A great year ahead?

This week’s Wednesday Vine Report is full of surprises. When you see my photographs you won’t believe the difference when compared with last year.

I hope to bring you regular reports as before. Since I was hit by a car in December, I have developed a painful condition which I won’t bore you with here. Suffice it to say sometimes I won’t be able to get out into the vineyards.

Watching for first signs

Remember how last year I eagerly waited for first signs of growth on the vines?

Dry sticks was all we had to look at last year at this time. I was looking to choose a particular vine so that I could follow its progress throughout the year. Mademoiselle Merlot became the choice and I’ve grown rather attached to her. Silly, I know, but I don’t want to be unfaithful. She’s going to feature in this year’s vine reports too.

Here’s the Merlot field this week after the mildest winter weather I’ve experienced since moving to France.

Today we have welcome light rain. There hasn’t been much of it. Growers depend on the fourteen days of downpour we can normally expect spread throughout late March and April. It hasn’t happened yet. In my last Vine Report, I showed how the grower of the Chardonnay vines has recently installed a watering system

So here are those Chardonnay vines.

This photograph was taken on March 20th after a neighbour had told me I had better get up there and have a look. She knew I’d been looking out for first signs of growth again this year and I think she was rather pleased with herself that she’d beaten me to it. However, judging by this amount of growth, we’d both missed the first sprouting by at least two weeks.

Is this year’s harvest already a whole month ahead of last year?

Maybe it’s too soon to say. Maybe we wouldn’t want to tempt fate by saying so. (Languedoc is full of superstitions)

But it looks that way to me. There’s very little danger of late frosts in this part of France. Besides, now that the rain has begun I think we’ll move right along into an early summer.

So, come along ladies. Do your stuff.

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Till next time,

Cheers!

 

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