The 2017 vintage at Domaine des Hospices de Beaune:
Balance and intensity

Review and analysis of the 2017 vintage by Ludivine Griveau

Climatology - October 2016 to September 2017.

After a very sunny autumn, particularly in October which was almost summer-like, it's been a long time since we've had a real winter. Sure, the sun shines in December and January (+121h of sunshine on top of that), but it's very cold! There were 7 days without thaw in December and 20 in January.
Rainfall levels also changed compared with recent years, as the winter rainfall deficit was significantly reduced this winter. February and March are warm (+2°C above seasonal normals) and very bright. The sunshine at the beginning of April was largely surplus to requirements, and rainfall was low - the opposite of 2016. The end of the month was more chaotic, with everyone scrutinizing the weather forecasts, which predicted a high risk of frost. But the weather was dry and the wind reduced the risk. The buds normally resist -3°C ... but the wetter conditions of April 27 to 29 lead to cold sweats and sleepless nights. For 2 nights, winegrowers in the villages of the Côtes and Hautes-Côtes did their utmost to ensure cloud cover at sunrise on those 2 days .... In the end, the damage was very localized and contained. Our thoughts are with neighboring vineyards, some of which lost almost everything.
The cool weather persisted at the beginning of May, then summer arrived ahead of schedule, with temperatures of around 33°C and exceptional sunshine until the end of the month. The rains came regularly, and the vines welcomed them with relief! However, the Chamber of Agriculture warns us: "the deficit is significant" and comparable to 2016, when, conversely, the rainfall surplus broke records.

In June, the periods of high heat continue, but are interspersed with rainstorms that result in highly variable accumulations depending on the sector (20 to 50mm in 7 days). The last week of June was a scorcher, with days reaching 38°C in the shade. Plantations were particularly thirsty.
Thunderstorm rains continued into July, but were interspersed with much cooler periods, with wide temperature swings from one day to the next. It should be noted that the water deficit is not being made up, and in the end, there is a 30-hour shortfall in sunshine during the month, which the Chamber of Agriculture gives us as being equivalent to May!
August will be a more regular month, despite a week around August 15 when it is cool and grey. The wind, present since the beginning of the vintage, continued to clean the vines and dry out each rainfall. By the end of the month, the vines are green and the grapes clearly visible. The first grapes from the Domaine, at Chaintré, were cut under a blazing sun on August 26 and 27. The rest of the Côte d'Or parcels are harvested from September 1st for the Chardonnay and 2nd for the Pinot Noir.

The vegetative cycle

Following a more than clement spring in February and March, the vines are in the starting-blocks and show a resumption of their vegetative activity already around March 20th. In fact, swollen bud stages can be seen in cotton at this date. This happened more quickly than expected, and as the cooler weather returned, things calmed down a little until the beginning of April. By March 28, green tips were appearing here and there in the earliest sectors. From then on, it was clear that this vintage was entering the race for earliness with its neighbors 2014 and 2011. It's 15 days earlier than 2016!
Throughout April, vegetation only accelerates its development and tying work is hastily completed. The pace is intense, with leaves spreading out one after the other: we can observe between 3 and 5 leaves by April 20! It's quite heterogeneous within the Domaine's plots, and it's difficult to establish a trend within the young vines on the one hand, and the older ones on the other. Smiles began to wane at the end of the month when the risk of frost was announced. One year later, to the day, on this April 27, Burgundy is still holding its breath, deploying an unprecedented collective action to do everything in its power to save the harvest. In the early hours of the morning, the verdict was in: the young shoots were safe and sound in most plots. During this period, soil cultivation was suspended to prevent moisture from rising. Tillage did not resume until early May, when growth stagnated for more than 15 days. The vines are pale green, slowly recovering from the cold, dry spell. We can see, however, that bud emergence is important, so we're starting a long and precise process of disbudding within all the Domaine's plots.

