la gramiere

Paris & Pressing

Last week was a busy one!  On Monday I spent some time with Denis Gayte and his dad Philippe, helping him press.  It was a big job and they needed one more set of hands.  My job was to shovel the skins into the trailer after they came out of the press.  Denis was down in the big 120 hl vat, and his dad was running the press.  Phew, I got some good exercise, filling that trailor up!  That's one of the best things about harvest, it gets you in pretty good shape before winter sets in and you have a tendency to stay inside and eat and drink!

Then it was off to Paris for a quick trip, with an over-night in Gevrey-Chambertin on my way up.  I spent about 3 years living in Burgundy, working in the vineyards and in a lab, so I like to stop over at my friend Mme Bartet's for a visit from time to time.  It's always good to catch up with her and her friend Monsieur Boillot.  Both spent their lives working in the historical vineyards of the Côte d'Or, it's amazing to think about.  I rented a room from Mme Bartet and worked with her in the vineyards off and on for 3 years.  She is the mother of Bruno Clair, a highly respected winemaker with amazing vineyards from Marsannay to Savigny-les-Beaune, with plots of Clos de Bèze, Corton Charlemagne and Bonnes Mares along the way.  Mme Bartet's house is at the foot of the famous Clos Saint Jacques vineyard in Gevrey-Chambertin.  I wonder if they ever really comprehend the reverie that their vineyards conjure up for wine-lovers the world over? 

There's something very moving about visiting world-famous vineyards.  Driving along the Route des Grands Crus from Gevrey-Chambertin, through Morey Saint-Denis, Chambolle-Musigny, arriving at the Clos de Vougeot and then on towards the mythic vineyards of Vosne-Romanée.  I do it every time I go there.  If you ever doubted the notion of terroir, or a "sense of place" all you have to do is drive along that ancient road and ponder the fact that wine has been made here for centuries, wine that has such a powerful effect on people that it is known throughout the world.  It's a pretty amazing feeling and I recommend it to all wine lovers.  The same sort of feeling is conjured up when visiting the magical vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, or Château Latour, or the Côtes des Blancs in Champagne, the sense of their importance can be overwhelming for a wine lover. 

But I digress... On to Paris for a meeting with the whole team of writers at Bettane & Desseauve.  I was of course late and practically running through the streets of Paris, I finally decided to get into a cab, but that in the end wasn't much faster.  The driver was great, trying his best to help me get there, but we hit every light, were behind every newbee riding one of the new "Vélib"  bikes on the Paris streets, and finally we got stuck at a construction site waiting through 3 lights while a semi tried to load a container onto the back of his truck!!  Finally I made it, a good 20 minutes late, but it turned out I hadn't missed a thing, and I wasn't even the last person to arrive.

We had a sort of debriefing on the guide, how the process worked, how we could make it better, what they expected from us this year etc.  The guide is selling quite well, it's number 2 only behind the Guide Hachette, which is not surprising at all, and ahead of Gault & Millau and their old guide that La Revue du Vin de France still publishes.  It was all very pleasing to hear, and great to meet the other people that worked on the project. 

That evening there was a cocktail party to celebrate the release at Caves Legrand.  It was a rather small gathering of friends and colleagues and a few vignerons.  There was lots of great wine to be tasted including the 2003 Chambertin from Domaine A. Rousseau.  Eric Rousseau, who is pictured here in the background with Michel Bettane on the right, generously brought 6 bottles to the party, so we all got to enjoy a glass!  It was a great way to celebrate the fruition of this colossal project, and great for me to get to meet all of the people that I had heard about and had been working with but didn't necessarily know in person.  Today I've been working on translating certain parts of the guide into English to show to an American publisher, so hopefully, sometime next year, it will be available in the US!

Travail dans la cave...

Phew, this year is a bit tricky as far as vinification goes, we're pumping over every day, trying to give the wine lots of air.  The colors are beautiful but the tannins are a bit on the light side, we'll see how it turns out in the end!! It'll definitely be a good year, maybe not a tannic monster, but lots of pretty fruit, that's not so bad! 

One of the things I find most frustrating in our winery is the lack of space. When we are working, there's always a hose, a pump, a bucket to be tripped over, and usually by the end I'm cursing at one of them, and at myself.  Climbing up and down the ladder, putting the hose in the vat, opening the tap, climbing back up to make sure it's in there, then turning on the pump.  Sometimes I turn on the pump, the hose lurches and flies out of the vat, while the juice is spraying out and I get a good sticky shower of fermenting grape juice!  Luckily it's not often.  Usually, I'm leaning as far as I can, holding the hose and trying to turn the pump on without falling over or loosing hold of the hose... If only Matt didn't work for Cisco and have to return to his day job after harvest, then I'd have someone to hold the hose for me...

Grape juice cocktails & Footstomping the Mourvèdre!

This year, our Mourvèdre vineyard wasn't very happy, and we only got a fraction of what we would get from a normal year, about 150 liters.  Since that was the case, we decided that we would put all of it in the rosé.  With such a small quantity, it would have been impossible to put it in a vat and bleed it off, but we wanted some of the flavor and color from the skins, we didn't want to simply press it right away.  Matt thought of a perfect solution.  We would foot-stomp the grapes directly in the press, pump away the juice and then press the remaining skins!  We've always wanted to stomp the grapes, but for some reason, we didn't do it, so this was the perfect occasion.  (Don't worry we all washed our feet!!)

In honor of this occasion, Molly and Matt decided to make us a delicious cocktail to put us all in a celebratory mood for the end of harvest.  They took some fermenting syrah juice, added some Aquavit and crushed ice and then garnished it with some fresh mourvedre grapes on skewers!  Pretty, and delicious!!! We all had at least two! 

We all got the chance to stomp the grapes, even my Mom who was too short to get into the press basket, so we had her do hers in this big crate!  It was the perfect way to celebrate the end of harvest!

Picking, picking, picking!

Ever since I got back from my two days of visits with Kermit Lynch , it's been a race to get ready for harvest!  Family arriving on various days, made it fun and festive.  We started picking Saturday, September 1st!! Crazy early, but with the strange weather around here this year, the grapes are  ripe! The fruit is beautiful!  Small little berries, very concentrated juice.  There's only one thing that we're looking for as far as a flaw, and that's bunches that are actually starting to shrivel up, due to the drought.  Some vines have started to drop their leaves at the base and the grapes then start the look like raisins.  These bunches we are leaving since the sugars are so concentrated that they're just too sweet!

Last night we bled off some juice for the rosé.  Look at that color, only about 6 hours on the skins!

Tonight as we were loading the destemmer, my soon-to-be brother in law, Billy got creative with the beer cooling!  He made a daisy chain and stuck them in the chiller that we use to cool the wine down.  Mmmm very cold beer after only a few minutes is a very good thing after a long hot day of picking!

More photos and news to come!