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Chateau Gazin - Nicolas and Christophe de Bailliencourt dit Courcol
 The 2006 harvest at Chateau Gazin
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Pomerol
Wednesday, September 27 2006
The 2006’s
vintage
harvest started at Chateau Gazin, on Friday, September 15th, for the youngest
Merlot vines, on a quiet and cloudy day. The following week-end unfortunately brought up water funnel.
But the Merlots
are fully mature at Gazin and in this case rain is not an insuperable barrier. It fortunately brought down the
alcohol degree that raised up and over 15° during the previous sunny and windy week. (By law in
the
Pomerol area, wines cannot have
over 13.5°
alcohol potential). In fact, after a dreadful end of August,
meteorologically speaking, the beginning of September came up with
a heatwave, allowing the grapes to concentrate the
sugar in a very impressive way. Let
us also remind that the month of July had been extremely hot and
sunny, allowing the grapes at Chateau Gazin to mature and cope
well with the bad weather conditions in August.
These good harvesting conditions remained up to September 23rd and allowed us
at Gazin to pick up all the Merlots.
We haven’t mentioned about the
Cabernet
Sauvignons and the
Cabernet
Francs yet. The problem might potentially come from these
varietals in 2006, as they are still not matured at this point and may
unfortunately start rotting due to the weather conditions!
If the rain should start again the rot could come up very quickly and bring
a strog dilemna to the staff at Chateau Gazin and to other wine
growers in the area: either one should pick the Cabernets when not completely mature, but
in a good sanitary state, or should wait and
harvest with a good
maturity but with rot too… In which case 2006 would be a
typical Merlot
vintage, and therefore a good
vintage overall for Pomerol. As you know
it is very possible for us at Gazin to produce a 100% Merlot
wine, without denaturing the wine's style.
As we expressed before, so far the
harvest has been beautiful . The grapes are
better selected this year as Gazin invested in new sorting tables.
In the past, 4 persons were doing this work directly in the
vineyard.
Now we are 14 persons sorting the grapes in the vat room, which
undoubtly gives better results.
Up today the
yield should stand around 39
hectolitres per
hectare with a natural degree of 13.5°. But most important,
Gazin has excellent and mature tannins, which is the essential point
to make a great wine. As for the Cabernets
we will soon decide what to do as we plan to
harvest this
varietal
on Friday 29th and on the following Monday.
Nicolas and Christophe de Bailliencourt dit Courcol - Chateau
Gazin
http://www.chateau-gazin.com/
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