Never has a harvest been so eagerly awaited as the 2013. Never have we had such a complicated year leading up to it: really late flowering of the vines, really late ‘veraison’ when the grapes begin to ripen, hail in July, more rainfall before summer’s end than we normally get in a whole year … […]
No, this was not our idea. Normally at the beginning of September we are harvesting the grapes for our fizz. But this is not a normal year, and so we are not harvesting the grapes for our fizz. We are sitting here twiddling our thumbs, and scratching our heads. At least the month opened with […]
If July was hot, then August came hotter on its heels. But we are not complaining: never before have we turned the page of the calendar from the one month to the other while the vines were still growing. Veraison, when the grapes change from a hard jade green to a softer, luminous, slightly transparent […]
July brought its usual distractions to Rives-Blanques: the Festival in Carcassonne, Wimbledon (won by Frenchwoman Bartoli while all her compatriots were glued to the Tour de France), and the absolutely stunning display of fireworks over the medieval City marking the glorious Quatorze de Juillet. All this, of course, not a patch on our own private […]
By the end of May we felt as if we might lift anchor and gently go off drifting over the Pyrenees into Spain. It’s cool and wet, wet, wet – and so is the vineyard. Wild flowers are lapping it all up and blooming in profusion … but the vines have come to a sulky […]