Meet Monsieur Almeras, he's our enologist. Boy did we get a surprise today when we did our first contrôle de maturité!
This is a test to see how the grapes are progressing in sugar and
acidity. We have 4 different parcels, and the biggest one we divide
into two since the upper half is Côtes du Rhône Villages and the bottom half is just regular Côtes du Rhône, so that makes 5. For the contrôle de maturité you
have to go to each parcel and pick at least 100 grapes, 200 is better
according to M. Almeras, so we did somewhere in between. You have to
make sure to get grape samples from all parts of the vineyard, avoiding
the outside rows and the first vine in each row since they tend to get
more sun. As we criss-crossed the vineyards, we put the grapes in
plastic bag labeled with the name of the vineyard and the grape
variety. Have I mentioned that our grapes are Grenache, Syrah and
Mourvedre? Mostly Grenache, which is the grape varietal most typical to
our region. Anyway, back to our contrôle, once
we had our 100+ grapes, we headed back home for our rendez-vous with M.
Almeras. He arrived with his equipment for our big test. It included;
two plastic bowls a sieve, a refractometre, some pipettes and various
other magic chemistry-related potions! First, he crushed the grapes in
the sieve to extract the juice, then tested the grapes for sugar and
acidity. Here in France, we talk about the sugars in potential alcohol,
not in brix, and boy were we surprised when it turned out that all of
our grenache was already above12 degrees potential alcohol! M. Almeras
was concerned that the acidity levels were fairly low too. So, what
does all of this mean you ask? Well, at this stage of development the
grapes tend to gain one degree of potential alcohol per week. Which
means in a week, all of our grenache will be at 13+ degrees! Which
means that we will need to pick them much sooner than we had planned
unless we want to have a wine that is 15 degrees, which we absolutely
do not want. Panic! Have you seen what our "micro-winery" looks like
lately? What, I haven't sent any pictures of the finished floor? Well I
will, and needless to say, the floor is really nice, but if we don't
get some vats in there fast, we won't have anywhere to put these grapes
that we suddenly need to harvest almost 2 weeks ahead of schedule.
Well, I spent the rest of the day making panicked phone calls and
running to our equipment supplier to pick up our power sprayer, pump,
and various other things we will need. I also confirmed the delivery of
the de-stemmer as well as the rest of the important equipment we
ordered from him. The biggest problem though is EDF (Electricité de
France) or, the electric company. You see, to run all of this equipment
we need 3-phase electricity, and we have been working with them to get
it installed in time for the harvest. Last week they told us that it
the work couldn't be done until the 2nd week in September, and last
week, that was ok, but this week it's NOT!!! So I called the man and
begged him to help us, stating that we would have 20,000 euros worth of
vinification equipment that we wouldn't be able to use if they couldn't
get it done before that. The problem is that the company that they
sub-contract the work out to is on vacation until the 5th, and the week
of the 5th, they are already booked solid! So I pleaded with him to
find me someone else to do the work, he said he would do his best and
call me back. Usually that is the kiss of death here in southern
France, usually you hear back from him 3 weeks later, but miracles do
happen, and he called me back just a few hours later with news that he
had found someone that could come and do it before the 1st of
September! Someone, somewhere wants us to make wine this year. Now
let's just hope we can get the vats delivered....
Drought! (The vine on the left is suffering from the drought, the one
on the right looks pretty normal.) Things are looking pretty bleak here
on the rain horizon. We haven't had a decent day of rain since April
and the effects are showing in the vineyards. In one of our vineyards
there are several rows where the grapes have started to shrivel up even
before they turned red. This section of the vineyard we will certainly
not harvest. In other parts the grapes are very small and the bunches
are very irregular, effects of an uneven flowering and the lack of
rain. We'll be looking at a smaller than usual harvest, hopefully with
good concentration, our goal now though is to avoid super high sugar
levels which will make the wines very alcoholic. Luckily, the weather
hasn't been overly hot, and the nights are quite cool. So therefore
we're crossing our fingers that the grapes will ripen slowly with the
right combination of sugar and acidity and we will be able to make a
delicious wine for all to drink!
