Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you.
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Or so the Crowded House song goes.
In this case, it’s not the weather, but the 2015 harvest that is following me around Europe and today there was plenty of pickers out in the vineyards of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
The white harvest has kicked off here in earnest, with reds still a week or so off judging by the Grenache grapes I tasted on the road between Chateauneuf and Courthezon.
As you can see in this photo though, eveyrhing looks very, very green, which is most unexpected given that July was damn hot. The healthy greeness is apparently a product of excellent rain last autumn that really recharged the soil moisture levels.
Needless to say that vignerons are pumped, not only here in Chateauneuf bud down south in the Languedoc too. The talk was comparing this year to 2010 or 2005…
I didn’t have much time tasting today but managed a quick visit to Ogier where it also was fun to taste their terroir series of Grenache based CndP off different soil types. It was the ’12s open today and, again, my favourite was the ‘Safres’ which is a 100% Grenache sourced from the compressed sand soils.
Grenache sure does love sandy soil!From here I’m heading back south for a few days on the beach. Can’t wait!
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