We had two glorious days on Friday and Saturday, with some mist in the morning that melted away around 9 to 10 am, leaving us with bright blue sky. No wind and high temperatures: an Indian summer!

The morning mist...

... gradually dissolves around 10 am

We also pick on Saturday, as we want to finish all the Grenache in our various plots over the different villages. All that will be left in terms of Grenache for Monday will be a very old vineyard at Beaucastel, which always ripens later than the others, and some Grenache in Vinsobres
Mourvèdre is beginning to get fully ripe. We may start picking on Monday, and so we pick some sample batches for analysis.

Harvest is now over in Gigondas. This year we separately picked a small plot of very old vines that will be vinified separately from the rest.

It is difficult to carry out manual cap-punching efficiently with some vats, so we resort in these cases to a pneumatic cap-puncher.

Gerard working the pneumatic cap-puncher