It will be an interesting harvest this year. The weather have been playing hide-and-seek with many winegrowers in France, putting various sticks in the wheels. I just returned from the Rhône Valley where during one morning last week they had so much rain that many cellars flooded. Now they need some dry weather and wind to dry up the grapes. Added to their woes were hailstorms in June that in some places destroyed 30% of the harvest, and some problems with mildew. Plus an exceptionally cold August. Not easy to be a winegrower in the northern Rhône Valley this year.
In Alsace growers seem quite happy though. In Bordeaux, with a cool summer, the harvest will be 2 or 3 weeks late, but the weather outlook looks good with stable weather until the harvest and even some warmer temperatures – so there is hope. In Champagne they’ve also had a cool summer and expect a late and not very big harvest. Further south the picture is quite different: hot and dry, sometimes even very dry, bordering on a draught. Read more in our short harvest notes further down.
In Italy, where we also were last week, they have had (at least in Tuscany) an exceptionally hot summer and the grapes were small and very sweet. The excessive heat they have had almost gives you the impression that the weather gods are on edge, and sometimes it flips over – in several places across Tuscany (Chianti, Montalcino, Montepulciano) they have had hail storms that have caused damage in the vineyards. At Poliziano in Montepulciano for example they told us that one of their vineyards that this year celebrates 25 years since plantation, hail struck and destroyed virtually all the grapes. Not much of a birthday celebration there… The Tuscan harvest has just started in places ripening early but most areas will wait another week or two. The day before we left we had a terrible thunderstorm and pouring rain (over most of Tuscany) but it seems to be a one off thing – for the rest of the harvest the outlook looks better and the short burst of rain should not make much damage since grapes were very healthy. We will have to wait and see.
Over the coming weeks we will continue around the wine districts – Alsace, Burgundy, Champagne, Veneto, Portugal… – so we will no doubt be back with more reports.
And if this makes you tempted to go visit some vineyards we have just launched the spring 2009 wine tour program. I can promise you some excellent wines and some really tempting food. The first trip takes you to the French South-West, the Périgord, where we will go truffle hunting, learn how to cook duck and of course visit some of the region’s top wine producers. This is followed by Portugal, where you can meet spring in a lush and green Alentejo and enjoy the new-wave Portuguese wines and their specialities, e.g. the pata negra ham…
Britt
PS: Recommend to your friends to read the Brief or forward it to them !
