It is already my tenth vintage

I am starting my tenth harvest. I have experienced my fair share of weather-related setbacks (frost, hail, mildew…), so suffice to say that I approached yesterday's first day of harvesting with as much excitement as stress. Every year, two plots reach maturity first: Bouché and Peyron. We decided to start with Peyron. Naturally, no harvest comes without technical glitches. The press ground to a halt barely after starting up. Fortunately, our electrician was able to step in very quickly and replace the transformer that had blown. As for the grapes, we are very pleasantly surprised by both the yield and the quality. We feared that repeated heatwaves would take a toll on the expected juice volume. But not at all: we are close to 60 hectolitres per hectare on this Sauvignon plot, which ultimately did not suffer too much from the lack of water and extreme temperatures. The initial fruit set was very promising in spring, and the sheer number of bunches made up for the small size of the berries. We shall see what the yields look like on the plots that suffered, though it is far from certain that it will be the same story. Today, we are harvesting Bouché for our Argile ocre cuvée.