Maison Des Bulliats

So Sevarine and her colleague, who looked like a birdwatcher, both suitably clothed and sporting wellingtons arrived at 8.30 am to collect samples of our grapes. They showed us how it was to be done as, during the next week, we have to take two more lots of samples and deliver to the co-operative for analysis.

The grapes must be taken from the same patches of vines each time and 200 berries must be picked at random, hence the blindfold! Placed in a plastic bag and sealed. The juice will be extracted and tested for acidity, sugar content and Ph.

A telephone call this afternoon confirmed that our grapes had reached enough maturity to be picked, the sugar content must be at least ten and ours were exactly ten. The date remains fixed for the 3rd September for the team to start picking, if the sugar level increases in the next few days it will not be a problem.
Today was one of those fully charged days; unexpected visitors, our friends who manage the Chateau de la Terriere who make a fine Brouilly, we invited them to stay for lunch. They brought us a bottle of their 2001 which although had the duller colour that age brings tasted delicious with our melon and smoked duck and quiche accompanied by a beetroot, carrot and tomato salad, from the vegetable patch. The cheese was served with our 2006 Regnie and was much appreciated by our guests.  We ate in the garden in perfect warm sunshine and exchanged new ideas about how we could promote Beaujolais! Fred has an excellent plan which you will hear more about in later posts.

Pascal visited this afternoon and we delightedly accepted his offer of help to prepare the cuves for the forthcoming bottling next thursday, the bottles and corks, all eight thousand of them were delivered this morning, Fred moved the seven huge pallettes of bottles into the cuvage with the forklift truck so they would be out of the sun. Because we are mixing half the wine from each of two cuves the left over wine needs to be transferred to a newly cleaned and prepared one ready for another bottling another time.

We have to decide from which vines we choose to take the grapes for the co-operative and let Sevarine know by monday. We also have been doing a little research, contacting some regular customers in the UK, as to whether we make some Rose Beaujolais, or sparkling rose or some sparkling red Regnie which seems to have become quite popular in France.

What do you think?

The start time for the vendanges is getting close. Today G and Didier who have been helping us all along came this morning to examine our grapes to assess their maturity and quality.

We walked through each parcel of vines, looking, tasting and discussing each grape sample taken. We were extremely pleased that it seems, in spight of the bizarre mixed weather that we have been experiencing recently, the grapes are in excellent condition! Slightly acid but with a good flavour and very little rain damage. Some of the stalks of the bunches are quite tough and this is why our pickers should use secateurs as pulling the stems by hand will without doubt bruise the fruit and start the fermentation process too soon.

The soil or ‘terrain’ varies from parcel to parcel, some clay and on others more sandy. Grapes that grow on a clay based soil will produce wine that is more ’structured’ as the French say, perhaps deeper more rounded flavour whilst the sandy soils will give a fruitier wine. This is why we mix the wine from different cuves before bottling to make sure we have a good balance of characteristics and qualities.

We are in the process of doing exactly that at the moment. A bottling is arranged for 8 thousand bottles on the 30th August of our super 2006 vintage, to make room in the cuvage for the new 2007 wine. Two cuves will be mixed, filtered and bottled on the premises; this will take one whole long day and I will take photos of the operation for you to see.

Tomorrow at 8.0 am the team from co-operative at Quincie will visit us to do the same sort of inspection. They will take samples of our grapes, sealed and carefully marked for analysis and let us know when they think the picking should begin as, you remember, we hope to sell half of our production in grapes to them as we cannot cope this year with double the wine production to sell.

In between all this activity today, Fernand helps us seal a cuve, or vat, ready for the 2006 wine that will be left unbottled for the moment. This involves pressing a special red coloured putty around the edges of the lid. We must then thoroughly clean the inside of the cuve, with the high pressure hose. Cleanliness is of paramount importance and this will continue right the way through the production of the next lot of wine which very soon will commence.

It could be the 3rd of September but we now await the second opinion tomorrow.

