With every vintage comes the expectation that we take past experiences and learn from them.  With every vintage comes the inevitable question as to which past harvest we can compare it to.  With every vintage comes the nervousness, the anticipation and the feeling that we are starting from zero.  Nothing could be nearer the truth for the 2020 vintage.   Even after many decades of making wines in Bordeaux, Jacques and I and our family at numerous chateaux scattered across the Right Bank of Bordeaux have not seen anything like the last two weeks.

We are used to summer drought.  For the last few years it has come after a wet and fairly cool winter so at least the water tables have had a chance to replenish themselves.  We are also getting used to temperatures well above the 30°s and sometimes reaching the worrying heights of the 40°s. We have adapted our viticulture to provide vine leaf parasols for the vines to protect them from the harsh summer sun; we provide nutrients to the soil so that the vines’ roots can resist drought but there is always a lingering hope that as summer draws to the end there will be some rain or at least some cool evenings to temper the relentless heat.

As we approached the harvest, our hopes were not to be fulfilled.   Sure, the grapes looked gorgeous and tasted so sweet and rich, but we worried as the leaves shriveled and dropped to the ground, cruelly exposing the fruit to the sun.  As September arrived, Instagram was full of photos of our friends in Champagne and Burgundy in the middle of their harvest.  Here in Bordeaux we began to get impatient. 

This waiting game is a strange one:   the weather’s excesses lead to a less efficient photosynthesis so as harvest approaches, the ripening process slows down.   It takes pragmatic patience to realize that there is no point harvesting unripe grapes, but easier said than done when the potential alcohol levels are so high.  In the end, most of us had to make the decision to harvest the young vines, whose youthful exuberance could not be tamed.   Some producers decided to continue to harvest their Merlots (which are earlier ripening and have higher sugar content than the Cabernets), some prayed for rain and others such as us, decided to pick any urgent parcels and allow the wonderfully resistant older vines to continue their aging.  

I have to add, that these decisions, taken last week (14th September), were made under exceptional circumstances.   First of all, the temperature was above 30°C for most of the week with three days reaching at least 36°C.  Secondly, the harvesting and sorting had to be carried out while wearing masks; COVID makes this necessary.  It may be hard to imagine these conditions, but I can guarantee, they were not comfortable.  

Our prayers were gratifyingly answered last Sunday (20th September) when the skies opened and up to 50 mm of rain fell.  On Monday morning, the scene could not have been more different than a week earlier.   Shorts were exchanged for waterproof trousers; sneakers for boots; skimpy t-shirts for layers of clothing.  The temperature was almost 20 degrees cooler than the previous Monday.  The low clouds rolled across the dark sky as we slipped on the greasy soils in the vineyards.   It took a while to notice, but the little tiny berries that we had noticed a few days ago, began to swell and their awkward sun-shrunk, hexagon angles, rounded out.  The skins which were stubbornly tight and stiff the week before, began to expand and smoothen.  The rain hasn’t been a miracle, but it has been a blessing.

We are now halfway through week two of the harvest and most of us have brought in all our Merlots.  We will wait for a few more days to begin the Cabernets but we can see how the water and cooler temperatures have plumped out the grapes; now we have a different hurdle in front of us:  the threat of rot……..

(to be continued)

Fiona Morrison MW, Pomerol