La Sauvageonne Christmas Newsletter
Hello!! and welcome to the first of the La Sauvageonne newsletters!
In each newsletter I will be updating you with all the news from the vineyard, in the vines, and in the winery. Also, I will focus in a little more detail on certain areas of the work we do here, both in the vineyard and in the winery, that I feel to be relevant at that time of each newsletter. However this being the first newsletter I would like to commence with a brief overview of the 2009 season.
In the vineyard
We had a very cold winter which gave the vines a good chance to rest and recuperate. A warm particularly wet spring topped up our depleted water reserves for the long and very hot summer which was to follow. As a result of the aforementioned summer we harvested, as did everyone in the region, much earlier than usual. The whites were harvested on August the 29th, the Rosé on the 1st September and we started the reds on the 2nd. The harvest was finished on the 25th of September a full three weeks earlier than the 2008 harvest!
In the winery
The grape and subsequent juice quality was excellent, exceptionally concentrated with incredible sucrosity a superb balance of fruit, fresh acidity and wonderfully ripe tannins. It seems the 2009 vintage will be one of the best of recent years.
A little technical stuff for the wine buffs!
The Rosé and white were cold fermented as usual to retain delicate aromas followed by working of the lees to add a little extra complexity to the mid palette. The reds were guided through fermentation in our variety of concrete cuves. Each cuve was kept cool or “cold soaked” for around 3 days to give good colour and fruit extraction. This was followed by daily pumping over of the juice and cap punching or “pigeage” (the pushing down of the “cap” of skins back into the wine underneath) when deemed necessary. The average “maceration” time (the time the wines stay in the cuves “on the skins” including fermentation and any additional time before they are drained off) was three weeks.
The wines have now been racked and put to rest for the winter, some in tank and some in our selection of barrels and, as mentioned above, are tasting excellent.
Plumton Visit
A team of around 5 teachers and 36 students ‘I think!) of Plumton university in the UK visited us in early December to see our amazing vineyard, taste the wines and learn a little about how we make our wines. It was an enjoyable day, everybody seemed to enjoy the tour (again, I think!), the questions were frequent and interesting and the wine tasting that followed was good fun so thanks to the team and students. We may even see a few students again come harvest time!!
Well that’s it for this newsletter if you have any questions or want to know a little more about anything here, please don’t hesitate to call or e- mail me. In the next newsletter following all the news I will talk a little about the pruning of the vines. Until then
Cheers and a Merry Christmas to all.
John