gharbour
Posts: 371
Joined: 4/30/2010
From: Savigny les Beaune, France
Status: offline
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This series of posts is the continuing saga of a father helping his son (Nicholas) and daughter-in-law (Colleen) realize their dream of starting a winery (www.MaisonHarbour.com) in Burgundy, France. If you didn’t catch my earlier posts please look beneath the title of this post to find ” View related threads: (in this forum | in all forums)” and select “in all forums”.
The grapes continue to develop well enough after the damage from the hail. We have held our breath a few more times while storms passed through, but generally the weather has been nice. These are the grapes today (in my courtyard) that I have been following.
The search now for grapes is slow. Right now all the growers are just sitting on their grapes. They don't want to give contracts as their stocks are low from the last couple of years and they are worried that one more hail storm could wipe out the remaining grapes. Plus, everyone, even the courtiers (grape brokers), are on vacation till at least August 15th. So everyone is waiting until September, when we are closer to harvest, and people will be more confident in what they have. Nicholas and Colleen have looked at a couple of new vineyards but they did not like the farming practices.
In the meantime we wait and get ready in the cuverie. Things have been slow here with the August vacation. Everything is closed. We’re still without electricity so limited on what we can accomplish, mainly painting. Nevertheless, Nicholas and Colleen are still working on organizing all the materials and have just bought 8 french oak barrels.
Barrel tasting of the 2 wines Nicholas and Colleen made last year, shows them to be very nice right now. So we have begun preparation for bottling. To this end sulfur dioxide titration equipment has been ordered, to allow adjustment of the final sulfur dioxide level, as well as 150 bottles and corks. This should arrive next week when we’ll bottle everything up and clean the barrels.
Since things are so slow, Leslie and I ran off for two days in Champagne. We visited two of our favorite producers, José Dhondt and Veuve Fourny. But also a new house for us, Chapuy, because a classmate of Colleen’s from the Masters in Wine program at the Lycee Viticole in Beaune is doing a “stage” (internship) there. Needless to say we came home with a trunk full of cases of Champagne. Here a couple of photos.
The first is of José during a very relaxed tasting at his home in Oger!
The second is of the new cuverie (2 years old) at Veuve Fourny. The design and execution of the cuverie and caves was spectacular.
And a photo from the riddling room at Chapuy.
We stayed at a great B&B “Auprès de l’Eglise” (www.champagnevilla.com) south of Vertus. If you ever want a great dinner and accommodation in the area try them out. Leslie and Gary are the first two on the right.
A Bientôt,
Gary
_____________________________
Gary Harbour
Chez Nos Coeurs
Savigny les Beaune
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Summer Adventure in Burgundy 9 - Vacation time in France - 
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