Spring is always an exciting moment when you're a winemaker. Nature comes back alive: more sunlight, animals come out of hibernation, the buds on the vines sprout into blossoms. The start of a new vintage officially begins. However, this time a year a phenomenon called "griller d'avril" in French can cause extreme damage to our vines, freezing buds to death. Last week, temperatures dropped overnight to -4°C. A winemaker's worst nightmare.
On the edge
When we started looking for a house with vineyard in 2010 we were looking specifically for red grapes in a northern region of France. Because we prefer to drink red wine and don't like heat. And regions where red grapes are historically grown always have a micro-climate, with Château de Minière we really found the domaine of our dreams.
The Loire has a cool climate, meaning that it's on the edge of what is considered climatically suitable for growing grapes. Bourgueil in particular, where our vineyards are located.
Making wine is a cool climate brings many challenges and is playing with the limits of what nature can offer. An overall season with too little heat and sun, as in 2013, but also one-off risks such as frost or hail, and especially in spring, at the wrong time in the season for the plants.
Damage control
Spring frost is inevitable. But the winegrowers at Bourgueil know how to minimize the damage, as much as possible. By pruning sensitive parcels later and/or folding them later, some have windmills or place fire pits in the vineyard at night and in St Nicolas de Bourgueil some have invested in sprinkler systems. We placed small fires near our vines to protect them from the frost and guard them from sudden temperature drops.
Many winegrowers, including us, have insurance that pays out compensation in the event of frost or hail damage. As a winegrower, you choose the amount of the compensation yourself, just as you have your home contents insured for a certain amount: the higher you choose, the more you pay each year, so it's a difficult decision each year. But the most important aspect: the insurance company does pay out a sum of money, but it does not bring wine the cellar!
Worst frost in decades
The damage varies enormously. At our Château de Minière, accounting 29 hectares, we estimate the loss at 25%. At Château de Suronde we have 6,5 hectares of which some parcels are completely damaged but other parcels with no damage at all.
Unfortunately, it isn't over yet. frosts have been announced again and these fluctuations may last until mid-May. So we may have some sleepless nights ahead of us. We have our fingers crossed and pray to the wine gods!
The hidden bud
A vine is a magical plant in the sense that every bud has a 'counter-bud', that is, a 2nd 'hidden' bud that usually shoots later in the season.
In a normal season, that's often annoying, because those 2nd shoots create little unripe bunches that we don't want to mix with the real harvest, so that's why a team of people has to go through the vineyard to manually remove those buds.
In case of frost, however, those counter buds are our salvation and our hope. Nevertheless, Cabernet Franc already has fewer such 2nd buds compared to other vines, and the 2nd buds do not always have flowers and thus bunches.
The romanticism of winemaking
Winemaking is a trial and error, especially in a cool climate. It is more expensive to make wine. There are more risks such as spring frost, Which we hold our hearts for every year. Also because the climate provides more work (humidity, diseases, botrytis), and often also because the labor is more expensive than in warm regions, e.g. the new world. So it is logical that the wines are also more expensive in price.
We fell in love with our beautiful historic enclosed estate, in the middle of the vast vineyards of Bourgueil. It was our choice to want to continue making wine in these circumstances. And the fact that we make organic wine is entirely our own choice, in which we also persevere.
It is up to us, winemakers, to demonstrate and explain, that wine from cool climates can be more interesting due to a better balance of aromas, tannins and acids, and therefore worth more.
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