A busy few weeks at Le Chai

Saturday 27th
Every year, our UK staff have the opportunity to visit our French cellars for a weekend, and today a group of 30 arrive at Le Chai for a guided tour and tasting. Tony and I greet the very eager group and we all taste through the young 2008 wines that we have fermenting in the cellar. We start with the bright orange GG, the Sauvignon Blanc from the barrels, followed by a sneak preview of the big Roussillon Grenache soon to be released. After the visit we nip up to Chateau La Clariere and then to Tony’s house for a fantastic BBQ by Bridgitte.

I have to leave this evening for the Midi as I need to check the XV du President vineyards.

Sunday 28th
I wake up to blinding sunshine in the Roussillon. It’s 7a.m. and already 21 degrees! The view from the house down to the village is just stunning and I can’t wait to get down into the vineyards below. The XV Grenache vineyards are perfect so we will be picking first thing tomorrow.

Monday 29th
The XV Grenache starts arriving at the Maury Cooperative about 9 a.m. and vats are rapidly filling up by lunchtime. The vats here are not made of stainless steel but of concrete. Concrete vats work very well for fermenting wine as they naturally insulate the heat of the fermentation. This is important for extracting the colour from the skins of red grapes. By the end of the day I have 8 full tanks ready to be inoculated with yeast. This is a big job and I will require some help to make the wines and Benjamin is the perfect guy to keep an eye on the ferments when I am not here. He is a great cellar rat and can do a minimum of 5 jobs at the same time! Once Ben is briefed I am off to Bordeaux as the Chai 2008 Bordeaux Rosé is ready to be transported to the Chai.

Tuesday 1st October
A new month and a new wine for the Chai! The rosé arrives first thing and my stagiaire Alistair (now equipped with his new cellar knowledge) efficiently and carefully unloads the rose juice into the stainless steel tanks. The colour of the rosé is just incredible (a great rose must not be too deep red but be a vibrant pink/red) the fruit is already showing red summer berries, so the cooling is put on immediately to preserve these aromas until the end of the fermentation.

Friday 3rd
I am back in the south of France again and Ben has done a great job with the XV so we taste through together and plan the jobs for the next 4-5 days. The top end Grenache is being harvested today and tomorrow. I will put the grapes from these 100year old vineyards into much smaller tanks because I need to use different techniques to extract the maximum colour and flavour. The top end Roussillon wine is a blend of two tiny producers in the village of Maury so I am off to see one of them today. Jean-Charles Duran’s garage is where I make some of the best wine in the Midi, he has 5 tiny vats under his house and there is so little room you can barely move! His vineyards are 4th generation owned and are 100-110yrs old meaning have very low yields at only 1½ tons per hectare. He has already harvested his inky black Syrah and will be picking his Grenache and Carignan this weekend.


Monday 6th
Our Merlot harvest starts at Chateau La Clariere in the Cotes de Castillon! Everybody is here – Tony, Barbara, Henry, Tom … even Jean-Marc is on time! The grapes are handpicked into small crates and then carried to the trailer by the ‘Porter’. Once at the winery, JMS and I are being very French and needlessly discussing the same thing over and over with raised voices just to look good (this is very catching and once you get the hang of it is actually quite good fun!). The grapes are firstly hand sorted on a table by 4 people before the stalks are removed by the destalking machine. Once the berries are freed from their stalks they roll onto a vibrating table which shakes all dry berries, soil, wasps, ladybirds and bits of broken stalk into the tray below leaving immaculate black berries for the vats.

At lunchtime we have a huge workers lunch at the Chateau consisting of far too much pate and cheese but that’s all part of the French vendange, work a lot and eat a lot!

Tuesday 7th
With reds in at La Clariere and hundreds of barrels at the Chai to be cared for, we are now literally up to our eyeballs in wine! The amazing Indian summer continues here in Bordeaux and sun has been shining all day whilst we have been busy in the cool dark cellar of the Chai. After a hard days work we decide the best way to catch the last hours of the sunshine is a winemakers BBQ. I am in charge of the fire and John and Alistair the meat, we buy some doorstep thick ‘cote de beouf’ steaks for a traditional Bordelais steak frites.

