The Harvest of 2011-The Big Picture
Mother Nature continues to test us. Every year, just when we have defined our experiments and implemented them—usually as solutions to Mother Nature’s previous curve balls—she invents a new problem. This time, it rained on June 28th—directly in the middle of fruit set. There’s nothing you can do about that, except clean up the mess.
The 2011 harvest was the second worst harvest since 2005, when we got zero fruit. The weather was extremely cold throughout the growing season, and it even rained during flowering—in June! Thus, the flowers never did set properly into grape berries. We got only 50% of our normal yield from Domaine du Docteur Rodgers and Domaine Valeta, and only 7% of our normal yield from the big vineyard, Domaine Lois Louise. Yes, you read that correctly, 7%.
However, the quality of the fruit is exceptional. We grew very small berries (giving concentration) with low sugar (giving Burgundian characteristics), but still got optimum ripeness (brown seeds, indicating ripe tannin).
The 2011 harvest was the second worst harvest since 2005, when we got zero fruit. The weather was extremely cold throughout the growing season, and it even rained during flowering—in June! Thus, the flowers never did set properly into grape berries. We got only 50% of our normal yield from Domaine du Docteur Rodgers and Domaine Valeta, and only 7% of our normal yield from the big vineyard, Domaine Lois Louise. Yes, you read that correctly, 7%.
However, the quality of the fruit is exceptional. We grew very small berries (giving concentration) with low sugar (giving Burgundian characteristics), but still got optimum ripeness (brown seeds, indicating ripe tannin).