weeks ago is under control and won’t be an issue at harvest.

The bad news is that we had a mighty thunderstorm last night. Hailstones the size of marbles absolutely thrashed down for about a minute. It breaks my heart to see what were perfect bunches now looking decidedly worse for wear. Now we really need a spell of warm, dry weather to desiccate the damaged berries and prevent rot from taking hold.

It could be worse. I have one small vineyard which escaped totally unscathed. And 2km north of here the destruction is total… i.e. no harvest this year.

Baby blackbirds

2006-07-20T12:37:00.000+02:00

Not wine related for a change…

I have a family of blackbirds living in my courtyard. I had noticed a bit of activity in my one tree, but didn’t really think much about it. Yesterday was quite windy and when I returned from the vines I found three baby birds hopping around the courtyard. I’m guessing they are too young to fly back to the nest, or perhaps they just don’t want to. Anyway I’ve put lots of food out, and they seem to be doing well.

Powdery mildew

2006-07-11T14:32:00.000+02:00

Apologies for the lack of updates of late. Anyway…

It is still hot and humid here in Burgundy. In the past month we’ve had just two days below 26ºC (80ºF)! As I write it is 35ºC (95ºF)… and hence I am inside seeking shelter from the sun.

The vines are looking good. The flowering passed at record speed and the bunches are now fully formed. I’m all excited because my vines have quite a bit of millerandage (tiny, seedless berries) this year. At harvest-time these small berries are sweeter than average and have a higher skin/juice ratio, both of which should be good for the wine.

My only slight concern is the growing presence of powdery mildew (see photo of me spraying above…). Just in case you are now thinking that you don’t want to drink a wine made from sprayed grapes… ALL grapes are regularly sprayed against fungal diseases. Organic producers are limited to natural (i.e. non-synthesised) products (sulphur in the case of this photo), which are without consequence for even the heaviest drinker! Unfortunately organic sprays are also rather less effective than the ‘conventional’ chemical alternatives…

Flowering

2006-06-17T22:39:00.000+02:00

The vines are flowering. They have a wonderful sweet aroma, which perfumes the air on the warm, still evenings that we are enjoying at the moment.
Tradition holds that the harvest will start 100 days after flowering, or the 26th September. Only time will tell…

Hedging

2006-06-16T22:20:00.000+02:00

So far June has been hot and sunny, and the vines are loving it. This is a busy month… training the young shoots so that they grow vertically and then hedging them off to the desired height (see photo).

Finished de-budding

2006-06-02T20:13:00.000+02:00

Finally the first de-budding is finished. Every vine is now left with 6 or 7 healthy and evenly spaced shoots.

Wine bureaucracy

2006-05-15T22:18:00.000+02:00

As a wine producer I am obliged to pay duty on each bottle that I sell. Thankfully in France this tax is a very reasonable 0.02 euros/bottle. Thus, for my entire 2004 harvest I will owe the government the grand sum of 17€. I would gladly write a check right now, but that is not how the system works…

No, the tax on each bottle is due at the instant that said bottle leaves my cellar. Now the wise folk down at the customs office appreciate that it is not very practical for me to drive 10km and pay 0.02€ on each occasion that I sell a bottle of wine. Instead I must keep a full account of all transactions and then visit the customs office before the 10th of each month to pay the total tax due. Still seems like a slightly cumbersome system to me, but I guess I’ll just have to live with it.

But wait there’s a problem here… I mean what would happen if I shipped some wine and then went bankrupt before paying my 0.02€… well the customs office would be out of pocket and they don’t like that at all. So before granting me the right to sell wine they require a guarantee from my bank that it will cover an unlimited amount of unpaid tax. Obtaining this guarantee involves completing an unbelievably complex form provided by the customs office and then having this completed form stamped by my bank. Of course the keeper of the stamp is a very important man who works in very, very tall building in Paris. So he takes 2 months and 86€ to stamp my form…

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I posted my freshly stamped form to the head customs office in Paris, secure in the knowledge that they would soon grant me the right to sell my wine. And today I receive a letter that reads…

Dear Sir,

In box 23.4a on page 12 of our very complex and unnecessary form you entered a tick when in fact you should have written the letter “C” as this guarantee pertains to wine. Please obtain, from us, a new form and start the whole darn process again.

They didn’t even enclose a new form! The letter does however have one of those very polite formal French endings where they pledge eternal devotion to the exalted recipient.

Please, please just let me write a check for 17€….

Debudding

2006-05-09T21:56:00.000+02:00

Now that the vines have really started to grow, I select which shoots to keep and then remove the rest. Everyone agrees that this is the worst job of the viticultural year. 30 seconds per vine… and I have ~15000 vines. Best bit is that when you finally finish you get to start all over again because the damn vines have grown some more unwanted shoots! Why are the vines planted so low anyway? My back is sore.

Current score is 4200 down, 10800 to go.

First ploughing of the year

2006-05-06T20:22:00.000+02:00

Well, the first ploughing of the year is done. This year I’ve started with a very clever "active" plough that digs a furrow directly under the vines. A sensor detects each vine and retracts the plough just before it does damage. I’m pleased with the results, although it was pretty slow work – driving at 1.2kph. However, sitting on the tractor sure beats weeding with a hoe!

Weeds

2006-05-05T21:31:00.000+02:00

Hmm… perhaps I should do something about these weeds…

No frost this year

2006-05-04T16:48:00.000+02:00

Well Sunday morning came… 1.5ºC recorded in my courtyard and minimal damage in the vineyard. A few freeze-burned leaves right down at ground level, but nothing to worry about. However… we still have to get through "les saintes glaces" (Saint Mamert, Saint Pancrace and Saint Servais, otherwise known as the 11th 12th and 13th of May). Ask ANY Frenchman and you will be assured that there is ALWAYS a cold snap at les saintes glaces, after which there is never another frost. Of course, this dictum is valid for ALL of France regardless of latitude or altitude… perhaps I am too cynical. In any case, forecast for the 11th is sunny, max 22ºC min 12ºC…

Replacement vines

2006-04-27T18:31:00.000+02:00

Every autumn dead or dying vines are marked and later removed to prevent disease spreading through the vineyard. April is the month for planting replacements. I buy ready-to-plant one-year-old vines from the pépinière Guillaume in the Haute-Saône. The vines pictured are Pinot Noir (clone 777) grafted onto an American rootstock (101.14). The graft union is covered in paraffin wax to prevent it drying out, and a steel hoop is placed over the newly planted vine to protect it during ploughing.

Leaves are starting to appear on the mature vines. I am nervously checking the weather forecast; a frost at this stage would be very bad news. If the temperature drops slightly below freezing the vegetation is destroyed and the quantity of harvest significantly reduced. I am worried about Sunday morning… -2ºC forecast…

Pruning completed

2006-04-08T17:49:00.000+02:00

At last the winter pruning is complete and the vines are all ready for spring to arrive.

In this bare state the vineyards are perhaps not at their most beautiful, but after a long winter's work the sense of order is very satisfying. It won't last long; the buds are starting to swell and shoots will soon be growing...