Wednesday 8th
We have some very important guests at the Chai tonight. We are hosting a meal for the board of directors. Bridgitte and JMS have busy all morning hiring tablecloths, chairs, crockery etc. Everybody arrives at 7:30 p.m and the Chai is looking absolutely fabulous, the table is just perfect and the fire is roaring away. We start with some ‘Blanc de Blancs’ Laithwaite Champagne in magnums for apéritif followed by VO 2007 and GG 2007 with shrimps and salmon, then for the main meal of fire grilled steak the Grand Chai 2005 Margaux and 2004 Grand Chai Pomerol. We finished the dinner with chocolates from the famous Lopez patisserie matched with the 2004 Font del Bosc Maury. Once again the wines and company were fantastic and proves that the Chai really has something special and I think everybody felt it this evening. I think all the team deserve a pat on the back for organising a splendid evening and making the Chai look beautiful right in the middle of vintage.

Monday 13th
Today I find myself in Rueda in Spain choosing the 2008 Verdejo VO juice. The place is quite breathtaking and the sun is shining. They have had an unusually cool ripening period which is not so good for the reds but for the white Verdejo grapes, a superb vintage. A quick tour around the cellar to taste all the Verdejo juice with the winemaker and the decision is to take Tank 18. The tanker will be here tomorrow at 8 a.m. ready to be filled before a 7 hour journey back to the Chai.

The 2008 harvest starts at Le Chai!

Friday 22nd August

The bottling of the 2006 Grand Chai Listrac is set for the 23rd of September, so it’s a quick trip up to the Medoc to have another check, taste and meeting with the owner. I give the cellar master some instructions to follow to get the wine ready for the bottling and I will come back in a week before the bottling to re-taste.

Saturday 23th

The last weekend before the harvest starts so we went to see some good friends in the Dordogne. Loius and Anne live in a village called Brantome which is about an hour’s drive east from Le Chai. The village is built around a 9th century monastery and is a must visit if you are in the area.

Monday 25th

As harvest time rapidly approaches for Chai Au Quai my carefully selected vintage team arrive at Bordeaux airport. First to arrive is Alistair Nesbit a wine student (or stagiaire in french) studying oenology at Plumpton wine college. Every French cellar takes on a ‘stagiaire’ for the harvest and our cellar master Denis is eagerly preparing his initiation test (which mainly consists of eating snails and deadly cheeses) but he is fatherly proud to have someone to take under his wing. Later to arrive direct from Melbourne Australia is flying winemaker John Lackey. John is a very experienced winemaker and has worked all over the world and will work with me and hold the reigns whilst Jean-Marc and myself are flying round Spain and the Midi. These guys will be the 2008 chAi Team!!

Tuesday 26th

Today is a very important day as we have the harvest plan meeting. It is today that we put together all the ideas and inside knowledge to decide what and how much wine we will be making in the 2008 vintage.

After the meeting, Clare, Jean-Marc and myself are straight off to Midi to start putting the plans into action. We will stop at all the producers to discuss and bargain for the grapes we want. Over the next two days we will be in Carcassone, Roussillon, Perpignan, Narbonne, Beziers, Montpellier, St.Tropez, Rhone Valley and the Ardeche.

Friday 29th

After a crazy few days, all is in place for the 2008 vintage and my first stop is Maury in the Roussillon to check on the Grenache Gris grapes destined for the 2008 G.G. The vineyards are looking very good indeed and after a week of ‘Tramontane’ (the north wind) the ripeness of grapes has accelerated and I estimate that harvest is 7-10 days away!

