Sunday July 1
One of our regular customers in England sends us an email full of effusive congratulations. Then he sends a second email with the reason for the congratulations: copies of the August edition of Decanter Magazine, out today already, apparently.
We are absolutely stunned. Of the 30 top white Languedoc wines selected by Rosemary George, Master of Wine, there is our very own chenin blanc, Dedicace, in the No. 1 slot ! Right at the top of the class! This is absolutely amazing!
Then a third email arrives. This one has a photo of the next page of the same article, and what do we find there? Our much-loved mauzac, Occitania, placed at No 17 with 91 pointa!
And all this just a month after our chardonnay, Odyssee, won Decanter’s gold medal. This is a moment in the sun to be savoured and enjoyed for as long as it lasts. What a way to start the month! Such a garland of blessings has never before fallen over the shoulders of three single varietal Limoux’s all at the same time. And what a salvo of hard-hitting points they got: 96, 95 and 93 …!
Tuesday 3 July
We’re in the medieval walled town of Carcassonne, having dinner on the terrace of the Auberge de Lices’ terrace before the Opera. It’s Carmen, performed under flying buttresses and twinkling stars as part of the Carcassonne’s annual musical festival.
But suddenly an enormous wind whips up. Some unusually large drops of rain begin to fall. The waiters bustle, hastily putting up big umbrellas over the outdoor tables. The umbrellas fill with wind, flapping like an unmanned mainsail. The rain buckets down. We feel seasick and wet, there’ll be no Carmen, that’s for sure, she wouldn’t survive a minute of this..
Jan phones Jan-Ailbe at the vineyard, and tucks his iPhone back into his pocket with a grey serious look on his face. « Hail » he says, « tons of it ».
We drive home through the darkened streets of Cépie and our hearts begin to fall. The road is strewn with rubbish, ripped leaves, all the detritus and debris of a big storm. The headlights of the car pick out the turning into the little road leading up to Rives-Blanques: mud, mud everywhere! Oh no! It doesn’t look good.
And it isn’t. 
The cold light of morning shows that we have probably lost about 30% to hail. Perhaps more.
The cold light of morning shows that other parts of Limoux have lost 100% to hail.
The cold light of morning brings an advice from the Chamber of Agriculture that there is no effective treatment against hail damage, and « we advise you there is nothing you can do ».
And the cold light of morning brings a banal, bright blue sky and a warning of another hail storm.
Wednesday 4 July
We don’t get the hail today, just lashings of heavy, serious rain instead.
People are counting up the hail damage. Limoux has been badly hit, about 70% of the vines lost, at an early estimation. Everyone is comparing stories, and lots of people are blaming this year’s 13th moon. There was also a 13th moon in 2014, but I don’t remember anything like this then.
We have a good look at our own vines: there’s a fair bit of damage, maybe more than we thought. And there’s also damage from mildew, the unstoppable fungus that destroys photosynthesis, resulting from the excessive humidity of the last few weeks,. but everyone’s got that this year. In fact, the whole of France seems to have it. Jan-Ailbe has been spending about 20 hours per week in the tractor trying to prevent mildew from hitting us, but if you’re in organic viticulture, that’s almost impossible under these circumstances.
One field escaped, and that’s the old vines of mauzac for our Occitania. But that’s the very field that was hammered by hail last night. There’s hardly anything left there to harvest.
But we still count ourselves lucky.
Saturday 8 July
Frank Sakhinis, the maitre sommelier of the Michelin star restaurant at the Domaine d’Auriac is having fun. He’s in a very good mood. He happens to have a bottle of our chardonnay-chenin tucked under his arm, and is pouring it liberally at several tables all around ours on their lovely terrace
« If you have any complaints about this wine » he’s telling his guests, , « then go and talk to the winemakers. They’re sitting right over there. »
Then he passes our table and says, « I’m telling them to come and complain to you if they don’t like the wine… » And he laughs loudly, hugely pleased with himself.
And when we get home after lunch, we find that one lot of people had gone straight to Rives-Blanques after lunch to buy some wine. Who said there’s no such thing as a free lunch?
Wednesday 11 July
The days are too hot to hold. What’s going on? So hot, heavy and humid. Horrible. We scan the sky anxiously, but that doesn’t help. This is not good for our beleaguered grapes. Nor for our beleaguered vineyard manager.
Thursday 12 July
All you want to do, really, is dive into a glass of fresh fizz. Put a bit of sparkle into this hot, heavy and damp monotony.
It’s the regional lifestyle magazine, Terre de Vins, specialising in food and wine, that gives us the idea. Their July-August issue has just come out, with a selection of their top 100 rosés for the summer.
And the highest-ranked pink fizz just happens to the Rives-Blanques Vintage Rose. 16.5 points is pretty good going.
What a good idea for a hot, heavy, horrible night like tonight!
Friday 13 July
This heat is unbearable! Surely it fits the official definition of a ‘canicule’ (plus 36 C. during the day, + 21 C at night for three days and nights in a row)?
Ironic that in this heat we’re counting the losses of last week’s hail. They say now that 6000 ha of vines spread of 80 communes have been affected, and that ours, Cépie, was one of the hardest hit, suffering a loss of 75-100%.
