la gramiere

Here we go again!

Controle de Maturité number 2 was yesterday, and it dealt us a big surprise!  Our biggest vineyard, planted in grenache, went from 11.5 degrees potential alcohol, to 13.3 in exactly one week.  Yikes! Almost 2 degrees, when normally the rule of thumb is one degree per week. Holy cow, shift into high gear.  Here I was telling everyone that we wouldn't start harvesting until Saturday the 9th. For a moment we thought we might try to start this Saturday, but in the end we decided not to lose our cool, and to think through things.  The first thing I decided to do was to go out and re-do the sugar check, just to make sure that I hadn't accidentally picked only ripe grapes that looked pretty for my "controle".  I went to the train station to pick up my mom and then headed straight to the vineyards to pick 100 more grapes (the little individual ones, not whole bunches).  We decided to do an experiment though.  My mom went through and picked only ones that looked really ripe and I picked ones that didn't look super ripe.  When we got home we crushed them separately and tested them separately.  The results didn't help us any!  The super-ripe ones came in at 14.1 and the not-so-ripe ones came in at 13.1.  We blended it together and tried again, 13.5. 

While collecting the grapes, I tasted about as many as I collected.  Most winemakers say that after a certain point you shouldn't worry about the numbers and go by taste.  I had to include this picture of our dog, Daisy.  She is our chief taster.  She always finds the ripest grapes! They are starting to taste pretty darn good, but my gut feeling was that Saturday was too early to start, so we made the decision to start Tuesday morning, giving us enough time to get properly organized and the grapes to develop their flavors just that little bit more.  Let's hope we made the right decision!

How the grapes are ripening.

 

                

These two pictures show the effect that drought can have on the grapes.   In the one on the left, you can see that the grapes are still light in color, sort of a pinkish purple, as opposed to the ones on the right which have turned entirely black. (Click on the pictures to see them upclose).  This year the ripening is very uneven.  These two grenache vines are right near each other in the same vineyard, yet the grapes are much riper on the second vine.  We're finding this all over the grenache vineyards, the syrah, however, seems to be fine.  What happens is when the vines are stressed from lack of water and high temperatures, they tend to shut down, and when this happens the grapes don't ripen.  Luckily for us, the temperatures have dropped significantly since the end of July and last week it rained, a lot.  According to our enologist M. Alméras, it takes the vines about a week to absorb the moisture and to start seeing the benefits of the rain.  At this point the grapes should continue to ripen normally, just in time to be picked in a couple of weeks.  It was the perfect time for rain, but now we don't want anymore, not until after harvest!!!  So keep your fingers crossed that the rain will stay away...

Almost Famous!

Welcome, Colorado Springs!  For the rest of you, there's a big article about us in the Colorado Springs Gazette today, my hometown paper.  Dave Phillips wrote a great article.  It was my first time being interviewed, and I have to say that the article turned out quite well. It's very flattering to say the least.  The only correction that I have to make is that I did not say (and would never ever say) that my hometown is a cultural wasteland!  Afterall, that's where I got my start, took my first French classes and learned about wine.  So please, please don't think badly of me when you read that! 

Otherwise, welcome to the blog. I hope you like it!

To access the article, go to www.gazette.com, click on today's e-edition, sign in using the user id: 5976553 and the password: lillard - choose the August 24th edition at the top, then click on the "LIFE" section on the left - et voila!

Controle de Maturité - Checking the Ripeness

Yesterday we did our first "controle de maturité"  in order to see how the grapes are ripening, how much sugar there is, and where we are in terms of acidity this year.  First, I went to each vineyard and gathered grapes (just two berries from each bunch, not the whole bunch).  In order to do this I must zig-zag thoughout the vineyard and randomly collect samples.  It's hard because you are most likely to pick the nicest looking, blackest grapes, but that is a no-no because then your sample won't reflect the true ripeness of the entire vineyard.  What I do is look away while I'm pulling them off, trying to increase the chances of getting a good mix.  The rule of thumb is to collect 100 grapes.  When I was younger and doing harvest at wineries here in France and also in California, I used to try to count to 100. I gave that up and just criss-crossed the vineyard several times. Surely I have many more than 100 in each bag. 

