28th of april

Nothing change those last 2 days because of cold temperatures and humidity.

26th of April.

The coton that insulate the bud was washed by the hard rain we had today. The vines uses this watter to accelerate the maturation of the bud.

Our Austalian contact visit us.

Twice a year, an Australian frien crazy for wine in general, and much more for champagne comes to France. One is during spring and one is for harvest time. We are happy that, this time again, he took time to come visiting us.

Today, Marie-Noëlle proposed a clear wine tasting of our Chardonnay plots from Villers-Marmery (1er Cru of the Montagne de Reims) then we taste the champagne cuvées made with only Chardonnay as our Blanc de Blancs (100% Chardonnay from Villers-Marmery / 70% harvest 2007 and 30% of reserve wine aged with the solera pethod since 1968) and the cuvée Marie-Amélie vintage 2004 and 2006  (100% chardonnay from Old vines of more than 50 years, without malolactic fermentation). Minerality was the guest star.

Thank you Victor and à bientôt.

24th and 25th of April.

24th of April

25th of April

Launching.

Sexual confusion.

-"What are all those people doing in the vines with their basket in the hand ? It's not harvest time !"

That is the question that you might ask if you had crossed today the vineyard of Villers-Marmery (1er Cru Montagne de Reims). Well, this tuesday the 16th of April 2013 is the day when all the growers of the village decided to fight gainst two butterflies, we should say their caterpillars : "The Eudemis and the Cochylis".

Eudemis and Cochylis are part of the most damaging pests for the clusters. They perforate the berries, causing injuries that offer the best conditions for moistures and grey rot.

This method of struggle consist in attaching in the vines the small capsules (we called them rak) at the rate of about 500 per hectare. The will spray syntethic pheromones equivalent to the one of the female of both butterflies species. This high concentration will not allow the male to identify femalesn and therefore their will not reproduce in the vines...and so, they will never lay in caterpilars in the vines.

These pheromones are specific to these two species. There is no interaction on the rest of the insects. And because the spray in highly concentrated (only above the vineyards) the effect is on a small area, and butterfly can reproduce while they fly over the forest or the fields.

Tears of the vine.

First real day of Spring.

What a pleasure to feel more than 10°C of temparatures loke the past weeks. It was more than 20°C this sunday 14th of April that we can consider as the first real day of spring 2013.

Vines is not wrong  a,d, as the early afternoon the rising of sap made the first cry of the vine. "Cry of the vine ?" Yes, when the sap is coming up in the branches, if flows through the "wounds of pruning" not yeat completely healed : we said that vines are crying. Bud break sould come soon now.

Conséquences of a late spring.

Compared to last year, the vine has more than 15 days late. Last year at the same time, bud had openend and the first leave was forming. Today, our future branch is still protected from the cold in his cocoon.

But it's completly normal with such weather conditions. If calendar announces the spring for already 3 weeks, winter don't wanna leave the seat and makes resistance. Just one or two beautiful days with warmer températures (an average of 11°C in the all day) for the bud to open.

On our side, no problem, this late bud opening secure us everyday more against the damage from morning frost.

Bottling with classic cork.

The traditionnal corking wath abandoned in the eraly 1970s in favour of the metal capsule.

It is two year that we decided to use again this tradional method (so long and tedious) for some of our vintages. After tasting the cuvées of last year, and comparing them with the same "wine" with metalic cap, we found that maturity, body, quality of aging and the "opening" of the flavours was different, but very good, with the classic cork. So this year, it's more than 2000 bottles have been corked the old way.

Easy to recognize with the rectangular circle.

because this method has quite disappeared, it was hard to find old machines and operators able to wotk like in the past.But what a pleasure to watch these old mechanisms older than 40 years old working with so muche care and precision.

Manual feeling.

Corking and stapling.

This vintage 2012 classified Grand Cru is blended with 70% of Pinot Noir and 30% of Chardonnay both from Verzy and Verzenay. It will age 5 years in our cellar before the "degorgement".