We are starting the harvest on September 8th. The grapes already have high levels of sugar and lower than usual acidity, which will probably mean that their aging potential will be only average ( similar to the 1976 vintage which had comparable weather) for those who are not able to keep a little acidity in their dry wines.
Given all this and how quickly the grapes are ripening, it looks like there will be fewer passes than usual. The dessert wine grapes will essentially be sun-dried (passerillés) with concentrated acidity which will make things very easy.
We haven’t seen conditions like these in a very long time and, to tell you the truth, very few winemakers would venture to make serious predictions about the end results. Which goes to show once again that we aren’t producing Coca Cola™.
Drink 2003, packed with sunshine
Drink 2000, packed with rain
A vintage unlike any other and probably a taste of the kind of weather our children will have to contend with on a regular basis due to the heating up of the planet.
Of course, it was disconcertingly easy: very little grass to cut or hoe; 30 kilos of sulphur and 20 kilos of Bordeaux mixture for the seven hectares for the whole year (this is the dose normally used by chemists for one and a half hectares and for the last of 10 treatments); sunny weather during the whole harvest which lasted only 2 ½ weeks instead of the usual 2 ½ months, finishing on the day which we typically start, half the amount of passes in the vines, two pressings a day which shortened a few of our nights because I just can’t bring myself to do what most of my colleagues do – that is, staying in the cellar to do the pressing while strangers pick their grapes. Even the serious frost in the spring (which diminished the crop by 40%) was made up for in part by a downpour in early September which reversed the dehydration caused by the heat wave.
However, Chenin Blanc is a semi-late harvest varietal and one could certainly wonder about the intrinsic quality of grapes which ripened so quickly, especially about the finesse of the wine it will produce. We shall see.
And what’s more, these kinds of drought conditions, if they continue, besides causing more deaths, forest fires (why do they keep replanting pine trees?), repeated flooding as soon as it rains a little bit hard, will raise the question of whether or not we can continue to make a living doing this. How is one supposed to be a breeder, a farmer or a market gardener under such conditions?
New Prophesy
Last year’s prophetic paragraph having not surprisingly come true, I have become a repeat offender with the Rosé d’un Jour, vin de table, while waiting for my colleagues to adjust their tastebuds and remember the true tradition of Anjou Rosé by uncorking a bottle of their grandfather’s wine.
At the time of writing, my Waterford crystal ball tells me that at the end of the year, we will get a new generation of nuclear power plants along with a measly sprinkling of an assortment of other renewable energy sources to help swallow the (iodine) pill. It is, however, of the utmost importance that each one of us, as soon as the law is passed, install either a windmill, solar panels or something else in order to undermine the absurd political arguments like “We need more, the only thing we can do is build more nuclear plants”. Windmills cost nothing to run and pay for themselves.
Tasty and revealing episode
A new young and talented winemaker from Anjou who I will recommend to you next year, Cyril Le Moing, while visiting the former owner of his vines mentioned that he was going to treat his vines with sulphur because he had noticed a little oïdium. In a paternal and benevolent manner, this other responded by saying, “Good for you, kid, I always went heavy on the fungicides, just to be sure, …except in my own garden, that is. There, its not the same, you know, there it’s me whose going to eat the crop. “
Not much honey again this year. The extreme heat forced the bees to ventilate the hive in order to keep it at 38 C degrees. And in the meantime….
No apple juice at all because of the frost. If you have to get some, you can order it directly from Iris François.
Recommended winemakers:
Jean-Christophe Garnier in St. Lambert du Lattay
Cyril Fhal at the Tour de France
Recommended records:
De Dannan – Ballroom – Keltia Musique
Hank Jones/ Tommy Flonagan – I’m all smiles – MPS
Pierre Desproges – Any of his records, they’re all good.