Our enologist, M. Alméras, came just after lunch and we crushed the grapes in a plastic bowl trying to get each and every grape to break. He swished the bowl around to homogenize the juice.  Then M. Alméras sucks some of the juice into his pipette and squirts it on a device called a refractometer, holds it up to the sun and looks through the view-finder to read the potential alcohol.

Things are quite different this year as compared to last.  On the same day, 1 year ago, the grenache from the Lauzettes vineyard was at 12 degrees potential alcohol, yesterday it was at 10.6.  The acidity is lower, which is too bad, but that's the beauty of making wine, every year is different.   This means we are about 10 days to 2 weeks from harvest.  More time for us to get everything ready! Phew!

We thank you for your support!

Remember that old Bartles and Jaymes ad?  "...and thank you for your support."  Well, I have to say thank you to all of you who are out there reading along and joining us on our adventure.  It really is amazing.  I've been getting emails and comments posted from many of you, and I really, truly appreciate all of the good thoughts you have been sending our way!

Here's an example of an email I received this morning from Pat:

Wow!  I just finished reading your account of your visit with Kermit Lynch and taking an order from him for your red wine.  You know, I share in a small way your feelings of success and happiness because reading your blog has taken me along on your journey.  Please keep up the blog…I am waiting with great anticipation to see how the upcoming harvest goes, the winemaking and, of course, how your second vintage turns out.

I’ll also keep an eye out for a mention of your wine in Kermit’s newsletter, because I can’t think of a better way of cementing this long range bond with you at La Gramiere than opening a bottle, toasting you both across the ocean and tasting your wine.  Cheers! 

            Pat B.

Now, I want you to know that I don't know Pat B., I just received this email out of the blue this morning.  It's so exciting how much goodwill this blog has created towards our project.  Thank you so very much, to Fritz, Terry, Kelli, Pat, John, Maryanne, Iris, Rob...all of you who post comments and send emails from time to time, I love it! 

The Pilgrimage

Wow, where to start?  Friday morning we had an 11:00 appointment to meet Kermit Lynch at Domaine Tempier. The purpose of this visit was, of course, to have Kermit taste our wine now that it is in bottle.  When setting up the appointment with Kermit, I also mentioned that I had never been to Domaine Tempier (one of Kermit's flagship wineries) so we decided to meet there, since Kermit lives in the next village over. 

As we arrived at Domaine Tempier, I felt as if I were coming full circle, as if this was a place I should have visited years ago.  You see, when you work at Kermit Lynch, there are a few domaines that are really cornerstones of the business, and Tempier is at the head of the list. There is a sort of mythical quality surrounding this winery and their wines.  Made famous by the wines of Lucien and Lulu Peyraud, Domaine Tempier has come to symbolize the philosophy of Kermit Lynch.  It's so much more than the wine, it's the whole southern French lifestyle magically brought together by Tempier wines and Lulu's cooking.  Richard Olney, who lived nearby, wrote a cookbook about the cuisine of Lulu Peyraud, entitled Lulu's Provençal Table, a wonderful historical collection of the food and wine served over the years at Domaine Tempier.  Finally I had the chance to visit, and with my own wines in tow, hmm, that seemed a bit out of place.

We met Kermit in the entrance and waited a short while, the time for Daniel Ravier, the winemaker, to finish a previous visit with other clients.  He walked up and said hello, immediately handing us glasses and pouring us a taste of the 2005 rosé.  As we were driving down, the thought crossed my mind that Kermit might want to taste our wines there, at Domaine Tempier, but I quickly put that thought out of my mind - that would be too much.  Well, guess what?  Sure enough, Kermit says, "Let's go to the cellar and taste your wines with Daniel." Ugh, the last thing I would ever want to do.  Taste our first wines, rosé and red, in the cellars of one of the most famous Provençal wineries!!!  Well, we had no choice.

Tractor Troubles

When you have a tractor that was built in 1962, things tend to go wrong from time to time.  Whether it's the hitch literally breaking the first time you try out your brand new sprayer, the tire going flat after ploughing when Matt is off in another country and I am at the vineyards alone, or,  like today, the battery simply was dead.  Somethings are big, like the arm of the three-point hitch breaking, some things are little like a flat tire or a battery being dead, but all of these things add up to a lot of time lost when we're trying on a weekend to get some vineyard work in.

