Vintages

The various vintages: Key points

2008 In one word ? simply « Great »

The newspapers do not describe 2008 as a great vintage in Burgundy. Yet white wines are superb. In our young wine growers’ life, it may well be the best vintage we have vinified so far.

Back to context. After a relatively mild winter, the months of May and June were particularly rainy. Soils were soaked to the point getting to the vines for treatment was difficult, even with a light-weight caterpillar tractor. Mildew is, of course, the risk most generally dreaded by wine growers and that eventually affects inflorescence more or less deeply. Our vines « resist ». We reached the end of July tired but happy to have kept magnificent healthy grapes. The vines were beautiful.

Shhhhhhh, Bawwwwww ! yes it was a wall of hail that one could hear coming from the west as a terrible storm hit on August 7th. The deluge of ice resounded like the din of an infuriated ocean. The work of 10 minutes : 35 to 50% of our Vinzelles grapes were destroyed and up to 90% on our vines at Leynes (less than 2 miles further south). The berries were hit by impacts but the leafs were just partially injured which allowed the grapes to finish their maturation.

After such a rainy spring and summer, September was dry and sunny. We started picking on September 26th and finished on October 7th. The vines at la Soufrandière endured belated maturity because of the traumatic hail storm and the grapes were, therefore, late picked on October 4th and 5th. This, again, was a vintage salvaged by three consecutive weeks with North wind.

The wines are simply Great, well-balanced, loaded with personnality : minerality, fruit, length, acidity : they have it all.

Happy Wines ;-)
2007 Tension, fruit. « As subtle as Air » !!

What a year, again ! Spring was particularly mild, even warm. The highest temperatures (29-30°C) were seen in April, not in July or August. Bud-break and growth occured very early. To give an example, fully spread leaves are usually seen early May, but were already there this year on April 10th ! Flowering was very early too from mid to late May (as opposed to June 10th in a normal year) and this heralded very early days for the harvest to come ! Were we to re-live the 2003 vintage and its start of picking in mid-August ???

Summer turned out to be particularly cool, grey and dull in August. The vines remained superb with healthy small berries ; but what if they failed to mature ? Fortunately high pressure reappeared on August 20th all over Burgundy bringing with it some northbound wind (« la Bise ») and sunshine too for nine uninterrupted days. Temperature rose. The vintage was safe.

We started picking on september 5th and ended on 16th. The very next day hail hit Vinzelles ! The 2007 vintage is particularly « particularly subtle as air », bearing fruit and minerality. Terroirs are well defined, delineated. A racy vintage to be kept until it finally delivers itself.
2006 What a Vintage of Fruit and Balance !!

Yet another vine-grower’s Vintage ! Indeed, grapes reached complete rot free maturity only when and if very strict work had been carried out in the vines (ploughing, debudding, tying-up and trimming by hand, etc.). We are inclined to say that the vine-grower’s job is in the vine. Enologists can always find tricks to try and “set a wrong right again”. Yet grand wines are born only from excellent grapes which indeed demand much care, passion and sometimes sweat in the vine.

A very snowy winter in the Mâconnais region offered some magnificent soils for ploughing in late March thanks to the effect of cold temperatures. A very fine July was followed by a rather rainy August. Grapes eventually went from unripe to overripe (even with rot) with extreme speed. To quote Gugu (a vine-grower friend) : “before september 16th it was too early but after the 19th it was too late”. A bit of an exageration but not such a bad way to depict the vintage. Choosing the dates for picking, plot after plot, was of paramount importance to select the ideal maturity. We started harvesting the earliest plots on Sept. 16th and ended with the late ones on the 28th. 2006 is a vintage of fruit, race and pleasure. An ideal one while waiting for the great 2005 to mature. Cheers.
2005 What a Fantastic Vintage !!

Wine-writers heralded an extraordinary vintage right at the end of the picking of the 2005 grapes. Let us keep our cool as headlines may affect our common sense and let us not be hemmed in by the idea that one style forced on everyone at a time. Things may always vary. Yet it is true to a majority of winegrowers that 2005 is an exceptional vintage. We indeed enjoyed ideal weather conditions for our Burgundian Chardonnay. June and July had sunny conditions and although August was somehow fresh and cloudy, it remained very dry. Grapes did not suffer from heat and the water reserves of the soil allowed the vines to survive the dry spell. In mid-september the berries were a superb gold and perfectly healthy. Truly a vintage to be remembered.

We started picking the grapes on september 15 and ended on september 30. The yield was rather moderate and gave sweet grapes also enjoying fine acidity.

The 2005 wines are therefore rich, well-balanced and racy. Each terroir gives the best expression of itself. But hurry since quantity is low and demand is high !!

Cheers !! ;-).
2004 Back to classics !

After a superlative 2003 Vintage (the hottest and earliest in a very long time), 2004 looks like it is going to be a much more classical year, with definition of terroir, fruit and acidity finding harmony and balance.

The weather conditions matched the average data of the past without ups, without downs. Relatively cool mornings, in early spring, caused Oidium to develop (a vineyard disease that affects grapes). The disease can rapidly destroy the whole future crop if precise and minute works in the vineyard are not carried out in time (debudding, aeration, trellising, treatment, etc.) This year, we spent even more time in our plots helping our vines to grow – a work done entirely by hand- giving our vines more air to breathe and to avoid the disease. In the end, we were able to pick wonderfully healthy ripe grapes.

