Alastair\'s Blog

Posts Tagged ‘harvest’

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October - march to the dull and sober

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

And what a month this has been.  Busy, busy and busy.  Captain’s Log reveals nothing dull and not all that sober for us.

Personalised champagne via Parklane online remains popular with growing daily customer numbers (everyone happy so far this month).  This despite Google telling us that monthly searches for “personalised champagne” have fallen by 75% since July!

Loads of delicious enquiries from businesses, charities and individuals for possibly the perfect quantity of personalised champagne:  36 to 120 bottles.  How pleased we are to offer advice and be able to help and thank you to everyone for thinking of us - and for buying from us.  Do keep those enquiries coming!

Very interesting corporate business to attend to, sprinkled with delivering some challenging solutions and improve what has gone before.  I am always thrilled when we are invited to tender for any business but all the more so when the recipient takes a deep and enquiring interest in our response, investigating what and why we have proposed;  makes the hard work and research seem rewarded. Our service ethos and attention to detail rearing its head again methinks…

Marathon tour of Champagne (and a bit of Burgundy) just completed  - the not so sober bit!  2009 still wines from harvest were amazing - separate note coming - but the skill of the blender to merge all these into one non-vintage cuvee for drinking in 3+ years time still has me in awe.   Universally in Champagne, 2009 is being regarded as an exceptional year.

To my unsophisticated taste, what struck me about the still wines compared to my memory of previous years was their approachability;  yes there is that crisp acid tingle over the inner cheeks, but this year it was much more swallow than spit for each cru tasted.  The higher than average natural sugar levels (about 200g/l as opposed to 175g/l in a normal harvest Nomine confirmed to me) mellow the experience and then there are enormous surges of fruit.  And this is just from memory… I am sure at the time it was even more compelling, although my seven year old daughter did complain that all the wine tastings took “a very long time Daddy”!

Appropriate as well to touch on the dreaded recession - we feel it here (UK) and we feel it there (France);  I am not qualified to say if we feel it everywhere but we are told the UK is still in economic contraction while key European economies and the US are now growing.

From the Champenois perspective, the UK has either become more fickle or is in deep trouble;  yes champagne sales are down to all major export markets with the resultant consequences (according to both small recoltants and massive houses) but to the European and Asian markets this is down “a bit” - maybe up to 10%.  To the UK, which is by far the largest export market at +/-37m bottles in 2008, shipments are down a minimum of 25% and for some of the most prestigious and better known brands, well over 50% behind last year.  And that from the Country where unleaded petrol is typically €1.40 a litre - virtually £1.40 according to my card statement!

But I do think we can finally see some compact but sturdy economic green shoots for our industry.   At 18 months they have been a long time coming -  about the same time as the Camellia Fanny I planted has taken to muster a first flower this autumn - and there is still a long way to go.  Still, somewhat encouraging to think (rather than relying on being told that the “public thinks”) things are recovering - even if we are in a very rarefied business.  And this before the rose-tinted specs of the festive season.

Maybe the exceptional harvest this year was an omen; 1945 was also an exceptional year…

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Harvest - the pressing

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Champagne is a big subject;  controversial and emotive with nearly everyone having a different opinion as to which champagne they prefer and why.  Certainly with 8,000 producers in the region and each producing probably three different styles, there is plenty of choice!

We are often asked which is the “best” champagne;  what a question and where  to start? Vintage or non-vintage (a debate for another day), pink or white, single grape variety or traditional mix (Chardonnay only champagne is a blanc des blancs), with food or without?

Unfortunately (or fortunately) because taste is so very personal and subjective, I am not sure there can ever be a definitive answer to that question.  Origin and quality of grapes, age in bottle, experience of oenologists, etc., will all play a part as a comparison for quality - but ultimately the consumer has to decide for the themselves.  We like well made and well aged champagne that pleases most of the people most of the time - and we think our champagnes fulfill this brief perfectly.

But still the harvest continues where all of this debate really starts.  The 100,000 or so harvesters load their 50kg buckets into lorries which head to pressoirs, which press the grapes.  Traditionally a basket press was used by all but now presses up to three times that size are common in the rush to press the precious baubles.

The basket press holds 4,000kg of grapes (roughly an acre’s worth of yield) and a maximum permitted 2,550l of juice is extracted:  2,050l of first pressing or cuvee (best) and the remainder as taille, all kept separate.  Any remaining juice is sent off to become industrial alcohol.  The pressing is quick (4 hours) so that the dark skins of the pinot grapes do not rupture and thus tint the clear white juice - unless pressing for pink champagne.  A mystery explained: why champagne is a white wine when a majority of grapes used to make it (typically) are black.

