NEWS

Harvest 2008

Vines eventually ended their cycle and on 29^th of September we could start harvesting.

To give you an overview of the 2008 harvest and its future wine, we could no think about a better angle than sharing with you an intern interview of the key persons involved at Château Latour.

We first talked with the very complementary duo Pénélope Godefroy, Quality and Research & Development Manager for vines and Domingo Sanchez, Viticulture Manager.

Penelope and Domingo, the terroirs of our estate are extraordinary, but it is up to your team to ensure that the fruits ripen within the best conditions so that they express the full richness of the soils. During harvest, how is work shared between the two of you?

Domingo: I am putting in place and managing the harvest teams. Basically, during the collect of Cabernets Sauvignons grapes, this means monitoring about 190 men and women working in the vines, 90 of them being the pickers.

In addition to this, I also have a coordination function between the vineyards and the harvest reception. This is to say that I am constantly in touch with our winemaker to inform him about the quality of the parcels harvested as well as the forecasted yields. Communication is crucial at this stage, we must coordinate the best way possible to make the most relevant decisions.

Of course, with Pénélope and our Managing Director Mr Engerer, I often go on the ground to observe parcels not harvested yet and to taste berries. This is aiming at defining the harvest planning.

Pénélope: I daily gathered maturity analyses from different parcels, information that I link with tasting of berries and observation on the ground of the maturity and sanitary states of these parcels. The elaboration of a Grand Vin requests a detailed analysis of these dataset to orientate the optimum order and timing of harvesting. In few cases, it also greatly helps us to adjust our parcellation. It might definitely happen that we decided to divide one parcel into two smaller. We would then harvest them at different timing and they would be vinified separately. These are truly the characteristics of the vineyards which guide us.

We already heard a lot about the 2008 vintage being characterized by quite a capricious weather and smaller crops. Apparently, you still seem very confident with quality?

Pénélope: Weather since the beginning of the vegetal cycle in March has indeed been rather cool and humid. Although the total rainfall was less than the seasonal average from January to September, the frequency of those precipitations was appreciably higher.

This meteorological context affected the vineyards by implying late and heterogenic flowering and veraison, as well as risks of flower abortions, berry shots and theoretically mildew. I emphasize the term ‘theoretically”, because we did manage to keep very healthy grapes thanks to the numerous works implemented in the vineyards: thinning out the leaves, even sometimes on both side of the vine, green harvesting and of course spraying the vines in the most sustainable way taking into account the weather conditions and the vine growing cycle.

After a dry and warm month of July which helps us stopping the mildew risk, came a warm and humid August with few storms.

The very beautiful weather from the second part of September rewarded our daily work by enabling us to reach the perfect maturity of our grapes.

To make it short, we gave us the means to go beyond the capricious weather of 2008.

We decided to harvest quite lately, did the grapes hence gain in quality?

Pénélope and Domingo: We had a fantastic raw material, the sanitary state of the grapes was absolutely not a criterion in deciding on the harvest date. Looking at the beautiful late-summer, we decided to wait until the perfect ripeness.

Of course, that was associated with a risk, but we finally managed to pick up grapes at the perfect ripeness with smoother tannins, not even a touch of vegetal aromas, with a finer balance and still a very nice acidity.

That was then almost a 3 week harvest under a blue sky:

Domingo: Indeed, we started on the 29^th of September with the merlots under a blue sky and fortunately we had very few dull days.

We did a break on the 2^nd of October and restarted on the 7^th with the last plots of Merlot outside l’Enclos (l’Enclos: the 47ha just around the château).

From the 7^th until the 10^th we started the first plots of Cabernets Sauvignons which enter in the blend of the Forts de Latour. During the same period we also did the young vine stocks of Cabernet Sauvignon and the Merlots sometimes planted in the middle of the Cabernet Sauvignon parcels.

