Experimenting with harvest dates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!