It comes around every year, but it never fails to be exciting - vintage 2024 is underway! Harvesting started on a beautiful morning at Château Cazal Viel in St-Chinian, where ripening is typically 1 - 2 weeks ahead of the cooler-climate, high-altitude vineyards at Château Auzines in Corbières. We start by harvesting our Chardonnay and the Viognier plots will soon follow, before we progress to the Albarino at Château Auzines,
Night harvesting is key to the quality and finesse of our wines and we have been harvesting between dusk and dawn for many years. This practice was considered unusual when we first started because of the added expense of it, however the impact of global warming has made night-time harvesting not only sensible, but critical, to the quality and freshness of our wines. The first two weeks of August reached temperatures of 40+C here and this causes acidity levels to drop in the grapes and the sugar levels rise. Our policy of harvesting by night results in fresher grapes snf more elegant wines.
2024 saw unusual weather patterns in the Languedoc, with quite a cool, wet Spring and a late start to summer. The subsequent increased risk of humidity-related diseases led to careful monitoring of the vineyard during this time, although the rain helped to maintain a healthy level of water in our rainwater lake during the growing season. Mid-July brought more usual temperatures and ripening progressed well without the difficult heatwave conditions experienced in parts of Europe. August so far has been very hot and there was daily tasting in the vineyards to time correctly the date for harvest. Overall we are optimistic and delighted with the quality of the grapes, which is the most important thing of all! We are hoping for an incident-free harvest without any unexpected weather events.
The team will work around the clock 24/7 over the next few weeks to get the grapes harvested and to the winery as quickly as possible. The tanks and barrels are cleaned and ready to receive their bounty! It's a very busy time, but it's very rewarding to see the fruits of a year's hard work in the vineyards this week. Stay tuned and follow us on our social channels for updates.
Here's to vintage 2024!
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