News from the vines of Merfy

At this period, the vines are working whit the sun. The main work is the “photosynthesis”, the leaves transform the sun into sugar, to obtain, during the harvest, a nice maturity. Now, our work of winegrower is to follow the maturation of the grapes, and sometimes, to cut the grass in some vines.

As we don’t use any herbicides, the grass grows in the different ways. Different types of grass on different soils, even on the same village : Merfy. That’s due to what the soil tries to explain us. Each grass means something, and that’s a very important information that we have to keep for the next period of viticulture. If the soil is covered by “senecio vulgaris”, it means for example that there’s too much “matière organique” in the soil. I have to know it for the next year. There are more than a hundred plants to know, and what they mean for us, that’s a forgotten work, but certainly one of the most important work. Everything by hand ...

Concerning the grapes, they are now evaluating in a good way. They all need sun, but the evolution is nice. For the moment, the black grapes (Pinot Noir and Meunier) begin to be good to taste.

The Meunier juices seems now to evaluate in a fat condition, they have enough sugar to be appreciated, and the juices that comes are full of expression. The structure is now well represented on those juices, not too much finesse, but a big strength and presence on the mouth. Small grapes.

The Pinot noir, on the contrary, are lighter, with nice flavors, less fat than the meunier, thin skins. The grapes are now long and aerated; it could be a nice harvest for those grapes that could have a nice evolution during the two next weeks.

The Chardonnay is now big and wears some lighting dresses. The color begins to be yellow and let the sun pass through. The skins are thin and their flavors are hidden by the freshness of the juices. A lazy grape variety this year! We’ll have to wait between the harvest of the blac k skin grapes and the Chardonnay’s.

 

It was raining for now 2 weeks, and it seems to begin to be sunny now. It really have to continue like that if we want to have a nice harvest.