Wow, it's hard to believe that harvest has already come and gone!
I apologize for not updating my blog during the past two weeks but I had little time outside of work other than to eat, sleep and shower. On average I worked 12 hour days with 1 hour lunch in between, but occasionally we had our longer and shorter days. Thankfully, Vougeraie provided lunches for us, and I was able to refuel with a 3-4 course meal each day. Yeah, pretty incredible right? And this is why my coworkers joke I may gain weight rather than lose it during my internship here! I really hope I can prove them wrong.... But seeing as I won't have this luxurious meal after harvest, and will continue to have pumpovers, punchdowns and eventually decouvrages (shuveling out the grape remenants after fermentation and tossing them up and over the tanks), I should be alright!
La Mode de la vendage
Harvest fashion: my "waterproof" attire that I wore before climbing inside the press to clean it.
Starting on Monday, September 20th we received our first cases of fruit, and by the 30th all fruit was in. On the following day, the 1st of October, we finished sorting through the last bit of the Musigny Grand Cru grapes as Pierre Vincent, the winemaker, belted french songs from atop the wooden cuve as he worked on punchdowns. Ahhh... another Vive la France moment that I may never forget.
To give you an idea of harvest I will try to sum up the main processes that we carried out at Domaine de la Vougeraie:
All clusters were hand harvested and brought in by tractor to the winery, where each case was emptied out onto the sorting table and carefully scrutinized by the cellar crew and myself. Luckily we had some extra hands during the sorting process to keep the table running 12-14 hours each day.
The sorting process was quite demanding this year as there was a lot of mold on the grapes, beaucoup de pourri et oidium (grey Botrytis and Powdery Mildew), and most had to be removed by hand or with hand clippers. While the Pinot noir proved to be less affected by either fungus, the Chardonnay got hit hard this year so much attention was focused on the sorting table as the grapes came into the winery.
Mariette sorting fruit as Blandine dumps the fruit into the cuve, Jean-Luc guides her and Pierre stands by for moral support
After the sorting was through, all Pinot noir was directly destemmed and put into large wooden tanks, cuves, and kept at 12-13 degrees Celcius for a week. Since Burgundy is very appellation driven, each parcel of vineyards received its own cuve to carry out fermentation. Each cuve received a pumpover each day (by either myself of Mariette), and once the fermentation started up, punchdowns were carried out (by Thibault, Pierre, and myself on one occasion with the help of Ian, a retired Englishman who came to help out for the harvest).
The wooden cuve (with metal refridgeration cooling tube) before fruit
The cuve after the fruit was dumped in
For the Chardonnay, the grapes were pressed whole cluster in a bladder press and the juice was put into stainless steal tanks to be settled. The settling and racking of the whites were carried out for longer this year to encourage more of the oidium and Botrytis to settle out with the lees, bourbes.
The first Chardonnay pressing
All fermentations were natural and no yeast was added to any of the reds, and only one white wine appellation was innoculated (as the Botrytis was noticably higher on the fruit, and a natural fermentation was risky).
Now we have been seeing very fast and happy fermentations with both the reds and the whites, and Pierre seems to be quite pleased with the outcome. To recieve more aromatic character from the yeasts however, he has been prolonging the fermentations a few days by chapitilizing the Pinot noir cuves (adding sugar) just before the alcoholic fermentation completes. As strange and wrong as this sounds, it makes a lot of sense as the sugar content is lower this year and as the fermentations have been finishing in 5-7 days (which is 2X faster than the average fermentation.) The other question you might be asking yourself is "is that legal!?" And yeah, in Burgundy it is very much legal to add sugar to your must in order to achieve the right alcohol level (12.5-13% alc) but you must keep record of how much you use as the process is very much controlled!
Each day I continue to ask why, what, and when and have been jotting down notes left and right. By the end of this week I hope to do some grape stomping with my feet, and will no doubt share the photos with you all!
Wishing you all a very relaxing Sunday! Cheers!
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