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!

Sécateur électrique

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

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

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

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.