2024 vintage

A vintage saved from the waters

The season first saw a cold spell in the second half of April. While we escaped a severe frost, the buds nevertheless suffered.

Flowering occurred during a cold and windy period in early June and lasted around ten days, causing some flower clusters to become sparse.

Spring, starting in March, was particularly rainy; March received three times the usual rainfall for that month.

This dreadful weather favored the early arrival of diseases throughout the vineyard, with downy mildew and black rot leading the way with devastating attacks.

The exceptional rainfall mainly benefited the weeds, maintaining a constantly humid environment and making mechanical tilling very difficult.

We maintained regular applications of our organic phytosanitary treatments based on Bordeaux mixture, with up to thirteen rounds of treatment.

We had to wait until mid-July for summer to finally arrive, and even then, instances of sunburn on the vines appeared.

The teams worked tirelessly to counter this very unfavorable weather.

Today, in mid-September, the vines are struggling to progress, and initial outbreaks of gray rot have appeared.

We thus decide to begin harvest on Monday, September 16, as anticyclonic conditions set in and a drying north wind blows continuously, concentrating the juice.

The first grapes we harvest are small, with large stems, thick skins, and very little juice.

Some clusters contain more dried berries than normal ones.

In this case, the sorting step is essential. This year, we implemented two rounds of sorting: a manual sorting on a sorting table, followed by mechanical sorting after destemming to sort the berries by density, keeping only the best ones.

Despite this, the vats are struggling to fill; we’re seeing losses of up to 70%. We are heading towards 60 barrels of wine produced instead of the usual 200, yielding around 10-12 hectoliters per hectare.

This will make it one of the lowest-yield harvests since 1997, which will be remembered for this fierce struggle against the climate’s challenges, but nature proved stronger.

The harvest will last 4.5 days instead of the usual 8.

The vats are sometimes only filled to 1/5 capacity, making punch-downs difficult. We’re mainly working with pump-overs. We decide to install heating blankets to maintain the temperature of the barely filled vats and help set the color.

The first juices we taste are well-balanced; the tannins are smooth, and maturity is there.