The 13^th of October, a second team came over for the harvest of the Cabernet Sauvignon from the Enclos. We finished on the 19^th and the “gerbaude”* was the day after on the 20^th

(*lunch for all the employees of the chateau for celebrating the end of the harvest).

Domingo, you were giving very strict rules to the pickers to ensure quality. Generally speaking, how was the sorting in the vineyard and were the yield strongly reduced from previous years?

The sorting in the vineyards is done in a very severe way and our pickers are very cautious. I believe very few unripe, rotten or withered berries went through the sorting tables at the Château. The yields by themselves were slightly lower than the usual, but thanks to all the care provided to our vineyards, we are very pleased with the volume and quality of the crop.

Did any of the study you conduct this year allowed you to notably improve the quality of the grapes for this 2008 harvest?

Pénélope and Domingo: We are convinced that the research we carried out on the grass-covered vineyards was a success.

Based on ground observation, history of the parcel and some other data, we decided to either grass-cover some very productive vineyards or just change the varietal of the grass already planted.

As a matter of fact, we saw great improvements in some historically difficult parcels: better accessibility, better controlled sturdiness and better sanitary state of the grapes.

And your harvest teams seem to be glad coming over for these 2 to 3 week hard work?

Domingo: Indeed, we take good care of them. As a proof, half of our temporary employees come over every year and we are very glad seeing them every year. Lots of them also come from the region which gives us a very appreciable flexibility in term of harvest dates planning.

We can now carry on the interview with the Master Cellar, Pierre Henri Chabot and the Quality and Research & Development Manager for vinification Hélène Génin.

Pierre-Henri:

I am more responsible for the logistic between the vineyards and the sorting as well as for the following winemaking steps in vat and in barrels. I take care of the grapes from their arrival in the cellar to their transformation into a Grand Vin, always trying to enhance the great potential of our crop.

The first important stage that I have to keep on watching over is the sorting process. Although pickers are doing their best, we still need to carefully control the quality of our crop, berry by berry so to only keep healthy and ripened fruits.

In a second time, helped with the analytical parameters, the tasting of the berries and the must, I monitor the vinification of each plot: this is tailor-made vinification.

Finally, I overlook the running off, ageing, blending and bottling.

Hélène:

Basically, I’m responsible of the analytical part from the maturity control of the berries until the analysis done on the final product.

All the analysis we are doing in our laboratory are important because it helps us for the vinification. For instance thanks to the acidity control, polyphenolic richness, polyphenol extraction, tasting of the berries and the sanitary state of the crop we can optimize the different steps of vinification  (pumping over, running off, time of maceration).

On the other side, I also control the follow up of the different experimentation we do each year on the vinification. The aim of trying several techniques of vinification is to have a better understanding of our work and its impact on the structure and on the aromatic components of our wines. Eventually, we will be able to adapt in details the winemaking to the characteristics of the grapes. But long is the road…

Analytical parameters used at the end of the alcoholic fermentation

Even if it is quite early to comment on the new vintage, can you give us the main characteristics of the grapes harvested?

Hélène and Pierre-Henri:

Beyond the good maturity of the grapes for both the Merlots and the Cabernets, we are very pleased with the richness and elegance of the tannin. Of course, it is too early to compare this vintage to another one, but fortunately it seems that this vintage have a high potential.  

What about the taste of the 2008 vintage?

Hélène and Pierre-Henri:

We have just ended the running off the Cabernet Sauvignon. This is an early step for the Grand Vin but we already have the opportunity to taste some really good things.

Tasting from different tanks, we do not feel any astringency neither vegetal aroma, level of ripeness was definitely there. In addition, the tannins are supple and rich and greatly enhance already very fine aromas and a vibrant acidity. Day after day, the overall wine is acquiring some complexity and concentration. It seems that we are on the way for a really good vintage.

The malolactic fermentation in barrels for the Merlots and the press wine and in vat for the Cabernets, followed by the ageing in barrel from December this year, will us a better indication of this young wine.

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