Sensations, impressions, conception-

Posted on | October 5, 2005

OK, I don’t know if I am going to succeed in explaining my mood at the moment. Let’s try..

To begin with, I must tell you what one mustn’t believe, as I have believed for a long time, those vignerons who tell you that everything is done at the vine. Those that tell you that are good at everything but don’t show off, that’s all. For example, this year, we have perfect vines (excuse this lack of modesty, but we have worked so hard that I can’t see why one can’t be proud of it..) and nonetheless, nothing is staked.

Firstly, because just as long as the grape is not in the cellar, one can lose everything. Then there are four big steps to go through and they are all elimination rounds: the date of the harvest and obtaining phenolic maturity; the strategy of the vinification; the method and duration of the processing and finally the bottling. At each of these stages, our Prince Charming can be quickly transformed back into the vulgar frog of the marshland-

And if one is successful at all that, one would have just a good, even a very good wine.

To make a magical wine (it’s not for nothing it’s called « le clos des fèes [enclosure of the fairies]» - it’s the objective) one must also «feel» the vintage, to arrive in some way to capture its «spirit».

This is complicated to explain. Every vintage is different. The experience of the preceding vintages does you no good, except if you have «integrated» the lessons to the very depths of your soul.

«To feel» the vintage, is to breathe in the air, sense the humidity, compute the weather, taste the grape, variety by variety, to know which has the best potential, study each parcel, extrapolate and attempt to guess what the grapes of 2005 will become.

One must also attempt at «guessing» what the vintage desires one has to endure: a year of waiting to unmask its latent qualities; another to hustle it a little to harvest it when it’s a little chilly; a year of not touching the tanks, or to grasp vigorously in order to extract in depth; a year to ferment slowly, another to rack off quickly.

For the moment, lots of contradictory sensations, some solid avenues but still no definite decisions. I return «to prowl», nose in the air-

Hervè Bizeul

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