9/19/12

Over the last three days we have been harvesting like crazy! The morning of the 19^th actually turned out to be beautiful!

We met at the farm shop and took about an hour drive south to the region Crozes-Hermitage. What a sight!

We were there for about 2 hours harvesting Syrah as well as Marsanne. Of course in between we took our customary wine, cheese, salami, bread, chocolate, and coffee break J. It was quite windy, but at least the ground was flat so it was not as much of a hike as usual. We then took a small drive north to Cornas and harvested more Syrah! There was so much fruit that we didn’t have enough crates to carry it all so we just ended up throwing fruit in the back of the van and piling it up…

We got back to the winery and had lunch. For the entrée, (basically that means appetizer) we had “croque-monsieur,” aka the best grilled cheese with ham ever. It has cheese on the inside with the ham, as well as cheese on the top of the bread…and boom goes the dynamite! They were so good I wish I could have one every day. Alas, I hold off in hopes of keeping my figure. The main course was a total let down after that first course so I wont go into details. For the afternoon as well as 9/20 we harvested more Viogner in Condrieu. Cool, but nothing I hadn’t seen before.

9/21/12

This morning we got up and drove north to Cote-Rotie. I had been anxious to get back here as it is normally beautiful and has very steep, sweeping hillside plantings. It did not fail me…

We harvested some Syrah alongside Viogner to do the usual co-fermentation of the two, as per appellation rules. All of the fruit looked very good and everyone, including Yves seemed in good spirits. We brought the fruit back to the winery and Justin, the Kiwi Tom and I did some pump-overs (remontage) on the cement fermenting tanks they have here. Most of the fruit has not started to ferment yet. We also did some punch-downs on the Cornas and Crozes-Hermitage Syrah in the large format barriques (fudras). It was super cool to see as the Cornas fruit has just began to ferment after like a week of cold-soaking. The cap was thick and because the ceiling in the bottom cellar is a bit low, it was not the easiest pigeage I had ever performed. Later in the afternoon we harvested fruit from “Seysuel,” which is this plot north by Cot-Rotie, but on the other side of the Rhone River. It is technically Vin de Pay, which would normally make it a lower-priced wine, but Yves told us that he worked very hard ten years ago marketing the wines and now they go for a much higher rate. Apparently this area was documented by the Romans as being one of the premier regions for their wines...

This is a picture of some of the younger plantings on the parcel. Look at that soil!

Today we worked all day in the cave. It was awesome. We did a bunch of remontage, as well as debourbage (basically racking whites off of the primary lees). We then took the bourge (white lees solids) and filtered them to keep as much product as possible. At about 1 o’oclock Yves told us we would be going out to a bistro for lunch. And boom goes the dynamite! I was starving. We rolled out to Ampuis, which is the town below Condrieu. Yves and some buddies own a bistro there which makes very good food and has a very nice wine shop. We drank some white and red and ate like kings.

I have been focused on eating the most exotic French foods possible, so for an entrée I got Foie Blond (duck liver)…

For the entrée I got Beef Tartar…

They were both excellent with the Cote-Rotie we drank…

This night we went to George Vernay winery and had dinner with all of the interns. We brought a bunch of bottles of Yves Cuilleron wine for them to try. Their house was way up in the hills of Condrieu and it had an incredible view that is not not well represented in this picture, but you could see all of Condrieu and some of Cote-Rotie.

It was an excellent dinner complete with risotto and some peach crisp for dessert.

9/23/12

Today we got to sleep in…till 9 am! We had some pump-overs and such to do at 10 so we began work. We did remontage, filtration, and got in some grapes to process. At about 1230 Andre, Yves brother who helps out every day at the winery, announced to us interns that he would take us out for lunch and proposed we go to the horse show in Chavanay before-hand to grab a drink. I did not oppose.

Under the tent of the show we met a bunch of old French dudes. They bought me and the Kiwi Pastis shots like it was water. We downed some drinks and cruised to Chavanay for a nice sit down lunch.

We started off with some more Pastis.

Then moved on to some Condrieu with my Caprese salad first course.

I then decided to go big and order pizza..escargot pizza that is!

And why not enjoy that with a little Pierre Gaillard Saint Joseph? Mmmmmyyyyeessssssss…

After dessert and a little coffee Thuise, the Brazilian girl proposed we drink some Limoncello. Andre offered the option of going back to house for a drink. By this time it was about 3 pm. I did not oppose, surprise surprise.

We got back to his flat/apartment/house in Chavanay.

We went outside to the backyard which overlooked the ‘water jousting” field. He showed us his lance and a picture of when he was a “jouster” himself.

We were drinking limoncello throughout all of this. We then went out to the water and checked out the boats.

We came back to the house, took a seat, and he busted out some other black licorice liqueur as well as green Chartruesse, which is the 55% real-deal stuff, and some Genepi which is this alcohol made from a specific plant which I am not familiar with at all.

Needless to say the afternoon was quite an event. We then went back to the winery, emptied the press, and chilled for the rest of the day. That night we got a car from the winery and drove to Vienne (about 30 mins away) to watch a theater movie called 360 degrees. It was not the best movie I have ever seen but it was entertaining enough for a 2.50 euro Sunday night event. Plus a bunch of it was in French with subtitles so I hope it helped me to understand the language a bit better. We drove back and hit the hay.

9/24-9/25/12

The last two days have been the longest yet. We got in huge lots of fruit from Saint Joseph as well as Cote-Rotie. I think a lot of the fruit is getting ripe, but it is also raining a lot so everyone is worrying of rot with the Syrah. My days have been consisting of the usual pump-over/punch downs, barrel washing, processing red by lifting crates into the destemmer etc. Nothing out of the ordinary has really come up, but some of the lots are really taking off in natural fermentation. For a couple lines of tanks in the winery we use an electronic punch down tool that is pretty rad. 

Here is a video of the electronic punch down in action!

Here is a video of a pump over in action!

We also filled a couple barrels yesterday with Cote-Rotie fruit to do some barrel ferments. These special barrels are made by this company, Tonnellerie Baron. They produce a barrel with a large hole so in the head so you can fill it with fruit. Then when it starts fermenting it is on this oxoline barrel rack setup where you can turn the entire barrel to basically mimic a punch down. It is a trial run for this winery and should be super rad.