Loading the traditional basket presses2 aditional basket presses beginning the big squeeze

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Harvest - busy busy

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

So here it is - and you heard it first on Alastair’s champagne blog:  2009 looks to be an EXCEPTIONAL harvest.  That means not just an ordinarily good harvest that could qualify as a vintage declaration;  it means an EXCEPTIONAL harvest and that is not a word to use unadvisedly or lightly but rather reverently and deliberately, especially where champagne is concerned!

This year the quantity and quality of the grapes is excellent - they are very sound and perfectly ripe.    The natural alcoholic strength is about 10 degrees with excellent acidity between 9 and 10!  All bodes well for the future and the continued theme of high quality contents for your personalised champagne.  Thank you too to Mme Nomine for the update.

I am visiting Epernay next month and look forward to the opportunity of tasting some of the still wines (chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier) separately stored from this harvest and gently fermenting - which is a huge privilege and eye-opening experience.  Amazing that the acidic sharpness - causing that cheeky tingle in the cheeks of the mouth similar to the feeling after eating fresh rhubard - mellows so much with age and blending to create lovely non-vintage champagne three to four years hence - or in this year’s case a vintage as well (but not for a minimum of five years).  Not forgetting the maker’s skills, of course…

There seems a certain irony that this year, of all years, there is a bumper harvest in terms of both quality and quantity of grapes -when the potential revolt over yields has resulted in a permitted harvest for stock purposes of sub 10,000kg/hectare.  C’est la vie!

And just in case you are wondering, the actual harvesting is very hard work;  this is a snapshot of what it all looks like - at the vine face, so to speak:

An uphill battle?
Not the athletics track...Heavy when fullWhat a lovely bunch

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Harvest - snip snip

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

So my champagne blog update continues!  This is really a very very interesting time of year for champagne wine and its production - with a manic burst of activity universal across all 30,000 hectares of vineyards that make up the appellation.

Today it happened;  from all over Europe teams of people descended on the vines in the main Champagne region to start 2009’s harvest in earnest.  All harvesting of the grapes in Champagne is carried out by hand so it really does need plenty of people.

The harvest will last a fortnight or so, with different areas starting at different times - Nomine plan to start on the 14th - and the Aube area started at the beginning of the week.  Interesting that “Champagne” is one appellation but that the region is in two distinct areas with the Aube (mainly Pinot grapes) actually 100k or so further south…  Anyone who has travelled down the Autoroute A26, maybe en route to holiday skiing or to the South, must have slightly puzzled over this.

On a personal note, I am curious to see how laden the vines are once the harvest is over, considering the reduced permitted yield this year.  However, with 2000kg/hectare heading to blockage (juice held in reserve for future years but which cannot yet start the production process) and the ever growing demand for ethanol, industrial alcohol and biofuels, I am sure there will hardly be any grapes left on the vines.

For Park Lane, we can be assured of continued quality, even though the product of this harvest will not be with us in non-vintage form until mid 2013 at the earliest.  Always somewhat sobering (no pun intended) to think that the current bottles of non-vintage champagne available through us originate from grapes harvested back in 2005!   Nomine are great quality recoltant producers but even they must get somewhat fed-up at what looks like market manipulation by all those big houses and negociants.  I will look forward to learning more when I visit towards the end of this month.

And my children went back to school today - with the eldest two now 8.15am to 6pm;  by any standards that is a good day’s work!

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Harvest yields

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

I am not trying to becomes the UK’s most prolific blogger and nor to create the most comprehensive champagne blog, but hopefully these jottings help you to sneak a peek under the petticoats of this amazing wine.

So in response to Toby,  the CIVC dictate how many kilos of grapes per hectare can be harvested.  As a rule of thumb guide, it takes 1kg of grapes to create one bottle (750ml) of champagne.  Typically the permitted yield is about 12,000kg per hectare;  last year it was 14,000kg but this year, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal, it is going to be 9,700kg.

As Non-Vintage champagne is typically aged in bottle for a minimum of two years (by law it must be 15 months and Nomine prescribe a minimum of three years), you can envisage the vast number of bottles snoozing in cellars all over the region.  The global slowdown in consumption could lead to significant over supply if it takes a while for sales to recover (export and French domestic - France is the largest consumer by miles), so I suspect that 2009’s restricted yield is intended to avoid this as much as to preserve quality.

Has the World forgotten Winston Churchill’s musing (apparently adapted from Napoleon) that “in victory we deserve it (champagne) and in defeat we need it”?!  Interesting fact that Churchill’s Pol Roger champagne consumption increased in 1942 from its 1941 levels - much to the angst of the budget bureaucrats - as the tempo of World War II accelerated, according to facts from the Churchill museum at the Cabinet War Rooms.  Proof indeed of the universal relevance of champagne!

And all this on the 70th anniversary of the day Britain had to declare war on Germany;  wow!

Chamagne bottles aging in cellars below Epernay

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