A heat-wave pushed our grapes over the start line and into September, as you will see on our monthly video if you click here. But in the early days of the month, it was clear that they were not ripe for the picking: acidity too high, sugars too low. So we distract ourselves, and try […]
Rain and unseasonably cool temperatures ushered in the month. We are watching our vines like a hawk, but as you can see if you click here, although the grapes progressed smoothly from flowering to bunch formation last month, they did not get much further. And nor did we. So veraison, when the sugar in the […]
The high point of the month comes right at the beginning of it: a harebrained idea to climb the mountain called Rives Blanques, which is tall enough to look Canigou in the eye, in the French Pyrenees. This, in order to mark the approach of the Tenth harvest at the eponymous Chateau Rives-Blanques, which approaches […]
It all crowds in on us this month. So far this year, life has been quite complicated: either too dry or too wet; either too cold or too hot – now the time has come to get our act together and do the Goldilocks thing: “just right”. The month opens on cue with brilliant blue […]
Wary of what we ask for, we say cautiously at the beginning of this month, « Rain, please ». A burst of brilliant and uncharacteristically warm weather last month pushed the vines into overdrive, and where two weeks ago there was not a leaf to be seen, May day brought with it the first sightings of tiny […]