- All go in the vineyard
- 2013 Bauduc white and rosé
- Why the UK duty on wine is unfair
- Where money goes on a bottle of wine in the UK
Category Archives: Chateau Bauduc
2013 Bauduc white and rosé update
February 06 2014
We’ve just blended our white and rosé from this tricky vintage. The August hailstorm at Bauduc wiped out half the grapes and we’ve been draconian with selecting only the best of the rest. The pale rosė is excellent but, for the white, we’ve only made 20% of what we hope to produce with our vines normalement*.
We’re happy with the amount of rosė – slightly more than last year, which is good news – and the quality is very good. Pale, crisp, dry, gluggable and refreshing.
For the white, we are allowed to make 1,100 hectolitres (110,000 litres) from 17 hectares. That’s a permitted yield of 65 hl per hectare (8600 bottles per hectare). I’m fairly confident that we would have made that had it not been for the hail.
As it is, we produced half that volume of wine and from this decimated amount, we have selected just 220 hl (29,000 bottles instead of a maximum 147,000) or 20% of the potential yield. This 20% was from vines that were hardly hit. The remaining wine we’ve produced (350 hl) is being sold off in bulk to Bordeaux wine merchants, who make blends for larger, non-chateau brands.
We don’t want to compromise the quality by including wine that was made with grapes that just didn’t ripen properly as a result of the vines being hit by the hail. I don’t think they ever recovered from the shock to the system, or that’s how it seemed, and with a much later harvest than normal, the grapes never really had a chance of being ripe enough. At harvest time, when tasting the grapes out in the vineyard, it was like biting into a cooking apple instead of a granny smith.
Onwards and upwards. Keep reading
All go in the vineyard
January 31 2014
Another year, another vintage. This will be our fifteenth full season at Bauduc and no doubt it will throw up some unforeseen challenges. Right now it’s pruning time, and whilst it’s not been quite as wet here as in parts of the UK, it’s fortunate that we’re up on a hill. Here are some Winter snaps.
The pruning started in December in ideal conditions: cold and dry with frosty mornings, so that the sap had fully receded; and there’s less risk of spreading some vine diseases if you prune when it’s dry.
Daniel and Nelly are pictured here, having to work their way around some hail-damaged branches. You can see where the vine shoots took a peppering from the hail in August. The damage was more severe on the ripening grapes than the branches, which wasn’t good news for 2013 but it bodes better for this year. Many of our neighbours were hit much harder and have real problems with pruning severely damaged vines for 2014.
Then it rained. Thankfully, most of the rain has drained off the slopes, although it’s pretty soggy on the clay plateau.
Bauduc ‘Hail Sale’ in The Telegraph
November 26 2013
Many thanks to everyone who chipped in for the Bauduc hail sale. The offer on our 2010 and 2011 whites went down really well and prices are still at a knockdown rate, so do stock up before the Christmas rush; if it’s been on your to-do list, please take a minute to order.
It was great to see the ‘hail sale’ in the Telegraph wine column at the weekend. In her article on buying online, Victoria Moore perfectly summed up what we’re all about, after mentioning Tesco, Morrisons, Asda, Laithwaites and The Wine Society.
‘But for me the real thrill of online wine shopping is the chance to escape the giants. It’s all about stories, immediacy, connection, a chance to root around making new discoveries or, more to the point, getting in touch with people who’ve made them for you, buying the wine you want when you want and having it delivered all with sublime ease.*
One online micro-trend gathering momentum is for producers to sell direct to customers. Think of the likes of Gavin Quinney, whom I wrote about over the summer when swathes of his crop were smashed by bad weather, and who is now having a “hail sale” (Bauduc) to try to get back on his feet.’
Back in August, we emailed everyone with a link to Victoria’s article ’Hailstorms: when ice and wine don’t mix’. A dramatic piece about our little catastrophe was probably not the ideal press coverage but it was a welcome silver lining:
Bordeaux 2013 – the harvest at Bauduc
October 22 2013
6am on a Sunday morning. Harvesting Sauvignon at Bauduc.
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Another year, another harvest. Only this one – our 15th would you believe – was our toughest yet. I suspect many Bordeaux growers will be thinking along the same lines, and 90% of them didn’t get hit by the Summer hail.
There are some bright spots at Bauduc. We have got some good tanks of white and rosé fermenting away.
Doubling up
After losing much the crop in the hail on 2 August, and spurred on by scores of supportive comments on our blog, we managed to lease some vineyards from another chateau.
By taking out a lease ahead of the harvest, and not just buying grapes, we are able to mix the grapes with those from our own vineyard and label the wine ’Chateau Bauduc’. (As a grower, buying grapes from other growers is not permitted, except when there’s a special ruling after a disaster. Only the French…)
Our ‘new’ vineyard at Omet, near Cadillac.
Not wanting to tempt fate, we’ve kept this under our hats until the harvest was in. Time (and our accountant) will tell whether we made the right call, but we felt the chances of making enough good wine from our own vines alone were fairly slim.
