Vineyard Diary 2003
November/December 2003
We continue to have fun in the winery with vinification of the red wines still continuing. Our wines are showing high natural alcohol potential and, thanks to late picking, have good ripeness in flavour. The Chateau Masburel white 2003 promises to be perhaps one of our best yet, with very expressive exotic fruit flavours. Our Lady Masburel white 2003 will be un-oaked, due to popular demand, but is still showing classic concentration and richness because of the very low yields we produce. The reds are also showing a very open and fruity potential, but we need more time to see how they develop in barrel in terms of aging quality and structure.
In the vines, we started pruning on 15th November, a job which will continue through until March 2004. The pruning is one of the most critical factors in determining the quality of harvest and is really an expert job. There are workers at top vineyards who have been pruning the same plants for 50 years and claim to know each one and how it should be pruned for maximum effectiveness. We are some way off this expertise but we are getting to know our plants and which parcels of vines need less or more rigorous pruning.
October 2003
We may have started picking early but we finished at the same time as last year. The reason is that we waited for polyphenol ripeness in the Cabernet Sauvignon which was way behind the alcohol potential. Theory has it that polyphenol ripening needs a good thermic shock between day and night temperature in the summer and this year we had exceptionally hot nights, thus delaying ripeness in the tannins. By waiting, we believe we have gained an advantage in ripeness, despite being the last to pick in the area, as usual!
Vinification has been very difficult with lots of sleepless nights. 2003 may well turn out to be exceptional in terms of wine quality and if the degree of difficulty during vinification is a guide, then it will be!
September 2003
Wow! The 1st September and our first grapes are in!!! Last year we started on the 27th so we are nearly 4 weeks early due to the exceptional summer. First grapes harvested were Sauvignon blanc followed by some Semillon and Muscadelle on the 9th. We harvested the last white, the best Sauvignon blanc, on the 17th. All the grapes are in perfect health and with lots of potential alcohol! The red grapes started coming in on the 20th, beginning with Merlot, followed by the first harvest of Malbec and Cabernet franc from our new dense plantation. Quality is incredible. The Cabernet Sauvignon will be the last to be picked, as usual, in early October.
August 2003
The month of August passed by under consistently blue skies with temperatures reaching 50° in the vines. Not ideal for the team working outside but very promising for the maturity of the grapes. We carried out our usual leaf stripping on the red grape vines to get the best exposure to the sun. The lack of rain potentially blocks the maturing process but so far our vines have found ground water. People who have been vignerons all their lives cannot remember such hot and dry conditions and comparisons are now being made with 1929 and even 1893 as the last such vintages. Everything is not so easy though. The sunshine has produced lots of sugar in the grapes and high potential alcohol which will make it tricky to vinify. The polyphenol ripeness( which contributes tannic structure, colour and aroma) is however well behind the sugar level and choosing when to harvest is going to be difficult. Too early and the wines will lack structure and aging potential, too late and the alcohol will be too high and acidity too low.
July 2003
The first week of July was classic "English" weather, cold and raining. For our new plants, the 45mm of rain were literally heaven sent, but the holiday makers for some reason were less enthusiastic. However, the fantastic sunny weather that started in June and reached 40°C temperatures in the shade, has now returned and looks set to stay. The locals have been predicting since the spring that this summer will be like 1976 which, if memory serves well, was a long hot sultry languid summer when weather records were convincingly and continuously broken. The insider view is that the harvest will be early this year, maybe even starting in August!!!
June 2003
The ground has been cleared for our new Malbec plantation and we start planting on the 3rd of June. Everything went as planned but of course the recent rain which threatened to drown us has turned to drought, so in shifts of two people covering 16 hours/day we are watering 12000 plants each with 10 litres of water and then doing it again, twice. Since water is metered, you would not want to get our water bill by mistake!!!
Elsewhere in the vineyard we are well into "relevage", lifting the long vine fronds from horizontal as they search the best sunlight, to vertical so we can get between the rows and cut the grass. By encouraging the vine to grow up instead of out, we avoid increasing the thickness of leaf cover which tends to hide the grapes from the sun. It is time-consuming manual work but essential for quality grapes. Other vineyards just cut off the long fronds with an attachment on the tractor (rognage), but this reduces photosynthesis in the leaf canopy. Photosynthesis is what turns sunlight into sugar in the grapes, so the more the merrier the wine, since it is sugar that is converted into alcohol. Since we do relevage by hand it takes most of the summer, and whilst every other vineyard looks immaculately couiffured, we look wild and hairy. It is though one of the most important aspects of vineyard management so we persevere, even if our visitors inevitably raise the question about why we are different.
On Wednesday 25th June, whilst everyone was celebrating the last night of Vinexpo, the worlds biggest professional wine fair in Bordeaux, a storm wreaked it's vengeance on South West France. A garden party in St Emilion was somewhat disrupted when the wind removed the tent for 200 guests and in Bergerac a tornado ripped up several hectares of vines, stakes and wires, leaving them in a tangled heap some distance away. Miraculously, between the two locations, Chateau Masburel was spared the worst damage. All 16,000 plants that were planted in 2002 were blown flat but their pliant youth actually saved them from serious damage. All we had to do was stand them up again, one by one!!! All in all, an eventful month!
May 2003
We should not have worried about the lack of rain because the heavens have been open for much of May and the ground water table has risen to threaten my personal wine cellar under the house. In the vines everything is progressing to plan. New stakes have been installed, and wires attached, for the new vine plantations and old ones replaced elsewhere. "Epaumprage" has been carried out throughout the vines to remove the unwanted suckers from the base of every vine, a time consuming and boring job at this time of year but essential to avoid the suckers stealing too much water in the summer.
April 2003
The excitement of the new season is upon us as the vines show their first shoots. The Merlot began budding at the beginning of April and the Cabernet in mid April. Following the long cold winter, spring is turning out to be very dry. We have had no rain for 4 weeks and the locals are talking of another 1976 summer, long sultry and hot, hot, hot. We shall see! The vineyard is in great shape and we are currently ploughing between the rows to suppress the grass which is an ever present competitor to the vines for whatever water exists.
March 2003
The last pruning job of the season is to train the new plants into position on the wires so they form the right structure. This was completed by week three of March. Now we have to complete "attachage" which is attaching all the pruned branches to their supporting wires ready for the budding to start. Good news to report is that we now have enough parcels of vines in production with dense planting of over 5000 vines/Ha to qualify for producing a Montravel Appellation Red wine. This new appellation has the highest quality standards of any region in France and we can virtually guarantee that wine under this designation will be superb. 2003 will be our first vintage, so it should be something to anticipate. In the meantime, our 2002 vintage is maturing in barrel and promises to be a cracker! The wine has elegance and power and in both red and white should be our best vintage yet. Watch this space!!!
January/February 2003
The winter months tend to be quiet, the main task being pruning and more pruning. It has been quite a cold winter so everything is a bit behind at the moment.