Tag Archives: Weather

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:

Keep reading

Bordeaux 2013 – the end of the harvest

October 22 2013

Also published on JancisRobinson.com and Livex.

The 2013 Bordeaux harvest is drawing to a close as the last of the Cabernets and final Sémillon selections for sweet whites are picked. Sighs of relief all round.

Few grapes are left on the vine now, although they only finished the Merlot at Chateau Fleur Cardinale in Saint-Emilion on Saturday. They hadn’t even started the Cabernet Franc (right).

’C’est pas mûr (ripe)’ said the cellar master as he gestured towards the unpicked vines; the bunches were admirably free of rot, thanks to the colder, later-ripening terroir.

I’ve tasted a lot of red grapes in the last few weeks around Bordeaux and he just about summed it up. Most reds have had to come in before they were ripe. This should have been a late October harvest, by rights, given the extremely late flowering in June and retarded colour change that dragged on into early September. (In between, we had a hot July and a pretty good August – but don’t mention the hail).

If there are any successes, and there will be some, they are triumphs over adversity. This has been the most difficult growing season for red Bordeaux that I’ve seen in fifteen harvests, capped by nerve-jangling conditions for the picking.

The threat of rot at harvest time is also the most acute I’ve witnessed. Many chateaux have picked healthy-looking grapes in the nick of time, or sorted them as best they could. Seeing so many botrytis-affected bunches discarded beneath the vines has been a sad but necessary image.

It’s not that the 2013 harvest has been blighted by days on end of incessant rain. What we’ve had is a series of two-day stints of rain, starting with the last weekend of September (27-29), then 3-4 October (we had 75mm in two days here, 20 kms south east of Bordeaux) and more downpours over the weekend of 12 October.

In between we’ve seen the windows for harvesting and, simultaneously, dangerous periods of warmth and humidity which are ideal for the spread of botrytis. (Even now, in the third week of October, it’s a clammy 19°C this morning.) The picking schedules have largely been determined by the staying power of the grapes in any given parcel. Keep reading

Bordeaux 2013 – the harvest at Bauduc

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 – the harvest so far

October 09 2013

Also published on JancisRobinson.com and Livex.

A complicated year, a complicated harvest. After a fraught growing season in 2013 (see my pre-harvest report for a detailed overview), most Bordeaux chateaux and vignerons have had to bring in their Merlots rather sooner than planned, before the dreaded rot sets in. Some Cabernets are following in quick succession (as at Lafite-Rothschild in Pauillac, below) but now that the sun has come out, there’s a ray of hope for those that can hold on for a little while longer.

It’s all a far cry from the à la carte harvests of 2009 and 2010, when you could pick and choose at leisure. ’Une année compliquée’ is a polite way of describing 2013 and can be used by owners and managers without giving their public relations people a headache. It’s really code for a bit of a shocker.

The weather at the end of September and for the first days of October proved, unfortunately, to be ideal for the development of botrytis – otherwise known as rot. Sultry heat and too much rain over the weekend of 27-29 September was perfect for the champignons in the bunches to thrive and forced growers on both banks to be extra vigilant and, for most, to take swift action.

In many cases they’ve had to harvest red grapes long before they had had a chance to ripen, and only the tiniest estates in places like Pomerol can bring in everything at the same time. Out in the vineyards, it’s been all mud-clogged wellies, short sleeved shirts and waterproofs. Until this week that is, with the welcome boost of chilly, bright mornings and warm sun in the afternoon. 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

Bordeaux 2013 – pre-harvest report

September 27 2013

This article also appears on JancisRobinson.com and Livex – the fine wine trading exchange.

As the Bordeaux harvest begins, here is a detailed report on the weather so far this year and its impact on the vines.

It’s fair to say that my earlier updates on the 2013 growing season in Bordeaux have been less than enthusiastic. Running late in May, The flowering and Soggy Vinexpo, sodden vines in June, Lafite’s weeping willows in July and then, in August, the Hail in Bordeaux series of posts hardly paint a rosy picture.

Yet even at this stage at the end of September, this roller coaster vintage is still too early to call. The weather in October for the red harvest (Bordeaux is 88% red) will be crucial. Even before then, storms are forecast for this weekend, after a week of sunshine.

To follow my harvest updates on Twitter, type the following in the Twitter search box: from:gavinquinney #bdx13

TEN THINGS WE DO KNOW

1. 2013 is an exceptionally late harvest. (Or should be.)

2. 2013 will be a small crop in Bordeaux overall.

3. A cold first half of the year held up growth in the vineyard.

4. An unusually cold, wet May and downpours in June led to late, uneven flowering.

5. July was hot and dry, August sunny, September up and down. October is key.

6. An August hailstorm hit more than 10,000 hectares – about 10% of the Bordeaux vineyard – but none of the top châteaux.

7. Quality and yields will be extremely variable – the contrast is evident in the vineyards.

8. The dry white harvest has started well, while prospects for sweet whites are ‘promising’.

9. The red harvest is likely to be a race against time (and rot) as the autumn weather draws in.

10. The advantage lies with those who have the resources and equipment to be highly selective. Keep reading

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 2 – the path of destruction

August 07 2013

Thousands of hectares of vines between the Garonne and Dordogne rivers in the Entre Deux Mers were decimated by the hailstorm that ripped through this corner of Bordeaux last Friday evening, 2 August.

I’ve seen hail damage to Bordeaux vineyards in 1999, 2003, 2008, 2009 and 2011 at varying stages of the season, from one end of Bordeaux to the other. In our 15 harvests, as I pointed out in yesterday’s report, we’ve had hail at Château Bauduc in 2003, 2009 and now in 2013. But I have never seen anything as bad as the vine damage sustained by some of our neighbours last Friday. Others, meanwhile, were untouched.

The week before, late on Friday 26 July, a hailstorm ruined part of the crop in the Entre Deux Mers around Génissac, near Libourne on the banks of the Dordogne. (Strong winds the same night also caused considerable damage to the famous willow trees at Château Lafite 50kms away near Pauillac but as there was no hail, there was no loss in the vines.)

Last Friday evening, at around 8.45pm on 2 August, this second, much more violent hailstorm destroyed this year’s harvest in many more vineyards in the Entre Deux Mers and over the Dordogne in part of the Côtes de Castillon. Official estimates vary, with figures being bandied about of between 5,000 and 10,000 hectares having been affected to a greater or lesser extent. That’s about 4% to 8% of the whole of the Bordeaux vineyard. (I’m a little sceptical of the 20,000 hectares/50,000 acres now being quoted as a result of state aid being mentioned by the press.) 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.