By the way there is a saying that the time of flowering of the ivy plant will give the date of the next years harvest. We have ivy outside our front door in full flower at the moment so 2008 may be an even earlier vendanges!

You would be surprised but it is true that plastic containers for the grapes are, this year, like gold dust! Again we answered adverts and put up adverts everywhere but those found had already been quickly sold, and we had to be extra quick to respond. One early morning we set off for the pretty little village of Charnay, south of Villefranche where we met M. Barrot, who sadly was having to give up producing wine this year. After a degustation of last years production, a cool dry Rose and a red Beaujolais Village, we inspected the famous bennes, all fifty of them, they will fit nicely in our green trailor, and they were half the price of new ones. Twenty six buckets were also avalable, and a set of well cared for greased secateurs, which we also bought. It is important that the pickers use special secateurs so that the whole bunch of grapes can be cut and drop neatly into the hand with the minimum of trauma to the delicate fruit. It seems that loading the grapes into relatively small containers, the bennes, instead of into an enormous container on the back of a tractor, called a ‘bac’ is the traditional way of the vendange, and local people here are returning to this methd. Again there is less squashing of the grapes, it is crucial that the they arrive in the cuvage as un spoiled as possible. The method we will use also enables the grapes to be sorted more easily in the vineyard, as the smaller bennes containing their bounty can be checked on site for any unwanted vegetation or damaged fruit, instead of in the cuvage. We were warmly received by the Barrot family and it was interesting yet sad to hear their story, how they had met each other while tending their separate herds of cows, how as the collection of milk from the more isolated regions became uneconomical as the industry became more centralised and mechanised, how they turned to wine production, when times were good, managed to build a house high up with a beautiful view over the rolling Beaujolais hills. They rented vines, an arrangement known as a ‘fermage’ and sold their wine. We have had some very hot weather over the last few days, people are beginning to say that the grapes will be ready around the 25th of August. We have spent some idyllic evenings eating outside with friends. My hand painted notice at our gate inviting passers by to taste our wine, seems to be working, more visitors from Belgium today and the charming young English couple will call in again on their way back tomorrow for some more of the delicious 2006 with its smart new labels!

One of our bigest problems this year was to manage the vendanges, in previous years totally organised by the Grandjean family. We dont have outbuildings set up to receive the 20 to 30 people who we need to help pick our grapes. We had to find local people who would come for ‘ la grande journee’, that is they do not need feeding or lodgings. Through a vigneron friend we managed to find Monsieur Uaysal! He lives locally and during the harvest time he gathers his extended family around and together they pick grapes from several vineyards in the region. We are confident that with his experience and the reputation the Turkish people have for working hard and conscientiously, all will go well. We will need to oversee and manage the whole operation and make sure that things go smoothly in the cuvage as the grapes get delivered for the first stage of the wine making process. M.Uaysal is at the moment in Turkey on holiday at a health spar! Hope he comes back……

On the way over to the Auvergne for a change of scene and to reflect on what we have accomplished and what there is still to do, re the vendange, and to tend my vegetables there of course, we stop at the printers to see our new label set up on the machine. A rendezvous had been made, we were met by Francois who was in charge of our order and the technician who was aleady beginning to print the trial labels.

At this stage small adjustments could be made, the intensity of colour the the right amount of red, yellow or brown in the sepia drawing. And then after rather a lot of wastage at the beginning we were on a roll, so to speak, there will be about 750 labels on each roll.

It was exciting but nerve racking to see suddenly so many of this image that had been thought about so much over the last few months and to give the final go ahead! The touch of gold came from a luxuriously expensive roller situated above the print bed!

The whole run would be completed in about two hours, the Canadian label complying with the bilingual regulations, the European label, and the back label with the Roman coins depicting Reginus who first planted the vines in Regnie, and a little bit of romantic history for you all to read as you pour another glass of our delectable 2006 vintage!

We were cordially received by M. Monroe the owner, he had thought our label well balanced and with ‘class’, and yet suggesting a wine with character made in a traditional way.