We started Domaine Jones’ 10th
harvest (yes 10 years already) on the 27th August a week later than
last year, which was particularly early, but a week earlier than previous
vintages.
We have 14 tiny vineyards that make up 12 hectares and we hand pick absolutely everything!
We started with the Grenache Gris
from our original 90 year old vineyard in Maury, followed by the old vine
Grenache blanc and Macabeu in Tuchan.
I think those old vines in Maury
must have been having a rest this year as they only managed to produce 50% of
last year’s yield. So a miniscule
vintage which was fortunately compensated by a slightly higher yield from the
vines in Tuchan.
Everything that has
come in though has been perfectly healthy and at optimum ripeness thanks to the
amazing vineyard talent of Monsieur Jones.
No mean feat for a vintage that was particularly difficult given heavy
rain in the spring and a resulting abundunce of grass in the vineyards. Perhaps not the best year to start our
conversion into organic production but we had to employ an extra person and buy
another strimmer to keep on top of it.
The resulting juice has been well
balanced with less sugar than usual and surprisingly a slightly lower acidity.
The freshly pressed juice smells delicious and ferments have so far finished on
3 of the vats producing wines that show great varietal character – grenache
gris mineral, lean and stoney, grenache blanc - fruity and plumper and the
macabeu lovely ripe pear character and more weighty.
The grapes were easy to press with
a high juice content although the press were difficult to settle.
On the reds we have picked
everything except for 2 small vineyards of carignan which we will probably pick
at the end of this week.
We started with the syrah which
ripens first, then the grenache and the hairy grenache and finally the carignan
which takes a bit longer to ripen.
Despite a small heatwave in July
which made everyone talk about an early harvest, the ripening of the reds has
been slow and on a couple of occasions we have held back our 15 strong team of
pickers and delayed picking by a couple of days.
In the 10 vintages we have done I
have never seen such juicy grapes and such intensely fragrant juice. We do 2
rack and returns a day which involves taking the fermenting juice from the vat and then
pumping it gently back over the skins and the Gare du Vin winery is just filled
with fresh red fruit flavours – strawberry, blackcurrent and raspberry.
The ferments just totally have a
mind of their own though. Almost as soon
as the grapes see the vat they start to ferment so you have to be really quick
with the cooling as otherwise ferments would be over before you have had time
to gently extract all the flavour and structure from the skins. We put our grapes in a cooling room overnight
to get a bit more control but even at cold temperature the red ferments are
quick, very quick.
It is early days but we can
already see that the syrah are intensely perfumed and dark in colour and the
grenache are slightly lighter in colour than usual. We wait to see what the carignan will be
like - and of course the hairy grenache.
Fingers crossed that the 10th Domaine Jones harvest will be the best one yet!!
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