As we look across the vines towards the foothills of the Alps we can see the fist snow of the season here. The last couple of weeks the weather has turned colder, the heating is on and we have even had a little rain, although not nearly enough to alleviate the drought. At the moment with only about seven weeks to go we are at half the normal annual rainfall so we are keeping our fingers crossed for a wet winter. … [Read more...]
Press for Wine
The fermentations of the reds have all been finished since the start of October. We then leave the wine in the tank with the skins to extract colour and flavour. Once they have sufficiently extracted, we need to press the grapes and skins to extract the wine. We did our first pressing last week and pressed again last Sunday. We'll finish up by pressing the Cru Vinsobres Grenache at the beginning of next week. Here's a photo of the press in action. The grapes are pumped into the perforated … [Read more...]
Winery update
All is going well in the winery. About half of the tanks have now finished fermenting and the others will finish in the next few days.The exception is the rosé Carpe Diem which we keep chilled and therefore it ferments much more slowly; it's only about half done. For the reds, even once they have finished fermenting we keep pumping them over twice a day to extract the colour and flavour from the skins which are now floating on top of the wine (as you can see from the picture below). Then once … [Read more...]
All done
It was a beautiful hot autumn day yesterday and we brought in our last plot, the Grenache in Cru Vinsobres. Focus now turns to the winery where everything is fermenting fast and there's lots of work to do! … [Read more...]
Fermenting strongly…
Here is the Cru Vinsobres Syrah I referred to yesterday. This shot of the foaming wine is taken whilst pumping over. It's important whilst the wine is fermenting to "pump it over" regularly to keep it well mixed and extract the maximum flavour from the grapes. It also looks great and smells delicious! … [Read more...]
Harvest update
We had a busy day of harvesting on Tuesday bringing in about 25 tonnes of grapes, principally for our rosé Carpe Diem and red Terra Firma. For the rosé, the juice is drawn off from the skins into a separate tank, chilled to 10 degrees and then left to settle. Yesterday, after 48 hours, we blended the clear Grenache and Syrah juices in a chilled stainless steel tank and added the yeast. Now we let the temperature rise to 16 degrees and the fermentation will gently start over the next two or … [Read more...]
Harvest!
Here we are early morning yesterday ready to go for the first day of harvest. Yesterday we hand harvested the Syrah in Cru Vinsobres. The grapes are in great condition and now safely in the tank in the winery. We allow the fermentation to start naturally rather than adding commercial yeasts so it takes a few days to get going. Today we were meant to machine harvest the grapes for the rosé Carpe Diem, but the harvesting machine is broken down and can't be fixed until Monday so that has been … [Read more...]
The waiting is nearly over….
At the end of August we thought that harvest this year would be particularly early, but the first and only summer storm on 31 August marked a rapid change to Autumn. September has been unusually cool and that has dramatically slowed the end of ripening. Although cool the weather has stayed mostly dry so we have been able to leave the grapes to ripen and have just had to be patient! This morning has been the coolest of the season, down to about 6 degrees up here on the plateau, but now all of … [Read more...]
Testing times
Harvest is approaching fast now. The end of August was very hot - 37º - but we had a proper summer storm on the 31st and the weekend was much cooler which has slowed down the ripening a bit. We sent samples from all of our plots to the laboratory yesterday. It looks like we will wait until at least next week for the reds, but we may start with the harvesting for the rosé this week. We'll keep you posted. … [Read more...]
Success!
The 2018 wine guides came out this week and we are pleased to say that our 2015 wines feature in both of the major guides. Our La Dame Anglaise 2015 has received a star from Guide Hachette and four of our wines are in Bettane & Desseauve; the 2016 Carpe Diem Rosé, 2015 Terra Firma red, 2015 La Dame Anglaise and finally the L'Essential Vinsobres 2015 with a tasting note of 16/20. … [Read more...]
Veraison
Veraison is the name for the grapes changing colour from green to black. On the Cru Vinsobres Syrah the veraison has now finished and it's about half way through on the Grenache. In terms of timing this year looks a lot like 2015. In 2015 we started the harvest on 8 September, in 2016 it was three weeks later than this on 28 September. It looks like we will be early again this year so we have already started getting the winery ready. In a couple of weeks we will do a first maturity test to … [Read more...]
Doing well
This is the Syrah in Cru Vinsobres and as you can see things are looking good. The bunches of grapes have now formed and in the next few weeks they will start to change colour. Summer started so early this year, it seems strange to think that we are only in early July. Lots of hot weather still to come! … [Read more...]
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