Harvest 2010 in photos

We haven't been updating as we did last year on an everyday basis during harvest. Apologies for those of you who wanted to follow us closely.
However, we have created 2 photos albums reflecting the 2 weeks of intensive work of harvest. We invite you to have a look at thefollowing link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/closhenri

Don't hesitate to leave us your comments, we'll be glad to hear about your reactions!

In few days, we'll talk with our winemaker about his thoughts on the 2010 harvest and general impression of wine's behaviour and eventually prediction on the 2010 quality.

Keep checking our blog, we will be feeding it regularly all year long with news from Clos Henri Vineyard.

Start of Harvest 2010!

26th of March

Quite a bit later than usual, we have started harvest with our first ripe block of pinot noir. The reason being a slow maturing season, which is positive as it enables to build up concentration slowly and obtain a nice natural balance.

The season has seen a very good flowering, with right weather at the time (no rain or cold temperature), then december and january were in between very wet at times and very dry at other times bringing in fact water at the right moments and sun and wind to dry the vines and help them grow. A tough work on canopy management and crop control has been done, with srtict shoot thining. But naturally the yields were not high this year, mother nature has been quite measured.

As a result, the fruit is absolutely beautiful, and the vineyard healthy.

The first block to be harvested is grown on clay soils. One of our main challenge this year has been to work on irrigation, controlling the exact needs in water of the vines and irrigating only when needed. In fact, we haven't had to irrigate the clay soils at all during this season, the plants have never shown any sufficient stress. This is for us a huge step in our learning curve about irrigation, next year we'll continue working on the subject.