From mid-May onwards, the vines grow at breakneck speed. 3 to 4 new leaves appear every week! Temperatures are slowly rising, but it's clear that the vines were just waiting for that little bit of warmth to kick in. The end of May is very warm, the rhythm of growth is intense and we expect to see the first flowers quite soon. A winner! Chardonnay reached full flowering the week of May 30, and Pinot Noir the week after. We choose to limit the risk of coulure by waiting until 50 to 75% flowering before topping. Sometimes the branches are long, but we need to encourage the flow of sap towards the fruit rather than towards the shoot apices. The lead is maintained, and disease and pests don't exert too much pressure. This leaves us plenty of time for green harvesting at the height of active growth. We need to keep up the pace, as the alternating rains and heat are very favorable for the vines. By choice, at the Hospices de Beaune, we entrust an area of 2.5 Ha per vineyard employee, which, even in this configuration of intense growth, leaves plenty of time for the precision work that is essential in lifting, tying up and ploughing operations.

The berries in some Chardonnay plots had already reached 2 to 3 mm by mid-June, making 2017 one of the three earliest vintages in the last 10 years. This pace will remain sustained throughout June and July, with even development in Pinot Noir and very limited phytosanitary pressure in all sectors. We are, however, detecting coulure phenomena on the Chardonnays, some of which are quite significant (rapid budburst + heavy showers + high temperatures). The Pinot grapes remain within the physiological average (average fruit set around 70%).
Until June 28, the heat was overwhelming, and the vines sometimes stalled in their development, even showing signs of drought: yellowed leaves, roasted bunches in some places. As leaf thinning was carried out early in the Pinot Noir (during June), the fruit acclimatized to the heat and sun. The most serious damage was thus observed on grapes for which exposure was more brutal. Around July 10, the bunches sometimes reached the stage of closure: 2007 and 2009 are being compared again in terms of earliness, and the date of late August/early September is already taking shape for the harvest. An episode of hail on the Côte de Nuits will still make us shudder, but it will be the last major climatic alert of the year.

Some of the downpours were the cause of high, very heterogeneous rainfall totals: Vosne recorded 90 mm, while Pommard received "only" 50 mm. On July 15-20, the first logs turned red as the bunches closed quickly. The 3-week lead over 2016 is confirmed, and we start preparing the winery and the equipment to receive the harvest! At the very beginning of August, the vines are at the mid-veraison stage. This will be a little more spread out than expected, as the second dekad of August is cooler and, above all, less bright (cloudy but hot). It will end around August 21-25. Sanitary conditions are very good, and we have the feeling that it will be more important to sort out grapes with uneven ripeness than grapes damaged by botrytis, which is virtually absent at this stage.

In the last days of August, the Pinot Noir is gorging itself with sugar and the Chardonnay is tasting increasingly well-balanced. Once again, ripeness checks and berry tasting are essential. We decided to carry them out again on the entire estate, 117 plots. On August 21, we began our ripeness checks, and the harvest was healthy, with the Chardonnay a little ahead of the Pinot Noir; definitely nothing like 2016! The sanitary condition is really superb, the weather forecast more than clement, we have time to harvest perfectly ripe grapes.

The 2017 vintage harvest

The first Chardonnay grapes were picked on August 26 and 27 for our Pouilly Fuissé and on September 1 in Côte de Beaune. At the same time, ripeness checks on the Pinot Noir grapes are unanimous: it's time to get started! The very first grapes will arrive in the winery on September 2.

All the grapes, of course, went through the sorting table. We were able to see that the harvest was quite abundant as expected, but our choices of growing methods are bearing fruit and we have perfectly controlled yields as usual.

This year, tasting the Pinot Noir berries and skins gave us a glimpse of the tannins and colors that we're going to have to extract and that will require a certain "technicality". We're ready for the balancing act that Pinot Noir sometimes requires. The Chardonnays are dense, and the presses are adjusted on a case-by-case basis.

So it's indeed for a "balancing" vintage for balanced wines that our energies will be mobilized for several weeks!

Interview with Ludivine Griveau - review of the 2017 vintage at Les Hospices

2017: Albert Bichot buys the charity piece

157th Hospices de Beaune auction: Albéric Bichot of Albert Bichot buys the 2 Pièces du Président for his Chinese client Mr Leung for 420,000 Euros. The sale was sponsored by Charles Aznavour, Agnès b., Julie Depardieu and Marc-Olivier Fogiel. The sale of the 2 barrels of Corton Grand Cru Clos du Roi benefits three associations: the Tara Expeditions Foundation, which organizes expeditions to study and understand the impact of climate change and the ecological crisis on our oceans, the FRC (Federation for Brain Research) and the Alzheimer's Research Foundation.

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