My 2024 Vintage
My fourth vintage of wines from abandoned vineyards in the Languedoc. (And another wine from an abandoned vineyard in the Loiret.)
I’ll look back at 2024 as the year I mastered the logistics of harvest downtime: how to entertain the team between picking and processing grapes.
All the key elements were in place for a thoroughly pleasurable harvest experience: a competent, almost gender-balanced team; a comfortable rented guesthouse with a barbecue and a pool; loads of beer and wine for refreshment. And we did have a fabulous time.
Unfortunately, providing all this required reserving the guesthouse well in advance1: in retrospect, far before I had a good idea of when grapes would ripen in the abandoned vineyards I pick.
My overripe 2022 vintage taught me to harvest about a week or a week-and-a-half before my friends / hosts at Clos Fantine, a strategy that also helpfully allows me to stay out of their way during their harvest. Timing was just right in 2023. Alas, in a cool, wet vintage like 2024, the maturity in the abandoned vineyards was even further delayed than that in normal, farmed vineyards, presumably due to the far greater vegetal competition in the former.
Upon arrival in the region, I found myself bashfully suggesting to my assembled friends / harvesters that we start with the least worst option, given that nothing whatsoever felt properly ripe. So it was that my ace harvest team took in more grapes than I’ve ever previously processed - around 900 bottles’ worth - only the grapes were all of questionable maturity. This has led to some interesting surprises now that everything, or almost everything, is in bottle.