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Chateau Margaux - Paul
Pontallier
Harvest
Chronicles at
Château
Margaux -
Margaux
Château
Margaux, Tuesday, September 12th 2006
At
Château
Margaux, we begin the harvesting of the white grapes tomorrow in a euphoric atmosphere
quite similar to that of 2005 or 2004 at the
same period. Of course, nothing is ever exactly the same, and in our work, almost everything remains subjective. But we have
good reason to believe today in the possibility of another great
vintage in the making.
After a very dry spring, as in 2005, the summer up till now has been rather dry (it rained less in July and August than
during the same period in 2003) and overall quite hot, except for the first two weeks of August.
At
Château
Margaux,
since September 1st, drought conditions and very high
temperatures have once again set in, it would seem, to finish
off the ripening of the white grapes. All we have to do now at
Château
Margaux pick them in the right
time.
Château
Margaux,
Friday, September 15th 2006
We have (already) picked half of the white grapes. The weather has changed, as is often the case after the great equinox
tides, but so far we have been spared any heavy rain.
The white grape
yield at
Château
Margaux has turned out even lower than we expected.
Actually, when there are few grapes we, at Château
Margaux
,always think there
are too many. On the other hand though, their concentration is amazing (between 14,5 and 15,2° potential
alcohol), so much so
that the light rain we have had has been quite welcome.
We will be stopping the picking this weekend as there is no
hurry, and we will resume on Monday. There should be around two
days of work at Château
Margaux to finish picking the whites grapes.
Château
Margaux,
Tuesday, September 19th 2006
We finished picking the white grapes this morning: a very small crop, but the quality looks outstanding, probably on a par
with the two previous fantastic vintages at
Margaux.
Last weekend was rainy at
Margaux: we had 29mm (1,4 inches) of rainfall in
Margaux. This moderate amount of rain does not really affect
the quality of the grapes, though the earliest ripening
Merlot grapes, which appear to have reached optimum rppeness
levelsmay have been made a little more fragile. We are therefore going to pick these few plots
at Chateau Margaux by the end of the week, using
our usual harvesting crew. There is no rush to pick the remaining
grapes. The 2006 growing season has followed in the footsteps of the
2005: the flowering, grape colour-change and
harvest have all taken place at exactly the same dates. Will the quality of the vintage also be the same
this year at Chateau
Margaux?
Château
Margaux,
Tuesday, September 26th 2006
After heavy rain during the night of Thursday to Friday, (30mm or 1,2 inches), fine weather gradually settled in again, and
it even became very sunny yesterday. As planned, we picked some of the
Merlot plots
of Château
Margaux at the end of last week; we then stopped
on Saturday and Sunday before starting again on Monday 25, still using
the skilled harvesting team of Chateau
Margaux. The healthy state of our
grapes means that there is no need to pick any faster. Everything then, is going along very nicely with expectations getting
higher and higher.
Our complete harvesting team is due to arrive tomorrow at Chateau
Margaux. We still have half of the
Merlot to pick, and above all, the
Cabernets,
on which, as usual, the overall success of the
vintage will depend.
Château
Margaux,
Friday, September 29zh 2006
Since yesterday, we have been picking with great enthusiasm Château
Margaux' largest plots of
Cabernet
Sauvignon. In lovely sunshine,
our whole harvesting team was at last together to pick perfectly healthy,
ripe grapes.
As the weather is apparently going to be less favourable next week, we have decided,
at
Château
Margaux
, to carry on picking tomorrow Saturday and
also Sunday, because, in the worst case scenario, it would be pointless to pick
the finest
Cabernets
of Chateau
Margaux after a heavy downpour.
But tonight let's savour the delight; for we now know that 2006 should be at least a good, or even a very good
vintage.
Château
Margaux,
Thursday, October 5th 2006
Well, there wasn't any heavy rain after all - just high winds on Tuesday morning, which had no adverse effects on the vines.
Only 11mm 8less than half an inch) actually fell, which is nothing for our grapes to worry about, neither for our pickers,
most of whom have seen far worse in past vintages.
By Monday evening Chateau
Margaux
teams had finished picking the most fragile of the Cabernets
as these were the earliest ripening. We just had
the most solid and latest-ripening ones left to pick, those in the clay-limestone soils surrounding the chateau.
Tomorrow, the
harvest will be over - already..
Paul Pontallier - Director of Chateau Margaux
http://www.chateau-margaux.com/
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