In Provence, autumn is not a season but rather a couple of days squeezed in between summer and winter.  Monday morning was still beautifully bright but since then it has been fairly dull with lots of fog handing around.  The photos give a good indication:

20 October 2008

23 October 2008

Ciaran went off to the United States earlier this year to market wine and bought a book by Alice Feiring, entitled: “The Battle for Wine and Love or How I Saved the World from Parkerization”.  Pieter met Alice last year and chatted to her about her views on winemaking (while drinking beer at a bar in SoHo).  Alice advocates for real/authentic/natural wines and has a number of guidelines:

Healthy farming practices
Hand picking
No extended cold maceration
No added yeast or bacteria
No added enzymes
No flavors from oak or toast
No additives that shape flavor or texture
No processes that use machines to alter alcohol level, flavor, or texture or that promote premature aging

Bertus Albertyn, winemaker at Avondale in Paarl, South Africa, is also a keen proponent of a more back-to-basics approach and has been experimenting with natural fermentation of whole bunches in large, neutral flavour (i.e. not new), oak barrels.  We are treating two 400 litre barrels in this way – the one is called Cuveé Bertus, the other Cuveé Alice.  

We pressed the first reds this week.  Young vine Syrah and Grenache.  The Syrah’s from the block we planted in 2003 and have been managing organically (i.e. no herbicides, pesticides or fungicides used in the vineyard).  The colour of the wine is intense, the aroma of sweet red berries and spice very concentrated and overall this is going to make a great blending component.  The Grenache has good structure and will give a solid foundation to the blend. 

Rémy picking the last grapes of the 2008 harvest

We picked the last grapes today on top of the hill.  We got there just after 8 this morning and a few drops of rain started falling.  Fortunately this ended as abruptly as it had started and we could pick the last of the Grenache from this old vineyard (it only gave us about half a ton of grapes).

Louis Nel, Pieter de Waal, Ciaran Rooney

After a great two week visit Louis Nel departed yesterday.  This was the “10th Anniversary Harvest Tour” as the three of us were also here for the 1999 harvest (OK, it’s only 9 years ago but 10 harvests).  We shared a lot of stories, jokes, and wine-making tips. 

Celesté Nel

Celesté (better-half of Louis) also joined us for a week and fell in love with the place, taking almost 500 photos during her visit.

Ciaran doing pump-over with Louis giving support

Sitting on top of a tank spraying fermenting grape juice onto the cap (the hard top formed by the grape skins) for lengthy periods of time, is not the greatest job in the world by far.  Many producers have devices that do this automatically with the push of a button.  Ultimately it does however impact on the quality of the wine.  Not only does the winemaker (literally) get into contact with the wine on a regular basis, he can also supervise the way in which the cap is broken, thereby ensuring the best possible contact between juice and skins.  At the same time he can smell the fermentation, feel the heat of the juice and monitor the condition of the skins coming through the pipe – all of the things that a machine would not be able to do.  This is just one of the reasons why handcrafted wines are so much better than industrially made ones.

Around midday today - ominous clouds on the horizon

It is not a question of whether it’s going to rain but rather when.  Ciaran is trying to get all the grapes into the winery today as rain is forecast for tomorrow and that won’t be a good thing as rain at this late stage will ultimately dilute the wine (as happened in 2002).

Clouds started out dark this morning but there is quite a bit of blue sky as I’m writing this (about 5 in the afternoon).

We have been extremely fortunate that the last three weeks have been mostly rain-free (we did have a couple of showers but it was followed by some wind that dried out the vineyards and kept mildew and other diseases at bay).  All-in-all we can’t complain and the grapes we’ve taken in have been of very good quality.  I recall that with the 2003 harvest it started raining while we were still busy crushing the last bin of the harvest – maybe we’ll see a replay this year?

At Domaine des Anges, almost all of the grapes are picked by hand.  The Cabernet Sauvignon however gives us the opportunity to have big agricultural machinery wizzing up and down the rows to pick the grapes and bring them to the winery.  This morning it was 5 degrees Celsius when the first load of Cabernet grapes reached the winery.  Check out the videos of the grapes arriving at the winery:

http://www.livevideo.com/video/86DCC92AAC8445D19D80513A73DC3D08/cabernet-sauvignon-machine-har.aspx

and going into the crusher:

http://www.livevideo.com/video/9396651FB3A74CB3890404E2AB75D0B6/domaine-des-anges-cabernet-cru.aspx

When I’m at the pearly gates
This’ll be on my video tape

http://www.livevideo.com/video/D0140459054447FBB3A65A7344895D0E/domaine-des-anges-ciaran-and.aspx

During bottling and labelling the quality control team takes out all of the bottles with low fills, cracks, leaking corks and any other discrepancies.  These bottles are then packed on to a pallet and at some stage all of the bottles have to be opened, the wine checked (i.e. sniffed and tasted) and then the decision is made to either reject the bottle (which will then get sent away to the people who distill out the alcohol) or poured back into a tank for re-bottling.

There are 40 bottles on a layer and about 14 layers so that’s about 560 bottles that need to be opened and checked. 

Hic!