Maison Des Bulliats

In November the start of the pruning was finalised with the two Turkish gentlemen. They were extremely proud of the quality of their work last year, you remember we engaged several people last time, including the Monk and the Poles. This winter just the two Turks and some help from Fernand, the father of our old vigneron. Their price per vine agreed, a little high, but included cutting the ‘cornes,’ the old knobbly growth and burning the cuttings, trimming last years growth, selecting and leaving the choice new shoots and digging a shallow trench around each vine. The work is nearly finished now, in February, and the vines look neat and tidy all ready to receive their new green shoots in a few weeks time. The skies are blue and the colours still muted but beautiful and the whole landscape is calm as if quietly gathering strength for the forthcoming efforts of the new growing season. We put all our efforts into selling, going back and forth between London and Beaujolais. Making sure we have stocks of wine in London to supply our customers for the Christmas and New Year festivities. We presented our wine at a dinner, a finale to the Beaujolais Marathon, a regular feature in the Beaujolais calender. This year the Cru Beaujolais wines were featured at this event for fifteen hundred people. in the past it had only been a celebration of the Beaujolais Nouveau, a fashion that we think has had its day and on which subject I have spoken about with feeling in previous posts. So thank goodness for the opportunity to show off the superior Crus. We circulated among the guests offering our wine. There was some interest but the tasting started far too late and our marathon runners had already over indulged. We had to compete with the cacophony of the live cabaret…..we were exhausted! I have to mention though that one of the guests I met among the hundreds had been reading my Blog!! In the next posts we go to Amsterdam and Paris. We discover new customers in London, take our wine to the Reform Cub, the starting point for Jules Verne’s 80 day adventure around the world, and dine at The Duke of Wellington ‘Gastro Pub’, recently receiving rave revues, and our Regnie on the wine list! We work with an artist to plan our bottle label for the 2007 vintage, and plan our website…….

We had a fabulous party to celebrate the end of our vendange with family and friends. There were ten of us and ,of course we had the famous sausage cooked on a bed of grapes.

I stuffed fresh figs with goats cheese and ham for a starter and we finished with a selection of delicious tarts. Our 2006 Regnie was an excellent accompaniment to the rich sausage with its aromatic sauce. It was a splendid evening and all who were there were tired but happy with a very successful vendange!

The leaves on the vines started to change their colour early this year, from an October full of vibrant shades of burnt umber, ochre’s, gold, deep pinks and vivid reds, to now in November only a few left, a frail faded yellow awaiting the first strong winds which will expose the gnarled brown vines.

The willows lining many of the roads in Beaujolais, whose stems can form the most elegant of baskets and in the past were used to tie the vines, are turning a rusty red. I love the way they form majestic landmarks in the autumnal landscape here.

Our first grape year has come to an end. The vines must be pruned again as soon as the last leaf has fallen, around the middle of November. We have already engaged the two Turkish gentlemen who helped us at the beginning of 2007, they arrived a few days ago to discuss the trimming, bearing a plate of sugary Turkish sweetmeats and little pink jewels of Turkish delight!

We turn our thoughts to competitions and finding new markets for our wine, we have great hopes to expand in Canada where we managed to find a few days exploring and meeting new potential customers. We will enjoy following the progress of our 2007 Regnie. It has to pass its cru test soon but we do not have any worry there, and by March or April of next year it will be ready for bottling.

Some still in this region are selling the primeur the young wine that was for a time a big fad and fashion and is less so now. This will be on sale very soon to the worlds wine drinkers. We feel that this Beaujolais Nouveau has somewhat damaged the reputation of the cru wines. They deserve better press. These wines are so compatible with good food and have such character and complexity, and can be kept for several years. The world should rethink these jewels from southern Burgundy and re visit them, especially ours of course!, and also get to know the beauty of this region in all seasons.

The bottling took one long day, on our property but carried out by the company ‘2000 Embouteillage’, this allows us to put ‘Mis en bouteille au domane’ on our label.  We have always used this company who have an excellent reputation in this area.

In the morning the wine is fitered through degrees of fineness of silica, the last, and finest, like powder.

In the afternoon the wine is put into bottles and corked

then stacked against the wall in our cave where only a few months ago we had our 2005 Regnie.

I remember looking at the quantity of bottles thinking how will we ever sell this amount of wine? In fact we only have about 3000 bottles left from the 20 thousand bottled!

We are very pleased with the quality of 2006 and I am sure it will go as fast. The new label looks great and already the pile against the wall is reducing in size.

One of our sons and a friend arrived, count down to V day. The vendanges will start on sepetember 3rd and they are here to help us, we have a weekend of calm before the storm! Our grapes are looking good and their sugar content is going up each day. The north wind that is blowing is drying out moisture and concentrating the sugar. Getting it right so the grapes are ripe but not too ripe is tricky and requires experience, good judgement and just a little bit of luck!

During the days leading up to the vendanges there was intense cleaning activity. When making wine everything from the huge concrete vats where the wine is made to every bucket and hose must be spotless. Nothing must be allowed to contaminate our wine. The vats or cuves are washed under high pressure, Fred with the help of Pascal got right inside them in waterproof gear and wellingtons until all were satisfied that they were ready to receive our grapes.
On the eve of the vendange we had some disturbing news, the oenologue who was to oversee the wine making had had a serious accident while on holiday and would not be able to work with us!
The good news was that Sylvain Dory would be able to take over. This man was recommended to us by a local character and expert vine grafter Paulo Cinquin who I described in an earlier post if you remember; young and dynamic with a very good reputation in the region. With the continual help and support of our friend in Morgon they would make sure that our 2007 production was better than ever!
We look forward to the arrival of our son and a friend who will be here for a few days before and at the beginning of the vendange. I fear for them a lot of heavy duty lifting of bennes charged with grapes to feed our cuves and those at the Quincie cooperative.

Before all this we have arranged a mise en bouteille for 8000 bottles of our excellent 2006 Regnie, this involves a days work from a local company who come to our property and filter, bottle, cork and stack the wine in our cave. The highest quality corks and bottles are ordered and delivered in time for this big event..

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?