I’ll be writing the indispensable guide on ’How to borrow another chateau’s vineyard’ soon. Keep reading
Bordeaux 2013 – Bauduc harvest, sparrow’s fart
October 03 2013
It’s not something you’d want to do every Saturday and Sunday morning before dawn. Thankfully, like Christmas, the harvest comes but once a year.
I’m not sure when we decided to pick at the weekend but I think it was on the Friday morning. A few calls to Guy, who rents and drives the machine, and it was all booked. Mind you, it’s lucky we’re happy to harvest at a ridiculous hour at the weekend, because all his normal weekday slots were getting booked up by neighbouring chateaux.
It’s also lucky that he’s based here on site at Bauduc, with two machines, another driver, fuel, cleaning facilities and a rather unattractive caravan (below, left). We’ve yet to let his tyres down on the way to another customer but you never know.
It was the last weekend of September and the final week, after a mixed fortnight, was dry and sunny. This had certainly helped the white grapes ripen. The acidity had dropped and the sugar levels, the flavours and aromas had developed well. We do look at the numbers from the analysis of the grapes but the taste, with a bit of experience, is the important thing.
Then, with rain and sweltering humidity on the Friday, we had to pick before rot set in. We could see in the bunches that within a few days the rot would spread quickly, like a blackened banana in a bowl of ripe peaches. The weekend could make all the difference. Time to act.
One thing I’ve learnt is that nature doesn’t stick to a five-day week, so we don’t think of weekends any differently during the harvest. We also like to machine pick early in the morning – for freshness – and we’re lucky to have, in Daniel and Nelly, two tireless workers who don’t worry about the time of day or the usual Monday to Friday routine. They have been with us from the start, including the first five harvests which were all by hand. Keep reading
August news: Hail at Bauduc – Groundhog day
August 13 2013
- Hail in Bordeaux, part 1 – Bauduc
- Hail in Bordeaux, part 2 – the path of destruction
- Hail in Bordeaux, part 3 – the lottery of storms
- Hail in Bordeaux, part 4 – FAQ
- Hand-picked start to Bauduc 2014 harvest
Hail in Bordeaux, part 4 – FAQs of Bauduc
August 09 2013
Shreddies. 2 August 2013 at Bauduc
We were hit by hail on 2 August. 5000 hectares of vines in the area have been stripped of this year’s grapes and another 5000 hectares, like us, have seen damage to vines to a greater or lesser extent. Here are a few questions and answers, mainly as far as Bauduc is concerned.
1. Are you insured against hail?
No. You can buy special hail insurance but the premiums are outrageously expensive. Those sharp-suited insurance folk are no fools.
The authorities believe that only 15%-20% of the vineyards that were hit were insured against hail. Henri Feret of Ch Feret-Lambert, for example, makes excellent Bordeaux Supérieur and he’s not insured, which makes us feel slightly less dozy.
It would be surprising if the leading Chateaux of Bordeaux are not insured, but some appellations like Pauillac and St-Julien have not been hit for a long time, so premiums should be affordable compared to the price they get for the wine.
2. Didn’t you have hail before?
Yes. In May 2009 – twice, in fact, a fortnight apart – and in June 2003. So we’ve been hit in three out of fifteen harvests – or, more recently, two out of five. Our recent form isn’t good. Keep reading
Hail in Bordeaux, part 3 – the lottery of storms
August 08 2013
One of the extraordinary aspects of hail is how one vineyard can be badly hit, while another just a few hundred metres away looks as if nothing untoward has happened. It isn’t entirely random, however. The storm will follow a certain route and anything in its path is at risk, while vines either side can remain unscathed.
The contrasting fortunes of the vineyards around us at Chateau Bauduc, on the outskirts of Créon, is quite amazing. (I should qualify that: amazing for those who are vaguely interested, which excludes half of this household.)
Chateau Bauduc is in the centre of the image above, where a little red A marks the spot. Our vines surround the Chateau and winery – a single vineyard with woodland on three sides and the town on the northern boundary. To give you an idea of the scale, the estate covers 75 hectares, a third of which is planted with vines.
We lost around 50% of this year’s harvest in the storm on 2 August 2013 due to hail damage to leaves and grapes. It could get worse here if rot sets in now or later, or if the remaining grapes don’t ripen. We can only wait and see.
Here’s the thing, as the map shows. Vineyards just 2kms to the west of us were untouched because the storm passed by to the south. Keep reading
Hail in Bordeaux, part 1 – Bauduc
August 06 2013
The children were playing in the garden. The long wooden tables were laid for supper under the vine-covered trellis; grown-ups chatted, rosé in hand.
Last Friday was supposed to be just another lovely summer’s evening with old friends who were staying at our farmhouse. It’s what you imagine life to be like when you own a vineyard.
I’d been walking the dogs around the vines, half-inspecting the thousand, neatly presented rows at the end of the season’s labour. We’d completed the manual work just that morning, and now we needed a fine August and September to ripen the grapes.
The skies out west though – towards the Atlantic in the distance – didn’t look right. It was warm and sunny but there was a chill in the air, similar to the lull before the storm in September 2011, when hail narrowly missed us, and in May 2009, when it didn’t.