Our winemaker talks about the 2009 vintage

A LONG VINTAGE

In few words, it was a long vintage, well spread in time. The maturities were less quickly obtained than usual, mainly due to differences between night and day temperatures particularly well marked this year (the more extreme day went from -0.8degrees at night to +25degrees the day after).

A FRESH AND BALANCED VINTAGE

It is going to be a fresh vintage, with very linked aromatic and analytic maturities: good sugars, acidity and aromas - good balances.

A NEW HARVESTING SYSTEM

With our new winery on site, and new harvest trailers that separate the juice from the fruit during transport, the harvest was really quickly processed at the winery. This enables us to keep a nice finesse as we can avoid skin contact on the sauvignon.

SHORT MACERATIONS AND NICE ROUNDNESS

On the pinot noir, this year macerations goes quite quickly as well. Between crushing to driaing, it takes around 3 weeks. Long macerations are not necessary. One particularity this year, is that the roundness of tannins seem to be coming quite rapidly and nicely.

A GREAT TEAM

Despite the long hours, the team has been working hard, but always with the smile and with passion. Fantastic to live!

Bel Echo Sauvignon 2008 - 93 pts by MW Bob Campbell

"Rich, creamy Sauvignon Blanc with gooseberry, mineral, capsicum and bready yeast lees flavours. Quite complex wine with a great texture and lingering finish. One of the best of the vintage." Tasted by MW Bob Campbell in March 09.

The vines can now rest, under the automn colours

All the fruit in, work goes on in the winery...

Last fruit was harvested last sunday the 12th! Both our viticulturist and our winemaker are very satisfied with the harvest, wonderful quality, good flow of work in the vineyard with a wonderful team devoted to give the best of themselves and enthusiast to get the fruit of a whole year of work delivered to the winery. After very long hours for our winery team in the last 3 weeks, they seem to be getting back to 'normal' hours - with dark undereyes, but absolutely thrilled and eager to work the wines!














Here, the pinot noir are being digged out: After maceration, the wine is ran into tanks while the cap containing all the skins and few lees is sent to the press. The wine after pressings is kept separately to eventually be integrated partly at blending time or not at all, depending on the need in balance we are looking for. The wine ran in tanks, will be transfered into barrels shortly.

In the winery, lab work!

The lab work is an important part of the process, as it permits our winemaker to confirm his tastings conclusions and helps him to make decisions in the winemaking.

Marie Thibault is our seasonal cellar hand in charge of taking samples and proceeding to the analysis.

Team work and sharing of experience and knowledge...

Florian Prulean working on the pinot noir, tasting and inoculating the musts. On the right, yeast growing up before insertion in the must

Listening to our terroir...

We were recently talking with few other producers in the Marlborough region, and they were quite surprised to hear that by the end of the week all our pinot noir would be harvested, and half of the sauvignon blanc as well.

We might have started earlier than the majority, but for one simple reason: the fruits were ripe and showing good phenolic, analytic and aromatic balance.
To decide of our date of harvest for each block, we use a mix of berry analysis to reveal sugar, acidity, pH levels; and tastings. Tastings of the juice from the berries that we crush, but also by going in each block in different rows to taste berries and check on aromas and phenolic ripeness.

From the grapes already harvested, here are few analysis that will give you an idea of the balance we get. Also this shows it was the right decision for us to start harvest slightly earlier than most wineries in Marlborough.
But obviously it was a good decision in our vineyard, which is ran quite differently than the average Marlborough vineyard (twice higher density, guyot or guyot double pruning, controlled irrigation etc.). This is another example illustrating the combination of each vineyard, each block, each soil types, each microclimate, leads to a different working approach and different needs - doesn't this remind you of this notion of sense of place or terroir we are so attached too?