Another strong characteristic of 2004: higher yields. The vine truly compensated the hydric stress (water deficiency) of 2003 by increasing the number of grapes. There again, moderate yields had to be imposed if the essence of the vintage was to be obtained. We did not produce more than 55 hl/ha at La Soufrandière which is a relatively « low » yield for such a year.

Oidium was not the only event the vineyard had to suffer from: on July 22nd, a terrifying hailstorm also hit Vergisson, la Roche-Vineuse in particular, destroying 100% of grapes on 300 ha (740 acres)!! Fortunately, our vines and those we buy grapes from were not hit except for parts « En Carementrant » at Vergisson. We started picking on September 26th and finished on…October 13th. A late year.

A difficult year, say all winegrowers, but a rewarding one in the bottles. Cheers!
2003 Exceptional, Superlative !!

The scorching heat of 2003 also affected Burgundy. No living Burgundian had ever experienced such an early ripening process, at least not since the end of the 19th century ! At the end of june 2003, the dry hot weather was already an indication of very early « vendanges », expected on the first days of September. In the end, it was as early as August 16th that we started picking, and we finished on September 4th 2003. This has GOT to be THE exceptional vintage, such as no-one may never see again, unless some new climatic changes occur.

In 2003, the grapes were both ripe and warm. In order to limit the effect of heat on the musts, we picked only from 6 am until 1 pm ; and our must-cooling system proved to be very useful. Indeed, excessive temperatures on the juice may cause premature alcoholic fermentation during the settling of the must (static clarification of the juice before alcoholic fermentation) and give « bad aromas » to the wine. We were able to cool the grape juice down to 14°C (57°F) while incoming grapes reached temperatures exceeding 30°C (around 90°F).

Well, warm it was, but again, all the work done in the vines of La Soufrandière and in those selected by BRET BROTHERS during the time leading up to the vendange brought about well-balanced grapes from plots of vines that successfully resisted the heat.
We shall keep explaining that a great wine is always produced in the vineyard. Ploughing of the soil, old vines, de-budding, respect for the plant, and so on… are all indispensable factors for producing great terroir wines .

In the end, our 2003 wines have the unmistakable mark of the vintage ; they are ripe, fleshy and rich. But we are also pleased with their balance (we re-acidified NONE of them, we NEVER do !), the fruit, and the expression of each terroir.
2002 Ripe and well-balanced

2002 is the prototype of an ideal vintage : maturity, balance, and very few diseases in the vineyard, perfect conditions for ploughing. All things considered, after a year like 2001 when our spines had suffered from three intensive weeks of hand-tilling, 2002 was an easier year.

But we had strong storms in August and conditions which normally bring with them grey rot on unripe grapes from over-yielding or badly aerated neighboring vines. In the Mâconnais many vines were infected and even more so as you travelled towards Southern France. Remember the tragic tropical rains around Avignon ? At the end of August, a dry Northern wind blew for six days straight ; this stopped the rot from further developing, even drying the already infected berries.

Generally all the vines that had been well pruned, with good aeration between bunches with reasonable yields, behaved remarkably well. None of the vines of La Soufrandière were affected by rot. The work that we had carried out in the vines since 2000 obviously began to pay off (ploughing in particular, all the hand-made de-budding, tying-up, trimming, plus the absence of added manure or fertilizer apart from tiny quantities of bio-compost on some plots). We witnessed the same consequences on all the grapes that we bought.

We started picking on September 18th and ended on 29th. We ended on October 5th to be precise, with the late-maturing Mâcon-Cruzille.

The grapes were golden and ripe yet with fine acidity. Undoubtedly a fine vintage whose early charm has developed for some cuvées .
2001 A stylish Burgundian classic

The « Ban des vendanges » (officially approved opening date for grape-picking) was as early as September 14th for Pouilly-Vinzelles. But, at La Soufrandière, we thought the grapes needed to ripen more fully so we waited until September 26th to start picking. We picked the last of our grapes on October 5th.

2001 had a lot of rain, which made ploughing, in particular, a very difficult task indeed. The very wet soil made it impossible to work with vineyard tractors. The alternative ? Hand tilling !

A rather gloomy summer on the whole slowed down the ripenig of the grapes. But what balance, in the end !! The golden berries had very good acidity. 2001 may not have been presented as the vintage of the Century, but one needs only to taste the wines now (June 2005) to appreciate all the dimension and all the expression of this grand Burgundian vintage, a genuine vintage of Terroirs.

This vintage also offered a golden opportunity to make wines from grapes affected by noble rot. (the grapes of our X-Mûr 2001 were picked on October 22nd).
2000 A grand Première !!

It was our first ever vintage at La Soufrandière. So many questions were raised, but we were so happy to eventually make a long time dream come true !

Conditions were ideal until the end of August. Very good maturity, healthy grapes…

Then, as sudden and dramatic as in the winegrowers’ worst nightmares, a hail-storm hit us at the end of August. Fortunately only the South-facing part of our vineyard was hit, and the berries dried very quickly under the warm August sunshine.

We picked and sorted ripe grapes from September 16th onwards (those affected by hail were eliminated). Then, other plots, until we finished picking on September 27th at our Pouilly-Vinzelles Climat « Les Quarts » Cuvée Millerandée.
For those wise enough to wait until now, bottles of the 2000 vintage are tasting well.

Vintages

2008 In one word ? simply « Great »

2007 Tension, fruit. « As subtle as Air » !!

2006 What a Vintage of Fruit and Balance !!

2005 What a Fantastic Vintage !!

2004 Back to classics !

2003 Exceptional, Superlative !!

2002 Ripe and well-balanced

2001 A stylish Burgundian classic

2000 A grand Première !!