I also had a look at the XV du President Grenache noir vineyards and they are in fine condition. Harvest is estimated to be 20-25 days away, so I will need to come back and have another taste and look nearer to the time. Tasting and assessing the vineyards are essential skills in winemaking and it takes a long time to gain experience. It is important that the grapes are picked when they have ‘phenolic’ ripeness, not just with lots of sugar. To give you an idea of how winemakers decide if grapes are ready to make into wine I have listed a few of the tricks of the trade below:

• The pips: is the colour is green or brown? Brown is ripe, taste the pips by putting them under your tongue and if they taste bitter they are not ripe.
• The pulp: if the pulp clings to the pips it is not ripe.
• The skins: if they are crunchy it is unripe so they need to be slightly chewy (not over chewy though). If they bleed red when you scratch the inside of the skins it shows the level of colour development
• The flesh: taste the flavour, is it high acidity or can you taste a real fruit character? Lots of acidity will mean it is not fully ripe.
• The stalks: if they are turning red, the grapes themselves will almost certainly have more flavour.
• The grape pedicels: if they are red then the berries could be about to fall to the ground so its time to harvest … quickly!

Saturday 30th August to Monday 8th September

The chAi Team are cleaning the tanks and moving all 600 barrels into the right places to be ready to receive juice at the Chai.

Tuesday 9th September

I am back off to the Midi to visit the Chardonnay and Viognier vineyards in Carcassone, the Chardonnay vineyards in Limoux and the Grenache Gris vineyards in Maury. Lots of walking up and down the rows sampling and tasting the berries so I take John down with me to help out.

Thursday 11th

Up at 5:30 a.m. to oversee the harvest of the 2008 Grenache Gris, the grapes are in lovely condition and are firstly sorted on a table then de-stalked and finally sent to the press. The first juice drained from the grapes is called the ‘free run’ and consists of the most delicate and light juice. The grapes are then purposely left in the press for a further 4-6 hours to pick up flavours from the pink skins. More juice is then drained and placed in a separate vat and called ‘1st skin contact’. More grapes are placed in the press and it is again purposely left for 8 hours and then drained to a separate vat and labelled ‘2nd skin contact’. Each of the three vats of juice are chilled to 5ºC for 24 hours to settle the rough sediments to the bottom of the vat. The three types of juice will be blended together at a later stage and each will lend a significant component to the balance of the final wine.

The following day the clear wine is ‘racked’ off the sediment into a tanker lorry and transported to the Chai Au Quai to be fermented and lovingly cared for. I then have to beat the lorry back to Bordeaux to help unload the tanker and start the fermentation.


Friday 12th

The 2008 GG juice arrived safely at the Chai last night and now we have to get the delicate fermentation under way. The yeasts are rehydrated and acclimatised before being carefully placed into the Grenache Gris vats. The vats will be kept at 13ºC for the next 2 weeks whilst the yeasts carefully ferment the sugar. The fermenting juice will be monitored twice a day and the fermentation rate will be recorded and tasted each time by myself. This is to ensure the yeasts are happy and not stressed or hungry, when yeasts become unhappy they will produce bad odours and may spoil the wine. So just like when babies (or grumpy Aussie winemakers) complain we will give them a snack to keep them happy!!

This afternoon I have to go back to the Medoc to re-check the 2006 Grand Chai Listrac for the final time before the bottling. This wine comes from a beautiful (but secret!) cellar where Jean-Marc and I have been able to care for it since last year.

Saturday 13th

As I open the door of the Chai this morning I am instantly overwhelmed with the first aromas of fermenting juice in the air. The Chai Au Quai 2008 vintage has officially started, but as any winemaker will know this is also the first sign for early starts and late finishes!

Monday 15th

I am off once more to the Roussillon to get an update on the XV du President Grenache vineyards. After a couple of hours driving around the slate roads I am happy to decide that the first vineyards will be harvested this coming Friday. Now I can get back to Bordeaux to check the Sauvignon Blanc vineyards with John and Jean-Marc in the Entre-deux-Mers region.

However, on the way through the midi I make an impulsive stop at Limoux in the department of Aude as I have heard rumours of incredible Chardonnay grapes this year, and if rumours are true I would love get some Chardonnay juice for the Chai. The terroir of the village of Limoux is very unique as it sits in a crossroads of climatic influences. To the north is the Autan climate, to the East is the Mediteranean climate, to the South is the Haute-Vallee climate and to the west is the Oceanic (Atlantic) climate. All four areas produce very different Chardonnay wines. I visit the four areas to see for myself and sure enough the grapes are tasting amazing but for me the oceanic area is the cream of the 2008 vintage so we will be certainly harvesting and taking this back to the Chai. Just need to think of a name for the wine now.
Any ideas?!

