As forecasted, we finished grape picking on Tuesday evening. This event was celebrated by the traditional harvest meal with the whole team!
The weather changed on Wednesday, and very heavy rains ensued on Thursday.

Rain on Thursday

Fortunately this bad weather only occurred after the harvest. It would have been impossible to get into the vineyards with so much water.
Now we have finished picking, we can appreciate how exceptionally lucky we have been this year. It is rare that harvest goes as smoothly as it has done in 2004. It is even rarer that all our grape varieties are picked so perfectly healthy and ripe.
The down side is that the quantities will be low (roughly 10% less than in 2003, and 40% below 2001). On the up side, the quality of the first wines that have been de-vatted is exceptional….

Harvesting boxes are carefully cleaned before being stacked away.

We thought it would be a good idea to continue this weblog over a full year, so that you can follow every step in the winery and the vineyard. What do you think? Please send us your opinions, comments and suggestions.

The forecast was wrong, as the weather stayed very fine on Thursday and Friday, after rather misty mornings.

Beaucastel, October 8th at 8am

This gave us the opportunity at Beaucastel to finish picking the Counoise grapes. We have rarely experienced a harvest under such good conditions!

We have now finished picking in all the vineyards, with the exception of Vinsobres, where we still have two days harvesting.

The last two days have stayed fine. The forecast is for rain in the coming days, so the teams are hard at it! Working hours have been extended, as we have just two days left and we hope to escape the rain. This morning we are picking Mourvèdre grapes with the full team, as well as the last plot of Roussanne. This means that we have now finished the whites. We still have 5 hectares of Grenache to pick at Vinsobres, as well as some Mourvèdre and Counoise at Beaucastel. The first tanks to be filled have now finished their alcoholic fermentation. We taste them and carefully note our impressions. Practically every day until we make the final blends (in March 2005), we will be tracking their evolution. Samples from fermented tanks are tasted every day up to the blending stage This will give us a first idea of the flavour profile of the vintage. It should tell the story of the exceptional weather we have had during this harvest (watch this space!).

Yet another very fine day, as you can see from this picture of Grand Prébois taken this morning:

At Beaucastel, we are picking Mourvèdre grapes today, using both the big and small teams (a total of 85 people).
The winery looks like an ant’s nest. There are all these people in the Beaucastel vineyards, and the grapes flow in, and cannot be kept waiting.
To make things more complicated, we are de-vatting the tanks that were filled at the start of harvest. We run off the wine that flows freely from the vat after fermentation, and then rake out the solid matter to produce the press wine. We do not use the latter in our blends. The residual solid matter, or marc, is taken to the distillery.

La cuve , asséchée, après l'écoullage du vin de goutte...

...Gérard (inside the vat)...

... and Franck rake out the “marc” which will be pressed to obtain press wine!

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

The weather is quite exceptional today. Very hot and sunny. And not a puff of wind. Just like mid-summer.

We are starting on the « big plot », a large-sized vineyard of Grenache grapes that lies just opposite Beaucastel.

Pickers in the “big plot”

Jean-Yves has been managing the main team for 10 years

At Vinsobres, we finish picking Syrah and start on the Grenache.

In the case of the Côtes-du-Rhône Perrin Réserve, we have practically finished the Grenache now.

At Gigondas, Vacqueyras, Rasteau, and Cairanne... both Syrah and Grenache varieties are now almost all in.

Another magnificent day.

Harvest is in full swing at Gigondas, Rasteau, Vacqueyras, Vinsobres, Cairanne and Châteauneuf-du-Pape... which explains why we are so late with this bulletin! Luckily all these vineyards are close to each other. The map below should make things clearer for you.

La cave Perrin et Fils, au Prébois. Au fond le Mont Ventoux.

At Coudoulet, we pick Marsanne grapes in the morning. Like Viognier, this variety is not authorised in Châteauneuf du Pape, but we grow it at Coudoulet for the Côtes-du-Rhône appellation.

Then we harvest the Picpoul grapes for Châteauneuf.

Round about 10 am we go back to the Grenache until the end of the day.

A lovely day today. The wind has dropped, and it is hotter than it was during the past few days.

This time we are starting our harvest at Vinsobres. The Syrah there is now very ripe and deep in colour. We have about 45 hectares (110 acres) of vines in Vinsobres, at a place called « Les Cornuds ». We purchased this estate in two stages over the past three years. Its vines are terraced and lie at an average height above sea-level of 300 metres. Vinsobres is an area that shows great potential for us, especially for the Syrah grape. This variety seems to show more finesse and crispness of flavours when produced in Vinsobres than in any other village of the Southern Rhône region, and at lower altitudes. In a nutshell, Vinsobres is the Southern Rhône village whose style is closest to the Northern Rhône.

The village of Vinsobres

In 2003 we produced three different wines from our estate in Vinsobres, in the following quantities:
- 6000 bottles of 'Les Hauts de Julien', which was made for the first time in the 2003 vintage, from a plot of old vines co-planted with Syrah and Grenache.
- 18000 bottles of 'Les Cornuds', a 50/50 blend of Syrah and Grenache.
- The rest of the production (around 80000 bottles) is declassified to Côtes du Rhône and goes into the blend of the Perrin Réserve.
These proportions will probably remain steady this year.

At Beaucastel, we pick Bourboulenc in the morning, and continue with the red Grenache for the remainder of the day.

The first box of Bourboulenc grapes come into the winery

At Gigondas and Vacqueyras, we are also in full swing with the harvest. The Grenaches are superb, and most of the Syrah has now been picked.

After a very windy and sunny weekend, the mistral dropped a bit today, and the weather is splendid!

We have finally started picking the Grenache at Châteauneuf, and have reinforced our “main team” of pickers for the purpose. Grenache constitutes about 30% of the blend of Château de Beaucastel, and 70% of our other Châteauneuf, Les Sinards. So it’s an essential variety for us!

The main team, behind Château de Beaucastel

The grapes are magnificent, perfectly ripe but not over-ripe. The harvest is very healthy, thanks to these exceptional weather conditions, with plenty of wind, over the past weeks.

Between grape sorting sessions, the team picks some olives from the trees just behind Beaucastel. These will produce green olives, once we have removed their natural bitterness by rinsing them and then leaving them to soak for several months in brine. The remaining olives will be picked later on, and we will make a few dozen litres of olive oil from them.

Vines and olives are inseparable in Mediterranean culture.

Another magnificent day, thanks to the mistral wind.

There was some cloud cover early in the morning, with a light southerly wind, as you can see from the photograph taken this morning.

Around 10 am the mistral wind picked up and blew it all way. This picture was taken from the same place, in the afternoon.

We had a light picking day today. The full team is resting, as we prefer to wait a bit longer. The small team gradually continues to pick the Syrah grapes at Beaucastel.

We use truncated segment wooden vats for fermenting Syrah and Mourvèdre grapes. These two varieties tend to show reduction, and wooden vats limit this phenomenon. Another advantage is that cap-punching is easier in wooden vats than in most other types of vat.

Empty wooden vats awaiting Syrah grapes at Beaucastel.