Our sauvignons blancs sit at the followings:
pH: 3.15
Tartric acidity: 8.2 g/l
Sugar: 220 g/l = 13.3 %vol potential = 24 brix

Our pinots noirs sit at the followings:
pH: 3.4
Tartric acidity: 6.0 g/l
Sugar: 240 g/l - 13.5%vol potential = 24.5 brix

We are now thinking of finishing harvest by the end of next week, with the last of the sauvignon blanc grown on the riverbed soil and all the sauvignons blancs growing on the clay.

Harvest of the Hill site - La Colline block

The last pinot noir of the season to be harvested comes from the hill site again. The fruit is is lightly bigger than from the Lone Tree block, however still under the stong wind exposition.

The winery expects the fruits with great enthusiasm. Jean-Christophe Bourgeois is still on the estate with the winery team for few days, enjoying to see the beautiful fruit coming in!

Some sauvignon on the riverbed soils harvested - La Chapelle block

Harvest of La Chapelle block, situated just at the foot of the church Ste Solange.

This old church of almost a century has been moved 5 years ago from a nearby village called Ward, to become our tasting room. Nowadays enchanting our visitors who can enjoy either a tasting, french delicatessen products, or a glass of wine and french cheese platter etc. outside. This piece of local history has found a new story to build at Clos Henri.

Harvest under the nets. Nets are installed over 4 to 5 rows at a time in order to protect the grapes from being eaten by voracious birds, which would without a second thought take care of harvesting the whole fruit for us - but without making wine!

Harvest of our Hill site - Lone Tree block

We have begun the harvest of the hill site blocks, starting with Lone Tree, a block of pinot noir. Another hard day of hand harvest on this block which is located at the far end and highest end of the hill.

Fantastic fruit, smaller bunches. The fruit seem to struggle a bit more on the hill, due to the high wind exposition and the higher water evaporation.

Focus on the fruit

We've harvested some more pinot noir, this time from our Riverbed soils - a block called Grave, clone 10/5, that will essentially enter in the final blend of the Bel Echo pinot noir.












We are nicely surprised by the balance, and are satisfied to see that our focus this year in the vineyard to obtain less alcohol has succeeded. After a visit of our viticulturist consultant from France in November, Francois Dale, we began to work on reducing the vigour, or more precisely finding the right balance between too much and not enough vigour, with the intent to reduce our alcohols. This results in potential degrees of 13 to 13.5%, which is what we were aiming for.



This week again, our viticulturist consultant this time from NZ, David Jordan, has come to check on the maturity of the grapes with our team and the family, as well as to see the sanitary status of our grapes. It was very good to hear from him that our vineyard is absolutely healthy, when some part of the valley have been touch by botrytis due to the rainy month of february. The important for us being to continue progressing in our learning curve in our vineyard.


"In the winery, it is a real pleasure to play with such a beautiful harvest", these are the words of Lionel and Jean-Christophe Bourgeois, who would dream to have such pinot noir in Sancerre. And Lionel adds with his legendary smile: "Days like this, we understand why we came to establish our vineyard on the other side of world in NZ!"

25th of March - first Sauvignon Blanc harvested!

End of the day at the winery...

Today, after harvesting some more pinot noir this morning from our block called Kaki clones 114 115. We continued this afternoon with our first sauvignon Blanc coming from our block called Petit pierre, from our riverbed soils.

Few more pictures from the winery today, and we'll focus a bit more on the vineyard tomorrow.

We are actually very satisfied with the sanitary state of our grapes. With a rainy month of february, once again our work on low yields proves us right, as botrytis and rot are absent from our fruit. We'll give you more information on this tomorrow, with photo proofs !

The tractor is coming straight from the vineyard to the winery, a great improvement for us as the fruits are taken care of immediately after picking.

In no time, the grapes get into the press.

And first grapes in our new winery...

Today is also a new step in the development of Clos Henri. After a long year of intense work for the Bourgeois family, our winameker Damien Yvon and our Admnistration manager Chrissie Wilson, our winery has opened its doors to the first harvest. First fruits are in!