Tuesday 16th

The Sauvignon Blanc harvest begins in the villages of Espiet and St.Radegonde. We are making the Laithwaite Sauvignon Blanc here but will be taking some grapes from a few very special vineyards to the Chai to make a Grand Chai Bordeaux Blanc.

Thursday 18th

I leave late in the afternoon for the Roussillon as the XV du President will start to be picked tomorrow first thing. You are probably starting to get an idea of how much travelling is involved in my job!

Friday 19th

The first grapes of XV du President arrive at the winery this morning. These Grenache grapes are from vineyards located to the south of the village of Maury and wow! The Grenache juice is deep black in colour as soon as the grapes pour into the first vat, this is the proof to confirm that the 2008 vintage is going to be a cracker! The samples of juice from the vats are collected and sent up to the tasting room where I can get the first good look at them.

Meanwhile John and Alistair are transporting the Sauvignon Blanc juice from Ste.Radegonde to the Chai. So I once again I race back to Bordeaux to help get the vats and barrels ready for filling.


Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st

Preparing new barrels for filling with young wine is very important and they must be pre-swelled or the chances of leaks are high. All the barrels to be used on Monday have to be taken down from the seven high racks and placed standing up on the cellar floor. Each barrel is then swelled by putting water in the head (end) of the barrel. Leaving the water here for 4 hours will swell the flat end and tighten the rest of the barrel. The barrels are then turned over and the process is repeated with the other end. Fingers crossed and the barrels are then ready to be filled.


Monday 22nd

It is decided that the Chardonnay in Limoux will be harvested tomorrow night by machine so I will have to pack my bag again and make my way back down south. The Chardonnay is harvested by machine as the vines are trained to grow on a high trellis (wires and posts). Machine harvesters work by straddling the row of vines and shaking the berries off the stalks onto a conveyor belt which takes the berries up and over into the storage pockets on the sides of the machine.

The quality of harvesting machines nowadays is so incredible that they can be regulated to shake the vine in different ways. Rotten or defected berries tend to have a more fragile connection to the main bunch and the harvest machine will actually knock unwanted berries further down the row to the floor before the machine arrives to take the good berries. Green, unripe berries do the opposite and are left attached to the stalk. With the added bonus of picking at night time when the grapes are cold, machine harvesting is a very quick, clean and clever way to pick grapes.

Tuesday 23th

The Chai team starts at 6:30 a.m.! First on the list is the filtration of the 2007 Grand Chai Pessac-Leognan so it will be ready for bottling this coming Friday. David is always here on the dot! He is the only French man I know that turns up on time and also oddly enough also the only French man I know that drinks tea and plays snooker?? David parks up his filter machine just outside of the Chai and the wine is filtered quickly and efficiently.

The rest of the day is taken up with putting the Sauvignon Blanc into barrels.

The end the day for me means it’s back to the Midi for tomorrows harvesting in Carcassone and Limoux.

Wednesday 24th

First bit of vintage luck this morning as both the Chardonnay in Carcassone and Limoux are ready to be picked today. This may not sound lucky but for me it means I will be able to use one tanker lorry with separate compartments to carry both the Carcassone and Limoux chardonnay to Bordeaux, and that’s also one less 6 hour return journey!

Harvest goes well and the juice is in the vats cooling overnight, I will be back in the morning to load the juice into the tanker and send it back to Bordeaux. I have tasted some of the other juice in the winery in Carcassone and by chance have tasted a fantastic small batch of Viognier! I have a quick chat with Monsiuer Degrotte followed by a phone call to Jean-Marc and within 10 mins the Viognier deal is done and it is destined for our Chai in Bordeaux. Tonight I will stay in Maury overnight and be back in Carcassone tomorrow.

Thursday 25th

I arrive at 7a.m. in Carcassone to put the Chardonnay and Viognier juice into the lorry and then onto Limoux to pick up the other Chardonnay. The lorry will arrive at the Chai late tonight so I have to get a move on to be back in Bordeaux for the delivery.

