On the trail of fine wine
It’s 7.15am and I’m standing on the edge of a field wearing pink washing-up gloves, holding a black bucket and a pair of secateurs wondering what I’ve let myself in for.
Ahead of me – and the eight workers I’ve just ridden with in the back of a transit van – is a field full of Chardonnay grapes, ripe and ready to be picked to be made into white wine. The grape harvest, les vendanges, just outside Pommard in Bourgogne – that’s Burgundy to you and me – in central France is about to begin.
Harvest is determined by careful checking of sugar levels – the decision when to pick is one of the most important a winemaker can make in the season.
We’re allocated a row and I’m quickly bending over to snip my first bunch of grapes of the week. I daren’t stop to find out whether they taste as sweet as they look – the Poles are already rapidly leaving me behind.
And within minutes I realise exactly why they are wearing skateboarding knee pads – kneeling on the floor is going to be painful on the stony ground. But it is probably less damaging for my back than constantly bending down.
All of winemaker Jean-Marc Boillot’s grapes are hand picked, reflecting his focus on quality. Hand picking is gentler and avoids damaging the grape skins. In white wine production, damaging the skins can undesirably colour the wine, or risk oxidation and a loss of some of the aromatic properties.
Not all of Pommard’s producers are so discerning. Mechanical picking – which is about two to three times cheaper – is on the increase, and later in the week it was somewhat soul-destroying watching a brand new New Holland harvester speed up a steep hill while we were on our knees. But Benjamin, Jean-Marc’s son, who leads the team of pickers, is adamant that hand-picking is crucial.
Jean-Marc set up his estate in 1985, after working on the family domaine in Volnay, and then with the negociant (wine merchant) Olivier Leflaive in nearby Puligny-Montrachet. Today, he farms 11ha of vineyards with Benjamin and daughter Lydie.
Four employees, including the irrepressible Paul, help them with the vines and in the cellars throughout the year.
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Fortunately, it is not too long before we get to sample some of Jean-Marc’s wine. We’ve been joined by a coach load of mainly locals to make a total of 60 picking this year’s grapes, and it is the first break of the day. It might only be 9.30am, but apparently that is not too early for a glass of red – as well as some delicious French bread, brie and charcuterie.
The five Poles drove more than 1000km the previous day to reach Pommard, I learn. For four it is not their first visit. The fifth, Magda, quickly proves experience is not necessary to be fast.
Picking grapes for a week earns decent money, although Wojtek and Andrei both have good jobs back in Lodz. But for them, and me, it is the experience that is the draw.
For the white wine, all the grapes, disease-free or not, are picked. From my bucket, or “panier”, the grapes are transferred to 25kg boxes and transported back to the “domaine”, where they are pressed in a pneumatic press in the first step to becoming a £50 bottle of white Burgundy.
Quality this season is excellent, Lydie tells me later in the week. But the yields, as we discover, are small – some 30-40% down on normal.
Like spring crops in the UK, the crop has been affected by a dry, cold spring. Vines only flowered at the end of May rather than the beginning, and the summer weather only provided slow growth. On the plus side, disease levels through the season were low.
That matters more with the pinot noir grapes, the main red wine variety in the region. Instead of being whole bunch pressed after picking, the bunches are destemmed and diseased grapes removed on sorting tables back at the farm.
Another difference from white wine is that the reds are placed in vats to ferment rather than in barrels, Lydie explains.
By the time we start picking pinot noir it becomes clear we are racing against time to finish. The weather from Monday to Thursday has been excellent and the days are long – running from 7am to 6pm – even with the excellent morning and lunch breaks.
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The forecast for the Friday is for rain and boy does it deliver. It starts slowly – a bit of drizzle, with the occasional heavy burst – but then the heavens open. I tell the guys we’re used to it in England, but no, this is full-bore soaking rain. I’ve never been so wet, yet we still finish the rows.
We’ve still more to go, but Benjamin takes us back to the farm to dry off. That’s no easy feat, even with a gas blower heating the barn we’re huddled in. In the end, Jean-Marc raids his clothes to provide dry clothing for workers, like me, with nothing to change into.
Mulled wine eases the cold, and then after a three-hour break it is back to the fields to finish the last three parcels. In total, the Boillots have 65 different plots of land and produce 22 different wines.
Of the 50,000 bottles of wine produced, 60% are white and 40% red. Around 70% of the bottles are exported, mainly to the USA, Japan and the UK – the latter through three distributors.
After the last grape has been picked, the party can start. Every year, each domaine holds a paulee to celebrate the end of les vendanges. A fine French meal with at least six different types of wine means I leave to catch my train in good spirits – if only I had remembered to collect the three bottles of wine Jean-Marc gives to each of the team before I had left…
Winemaking
Once the Chardonnay grapes have been pressed, the resulting juice is cooled, sulphur dioxide added, and pumped to a holding tank for cold settling. Temperatures remain too low for fermentation to start, and any grape skins, pips or pulp (known as ‘lees’) settle out. Jean-Marc conserves the fine lees to use during fermentation, which help improve the complexity of the wine.
All of Jean-Marc’s white wine is fermented in oak barrels at a maximum temperature of 20C. He uses a technique called malolactic fermentation, which occurs when lactic acid bacteria metabolise malic acid to produce lactic acid and carbon dioxide. The result is a wine that is perceived as more gentle and less sour tasting.
Typically, the wine spends 11 months in the barrels, and the lees are stirred weekly. The wine is then bottled following either fining, which removes microscopic particles that can cloud the wine, and/or filtration.
The red wine undergoes a different process. Red wines derive their colour from grape skins, so for Jean-Marc’s pinot noir processing there is a three-week “maceration” period where the juice and skins are kept in contact, which happens in three stages.
First, following careful sorting and de-stalking, the grapes are cold soaked at 13C and stirred, then fermentation begins at a high temperature (32-34C), before the temperature is reduced to 29C.
The grapes are then pressed to separate the skins and other solid matter from the liquid.
Secondary fermentation and ageing lasts for 16 months, before being bottled.
Grape agronomy
The Boillots own around 70% of the vineyards they use, while renting the rest each year. While the vineyards are up to 60 years old, around 10% of the vines are re-established every year, Lydie says.
After harvest, the beginning of the new season begins with careful hand pruning from November.
Better quality fruit grows on vines that are pruned back almost to the main stem. But it is a delicate balance: Too much pruning will leave small, uneconomical crops; too little, risks over-cropping and poor quality. Pruning also helps disease control and harvesting, with the vines being trained into a specific shape. The material cut from the vines is burned in December.
Fertiliser is applied at the end of winter and the soil worked heavily to help with weed control. Around 10 sprays of fungicides and insecticides are typically applied through April to July, with the Boillot’s choosing organic products whenever possible.