Luckily for us we have some very generous friends who are always willing to help. Like Jacques, he lets us store our tractor in his back yard, for free.  When we first got the tractor we

had it at our house in St Quentin la Poterie, which is about 20 minutes from our vineyards by car.  Consider this though, by tractor it takes an hour to get to our vineyards, ugh!  We did it for the first few months, it was awful, but we couldn't find anyone who had a garage or hangar for us to rent. 

Finally, in desperation, I went to see Jacques who had asked all of his neighbors for us, but didn't find anyone either.  He agreed that we could keep it in his back yard behind their house. We've offered to pay them rent, but they refuse to even consider it.  Whenever we have any trouble with the tractor, Jacques is there to help us out.  The tire went flat again a couple of weeks ago. Jacques has a compressor and filled it up, but it went flat again before we could get it to the garage.  Jacques jumped in his car, borrowed a heavy-duty jack from a friend and helped us get the tire off.  He then called the garage in the next town over and found out that they couldn't take it until the next morning. In order to save us a trip down there, he offered to take the tire over and drop it off for us! What a guy!   

You know the grapes are getting ripe when...

The boars start sampling them!  I found this example of the boars having a tasty treat up in our Syrah vineyard on Tuesday evening.  (See how the grapes are missing on the end of this bunch?) In some areas people have big problems with boars eating the ripening grapes,  luckily for us, our vineyards are located in an area where there are acres and acres of vineyards covering the hillside, thus giving them a large choice of delicious grapes in various stages of ripeness.  (I think that's a run-on sentence.)

Something else kind of interesting , the existance of several white grape vines inter-planted with the grenache in our biggest vineyard.  I have no idea what varietal it is, probably grenache blanc, but it's fun to come upon one and taste the grapes.  We just put them right in with the red ones during harvest. The percentage of the white grapes is so small it won't make any difference and it maybe even  adds a little something.  It used to be common practice to plant up to 10% white grapes among the reds, adding more aromatic flavors to the red. Some people still do it in Côte Rôtie and Hermitage.  We even thought about replacing some of the vines that are dead in the vineyard with some marsanne or roussanne, or some other southern Rhône white varietal. I will have to do more research on that though....

What to write, when there's nothing to write about?

Truth be told, there's not much exciting going on around here this week, but I keep thinking to myself, I've got to think of a post for the blog.  I could write about digging out the drive way and preparing it in order to pour cement. That's not very exciting or romantic, but we're trying to get it done before harvest.  I could tell you about the wonderful dinner we had with good friends at a new restaurant not far from Uzès.  That was fun. It's called "le tracteur" (the tractor).  They have a well chosen wine list and a very reasonable menu that changes nightly.  I wanted to write about that today, but I forgot to bring my camera so I don't have a picture, and I like to post pictures.  There's also the delicious bottle of  1999 Hermitage Blanc "Le Rouet Blanc" from Jean-Luc Colombo that we drank the other night.  It was such an amazing bottle of wine, but I'm not really a wine reviewer, and I think it's kind of boring to read about someone absolutely "loving" a bottle of wine that is no longer available on the market. It's almost like bragging.  This week I am catching up, organizing things, getting ready for harvest, which is only a few weeks away and taking a bit of a breather since the last few weeks have been so crazy.   A few friends have stopped by to purchase wine, both red and rosé. That is a nice feeling, always flattering.  Otherwise, my life this week, is probably a lot like everyone else's... There are some exciting things coming up though, I'll be sure to tell you all about them!

Veraison bandwagon

Well, everyone is talking about it, so I figured I may as well join in.  Here are some pictures of the Mourvédre (1st picture) and the Grenache (next two) starting to turn red, a process which is called "veraison".   When this happens we know we are in the home stretch, looking towards an early September harvest.  Luckily, the heat wave has ended and we are back to warm days and cool nights which will help tremendously.  If the temps had stayed in the upper 90s until harvest, I'm not sure what we would have been picking, raisins most likely.

We're looking at a pretty small crop this year, but hopefully  
that will mean the quality will be comparable to last year.  The biggest problem we could encounter is that the ripening actually gets "stuck"  which can happen in drought years. The grapes start to turn color, and then, due to the harsh weather conditions, they get stuck and remain half ripe dark berries and half pale purple unripe berries.  We already saw some of that last year, I'm really hoping we'll avoid it this year.... we'll see.