Growing Conditions
It all began with a contrasting winter. Indeed, after warm December, winter 2016 started with the record breaking quantity of precipitation (about 450 mm), with only 4-5 mornings with negative temperature… This winter brought serious concerns to all winemakers, their anxiety growing as the first buds in cotton started being noticeable since the beginning of February.
Happily, the low temperatures of March and water-soaked soils brought back more energy to vineyards, causing the buds to become stronger.
Despite on this little progress, a true coolness of April slowed down the growth of vineyard and we had a small catastrophe between 28Th and 30th of April, with serious frosts settling upon the vineyard, but we were still able to avoid a total loss of future harvest. This is to say, unlike many another vine regions in France, Bordeaux managed to escape traditional spring frosts.
The level of precipitation in May was truly high, bringing along the pressure of mildiou, that at this time reached a record peak. Several winemakers were worried if their vines would be able to obtain clean flowering.
It happened almost like a miracle around 10th of June, the weather became marvelous, a true gift for winemakers, due to its homogeneous character lasting for about four days. What everyone wished for, sun and dry days, finally came true. We could see a new vintage being born at the end of June.
July was hot and dry with some peaks of temperatures reaching beyond 35*C, but winemakers remain optimistic, as the water reserves are sufficient to make it through this heat.
The veraison take place until middle of August. Luckily, strong temperatures variations in between their day/night level provided to wine nice maturity and high aromatic potential.
But as this vintage was the year of extremes, some soils started to manifest water lack, as we have not had a drop of rain from July 13th to September 19th !
The September`s storms brought to our vineyard a true salvation and allowed it to have a well-deserved rest. Harvesting beginning slowly in the first days of autumn.
This is to say, the vintage 2016 offers wines with delightful aromas, strongly identifiable, yet subtle tannins.