Tuesday 28 September 2010
The Burgundian harvest bodes well...
Posted by Vicomte Liger-Belair
The 2010 Cote de Nuits harvest continues at a pace. Even though harvest had already started in the Cote de Beaune last week, there weren’t many Cotes de Nuits vignerons in their vineyard parcels. The first secateur cuts in the Cotes de Nuits would only have been this weekend just gone. My original assessment of the grapes on Monday 21st gave me reason to think that this will be a good quality vintage. Sugar was there, acidity though still a little marked at the time, has since fallen notably during the last 10 days of beautiful weather. This bodes well for a nice balance between alcohol and acidity in the final wines. The fine weather certainly allowed phenolic maturity to progress considerably in the last week and by the weekend full ripeness had nearly been reached. Now the work really starts...
Monday 27 September 2010
Silvia Altare, Picking in Piedmont
Posted by Silvia Altare
(this post was written a little over a week ago and due to technical problems with our blogging site we have only just been able to get it posted)
Here we are, back to the crazy days, when heart beats a little faster, finger nails get dirtier and sleeping hours get shorter and shorter! Nothing has changed from last year at the Altare winery, we have the same old…or I should say “expert” pickers in the vineyards, and in the cellar you have me, Tes-san the Japanese super manga hero, Robert the winemaker from Cullen’s in Margaret River and Sorin the Romanian Mr. Fix it and Mr. Reliable...and of course Elio supervising all of us.
We are doing much better with foreign languages this year so much so that we are all experts in swearing and giving orders in each other’s languages. Working for a vintage in a cellar is a cheap and fast way to learn a language; perhaps we should start a new trend and have people coming for free work just to learn the language!
We started picking Dolcetto last week, finally back to the usual time of picking.Yes, we are expecting a great harvest, I know I should talk about harvest only when everything is picked and safe in the cellar, but I cant help it, grapes look amazing, the weather is just how it's supposed to be, the picking crew is all excited, and we are all here ready to work hard to make some good juice! The first pressing we made 2 days after crushing.
Dolcetto literally spends only 2 days in the rotary fermentor, and it’s amazing how much color, tannin and aromas we can get after only 2 short days on the skins. We picked at 21-22 brix, less than usual, but we will finally get a light Dolcetto, exactly as it’s supposed to be.
Getting the juice out the rotary fermentor is easy, but to get the skins and the seeds out and put them in the press, that’s something else! Your hands turn purple and when you are among people there is not hiding that you are a winemaker!! At the same time we were picking the white grapes of Bosco and Albarola in Cinque Terre, Liguria, where Elio has started a little winery a few years ago. It originally started as a hobby, but is now turning into hard work…just what we needed!
We are planning on starting barbera by the end of this the week, in the meantime, so that we don’t loose the’ momentum’ that we have now, we are labelling, doing visits at the winery, delivering, and the most fun, which I get to do, running the office :-(
Here we are, back to the crazy days, when heart beats a little faster, finger nails get dirtier and sleeping hours get shorter and shorter! Nothing has changed from last year at the Altare winery, we have the same old…or I should say “expert” pickers in the vineyards, and in the cellar you have me, Tes-san the Japanese super manga hero, Robert the winemaker from Cullen’s in Margaret River and Sorin the Romanian Mr. Fix it and Mr. Reliable...and of course Elio supervising all of us.
We are doing much better with foreign languages this year so much so that we are all experts in swearing and giving orders in each other’s languages. Working for a vintage in a cellar is a cheap and fast way to learn a language; perhaps we should start a new trend and have people coming for free work just to learn the language!
We started picking Dolcetto last week, finally back to the usual time of picking.Yes, we are expecting a great harvest, I know I should talk about harvest only when everything is picked and safe in the cellar, but I cant help it, grapes look amazing, the weather is just how it's supposed to be, the picking crew is all excited, and we are all here ready to work hard to make some good juice! The first pressing we made 2 days after crushing.
Dolcetto literally spends only 2 days in the rotary fermentor, and it’s amazing how much color, tannin and aromas we can get after only 2 short days on the skins. We picked at 21-22 brix, less than usual, but we will finally get a light Dolcetto, exactly as it’s supposed to be.
Getting the juice out the rotary fermentor is easy, but to get the skins and the seeds out and put them in the press, that’s something else! Your hands turn purple and when you are among people there is not hiding that you are a winemaker!! At the same time we were picking the white grapes of Bosco and Albarola in Cinque Terre, Liguria, where Elio has started a little winery a few years ago. It originally started as a hobby, but is now turning into hard work…just what we needed!
We are planning on starting barbera by the end of this the week, in the meantime, so that we don’t loose the’ momentum’ that we have now, we are labelling, doing visits at the winery, delivering, and the most fun, which I get to do, running the office :-(
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