Friday 26th

The weather in Bordeaux continues to be magnificent and the last 3 weeks of sunshine has saved the vintage. This morning was no different with yet another stunning sunrise on the banks of the Dordogne.

Incredibly busy day as we are bottling the 2007 Grand Chai Pessac-Leognan. The wine is lovely and silky and will be ready for our UK customers for Christmas.

It has been a great week for the Chai ...

It has been a great week for the Chai because we have had our first cellar visits from the new Chai Key Holders. We have been very proud to finally be able to show first hand the Chai au Quai. Thank you to all the people that have visited us last week.


Monday 11th

The weather has been rather erratic during the last 7 days, with lots of rain and variable temperatures. Rainfall at this time of year is a good thing as the vines need that extra boost before the ripening begins. However, too much and there could be some consequences … so fingers crossed.

Veraison (bunch colour change) in the St.Emilion and Cotes de Castillon vineyards is just beginning and after a good look around the vineyards, the potential quality of the vintage starts to reveal itself. As reports of poor fruit set come in from all over France, Bordeaux is no different. There has also been an extremely poor flowering here in Bordeaux, worst hit are Pessac-Leognan and the limestone plateau St.Emillion/Cotes de Castillon. Cold and wet weather during the flowering period resulted in a number of problems. The two major consequences of poor flowering are ‘coulure’ (shatter set) which is when the flowers abort and no grapes are formed and ‘milerandage’ (hen and chicken) due to poor flower pollination. It is the latter that we are mostly experiencing in Bordeaux. The ‘milerandage’ produces tiny seedless berries amongst the normal sized ones in the bunch and the damage can range from 1% to 100%. The small berries do not ripen correctly and can be over acidic, over tannic or even too high in sugar so it means careful selection at harvest to remove these before the best bunches/berries are put into the vats, it will be a good year for the sorting table manufacturers! Milerandage is nature’s answer to a green harvest so yields will be small, but the positive side is that the remaining berries will be of an extremely high quality.

The Chai has a big week ahead as we are hosting a dinner for 28 people in the barrel cellar. The people invited include some of the most famous winemakers, negociants and chateau owners of Bordeaux along with our guest of honour Hugh Johnson. Hugh is arriving at 16.20 today at Bergerac airport, so it is on with the Chauffeur hat and I am off to collect him.


Tuesday 12th

Early start and there is a fair bit of tasting to do this morning. Clare Tooley, Dan Snook and my self start tasting some Bordeaux wines at 8am, but we are missing one person from the team – Mr Jean-Marc Sauboua. But with true French courtesy he has already phoned to say that he is late and that “zi traffic iz terribul”.

Tony Laithwaite arrives with Hugh Johnson and we start to taste the Chai wines – about 40 wines in total, ranging from our first 2006 vintage to current barrel samples. The tasting lasts two and half hours and we are all definitely ready for a hearty lunch at La Clariere. Bridgitte has everything ready on our arrival and she cooks some excellent entrecotes steaks to perfection on the indoor fire. After lunch, Tony and co are out to visit some chateaux in Montagne, St.Emilion and Pomerol. I give the tour a miss and start to prepare for this evening’s dinner.

By 6p.m. (people arriving for aperitifs at 7p.m) the caterers and Bridgitte have done a fantastic job, the Chai looks amazing. The guests start to arrive and the Champagne starts to flow, all the guests kindly bring along some wines for everyone to taste and the with calibre of guests there are some very nice wines to try such as 1964 Chateau Angelus, 1996 Cos Estournel, 1998 Chateau Giscours,1998 Chateau l’Evangile, 2001 Franc-Maillet, 2004 La Gaffeliere and a couple of 1966 Quinta do Noval vintage ports thrown if for good luck. Everyone gets to chat and drink champagne whilst delicious canapés are handed round by the smartly dressed waiters before dinner is served. Everyone is seated and dinner is served just after eight, a beautiful dinner with good conversation and the chance to talk to some of the people I have only read and heard about in wine magazines. The whole meal was perfect, from the food, the service to the company and the meal was ended with motivating speeches from Hugh and Tony (plus a short but hilarious speech from Jean-Marc). Thanks to everyone involved and invited for a truly fabulous evening.