A senator has called for this to be officially acknowledged as a Natural Disaster. The communes concerned are also asking the State to call it an Agricultural Calamity – all with the hope of freeing up some pennies to help the affected farmers. Our lives revolve so much around wine, that we tend to forget our fellow-farmers engaged in vegetables and grains (and yes, we are very sorry for them too). But somehow for us it seems worse: we grow the grapes, we nurture the vines, we pick the fruit, we nanny it from juice to wine, we package it, and then we part from it to do the whole cycle again. But for many, there won’t be that cycle next year either, so badly have the vines been damaged.
The region will vote on a special aid packet on July 20, and we watch that spot with interest. But what ever they do, they are incapable of replacing our lost grapes and all that lost potential.
Sunday 15 July
The only positive thing we can say about this incredibly debilitating weather is that at least it isn’t raining. Jan-Ailbe takes advantage of the relative cool of night (« relative » being the operative word) to do another anti-mildew treatment. Just as he finishes off, an electric storm of Star Wars intensity battles it out in the night sky.
Monday 16 July
Thunder rocking around overhead. Rain lashing down. Temperatures plunging.
Just one look out of the bedroom window is enough to discourage the 30 second commute to the office.
Jan shakes his head despairingly: they’re forecasting 30 ml of rain today, he says.
30 ml! That will wash away all the anti-mildew Jan Ailbe was spraying last night.
« And more rain and storms on Wednesday and Thursday » he adds gloomily.
Oh, will no one rid us of this troublesome year?
Wednesday 18 July
A bit late in the day, we learn that our Crémant rosé Vintage Rose got 90 points from Decanter and was included in Sue Style’s selection of French Cremants that « give you more bang for your bucks » than Champagne.
Hear! Hear!
it’s all in the self-same edition that included Dédicace and Occitania in the top 30 Languedoc white wines.
Embarrassment of riches? Definitely. But we’re not really embarrassed, just terribly pleased. And thanking our lucky stars, because of course luck has something to do with it too.
Thursday 19 July
And lucky we are that the hail forecast for last night didn’t fall. Just a lot of thunder, lightening and violent winds came crashing around our heads, but no hail.
Jan-Ailbe puts aside half a day today and half a day tomorrow again to get in his tractor and drive up and down the vines again spraying copper sulphate on the vines to protect them from mildew again. It’s the only product organic producers are allowed to use, and of course the rain washes it right off (again). The weather is benign and guiltless: perfect for spraying.
Friday 20 July
Tonight might be not quite so lucky, however. Nothing was forecast, so we’re getting everything, and are bracing ourselves for the final finishing coup de grace – though « grace » is hardly the right word to use in this case. The violence overhead in the sky and the vehemence of its flashing electricity is truly awful. Bacchus and Benson seem surprisingly unimpressed, but we are not.
There’s a strangled Klimt moment in the vineyard manager’s house in the woods, but the rain has no ears and cannot hear.
Saturday 21 July
« 24 mm of rain last night! » Jan says partly in awe, partly in disgust, and this after the 40 mm that fell on Wednesday. « Remember how we were praying for « 16 mm, please, please! » last year? We would have given anything for a bit of rain. »
Jan-Ailbe goes to Limoux to buy some more copper sulphate. He looks pale and drawn. « It’s just not do-able » he says, « we can’t go on like this. » All weekend he’ll be back in his tractor (again) spraying (again) and who knows what tomorrow will bring?
Who know what tonight will bring?
Monday 23 July
It never rains but it pours. A truism that never has been truer.
The wine critics are being incredibly generous to us: Occitania has had a real run in the sun, in the Independent, in the Telegraph magazine, in Decanter, and in Midi Gourmand all in the space of a month.
And Vintage Rose is fizzing in high places as well: in Decanter, in Terre de Vins, and now in JancisRobinson.com … and all in the space of the same week. It’s incredible. ‘Fine-boned, elegant, piercingly precise » she wrote about our fizz (not about me, alas).
And our still Limoux’s hold pride of place in Decanter’s Top 30 Languedoc whites. It’s not only incredible, it’s almost impossible. Actually, it probably is impossible, and we have to pinch ourselves.
What a volley of hard-hitting scores we’re getting too: 96, 95, 90 and 91 from Decanter, 17 from JancisRobinson.com. Just amazing
Trouble is, we hardly have any wine to sell. But still, even if we’re dreaming, please don’t wake us up. And even if these accolades are pouring in, let it rain let it rain, let it rain!
Thursday July 26
But the heat builds up to an unbearable level.
We prepare to head out for our annual holiday, and the temperature is soaring. There’s no rhyme or reason to the weather. After the terrible lesson of the 2003 heatwave, which we all remember as if it were yesterday, the government constructed the PNC (Plan National Canicule), which has now swung into action. 66 départements are in ‘canicule’ alert, for the first time since 2003. This has been the third hottest July since 1900.
Which, rightly or wrongly, actually gives some cold comfort. Was it, perhaps, just as hot as this over one hundred years ago… ?
Statistics can be misleading. So can the thermometer against the shutters on the south-facing terrace, which is nudging the 50 degree mark. Not that it is 50 degrees,, but it sure feels like it. And the vines, also on a south-facing terrace, are facing the same heat.
…/to be continued next month