Wednesday 30th September
Bottling of a decade-old treasure
Today was
an exciting day at Le Chai – the team arrived at 7am to greet the mobile
bottling line. Not exciting in itself, but today our 2005 Font del Bosc vin doux naturel from Maury was going to
emerge from a decade in barrel and be bottled. Ah – that is some wine. We had a
glass of it in the winemakers’ lab to swirl and sniff all day – rich, dark,
raisiny fruit, with hints of honey, mocha and big spice. Still really fruity
and lush – this is a wine, in small bottles, to savour slowly with select
company, a bowl of nuts to crack and a roaring fire.
A mere 4,200 50cl bottles of 2005 Font del Bosc were bottled – a delicious sticky |
Harvest
Over the
last three weeks, all the whites for Le Chai’s wines – both Bordeaux and
southern France – have been harvested, and in peak condition. The juice has
been brought to the cellar and has been slowly bubbling away.
Bordeaux 2015
Let’s start
with Bordeaux and it’s been a phenomenal year – wonderfully warm, dry weather
since March; shorts weather since May and peaks of heat in June and some good
rain mid September which saved the vines from totally shutting down. Not even
too hot for the whites, we just had to pick sharpish. Some amazing storms, too,
at the end of August, when the whole landscape, in typical French storm style,
was lit up by sheet lightning. No rain, however, the clouds had dropped their
load before they got to us.
So all the
Bordeaux whites are in the cellar, some are even through their fermentation,
with a few still chugging away.
With all that sunshine since May, the grapes are healthy and ripe and the berry size nice and small |
Midi 2015
The east
side of the Midi was equally blessed in 2015 too, with a great deal of sunshine
and fine weather through flowering and on ‘til harvest. West side of the Midi
suffered some flooding, but our Limoux vineyards, on the Océan Atlantique
sector, are luckily t’other side.
Having
spent a whole day taking samples from every one of the 59 barrels of La Voûte –
that’s the Chardonnay from down there – I can tell you it’s smelling totally
lush. Coming straight from wood it’s a bit creamy, toasty with some intense
ripe apricot fruit and lemon character. Very, very promising indeed. One of the
best ever for sure.