Friday 15th

Yet another French bank holiday weekend starts! And if you are unlucky enough to have taken your summer holidays this week, then not to worry as they give you an extra day at the end to make up for it, vivre la France. We spend the long weekend in Brittany as I thought the rain in Bordeaux needed dragging north.


Monday 18th

Denis the cellar master is back from his holidays, he’s on top form and raring to go. He hasn’t seen the cellar for three weeks and is already (before a coffee) rearranging and moving all the things I have touched back into their rightful places!

First job we have today is the monthly barrel topping (ouillage in French). The barrels lose wine or levels change due to a number of factors. Wine in barrel will be absorbed into the wood by and the loss is generally dependant on the age of barrel and the time spent in the barrel. New barrels or barrels left empty for a long period of time (not advised) will absorb more liquid than older saturated barrels with the first four months being the peak loss period. The key is to refill used barrels with a new wine as soon as the older wine has been removed. Temperature in the cellar and evaporation are other factors that changes the mass of the wine and in winter, when the wine shrinks, the barrels need to be re-topped. Last but not least wine is lost through taking samples for analysis and of course tasting!

The barrels need to be kept full in order to avoid bacterial spoilage (vinegar) and oxidation of the wine. Throughout the year each barrel can lose up to 8 litres of wine and with 500 barrels in the Chai there is a lot of regular topping to be done. We have many different wines in the cellar and each wine needs to be topped with its identical matching wine, this is managed by having small 300 litre stainless steel topping tanks allocated to every batch. Topping when the cellar is full is a continuous cycle and as soon as you have topped the last barrel it is time to refill the first! There are many methods to topping the barrels such as pressure kegs with pistols and torches, air pump pistols and gravity tanks. But Denis likes to do things in the traditional way of Bordeaux and uses a specially shaped stainless steel watering can and his acute cellar hearing to fill to the correct level (and that’s why most Bordeaux cellars do not have a radio blasting out music!)


Wednesday 20th

New barrels have arrived! The first of the 2008 barrels I ordered earlier in the year have been delivered to the Chai ready for the 2008 vintage. When new barrels start to be delivered, my winemaking adrenalin and excitement begins to kick off. The fresh toast of new barrels infuses into the cellar and they have an aroma uncannily alike to McVities ginger nut biscuits!



Thursday 21st

Today is our last bottling at the Chai of the 2006 wines which will last about 12 days before the first 2008 whites come into the cellar! We are bottling the Grand Chai Sauternes and St.Emilion 2006. We start with the Sauternes as this is in half bottles and the bottling line is already regulated. We are using a sterile filter because Sauternes contains residual sugar and we need to filter out all yeast cells in case they get hungry later on whilst in bottle! As we all know, yeast plus sugar equals fermentation and sparkling Sauternes is not good. The filters are changed and the bottling line sterilized just after lunch, ready for the St.Emilion 2006. We are bottling the St.Emilion without labels and capsules to store them laid flat in metal cages, this is called Tiré Bouché or TB in French.


Many top chateaux use this method as they can hold back the wine to age further in bottle. The winemakers will frequently taste the bottled wine and only release the bottles to the customers when it reaches the drinking condition. Wine takes time to evolve and sometimes this can take many years or only six months, but this method ensures customers will not be tempted to open too early and be disappointed. It is important to note that many wines are still released young (with further potential ageing) but the TB method guarantees to avoid the ‘bottle shock’ period. Once the wine is thought by the winemaker to be ready for release, the bottles are polished and dressed with clean capsules and labels ready for transport.




Tasting notes:
Grand Chai Sauternes 2006
Deep bright yellow gold colour, dried apricots, clove, marmalade and honey nose, concentrated tropical fruit, luscious apricot, lime zest acidity, long butterscotch and mandarin peel finish.

Saint Emilion AOC 2006
Dark ruby red colour, brooding black cherry and lifted leafy blackcurrant, licorice and rose nose, muscular body with soft tannins, elegant backbone, ripe blackcurrant fruit driven palate, hint of tobacco leaf, rounded tannins, black cherry finish.