Tramontane Who?

We've renamed our blog to encompass our three labels. Nothing has really changed, but it means we can let you know about ALL the wines we make, and intregate better with twitter and facbook (which we all need to do these days, right?!)
Essentially, Tramontane Wines looks after the logistics for Mas Cristine, Coume del Mas and our  Tramontane brand. This means we can centrally manage anything from vintage workers to customs clearance through one company, without having to do everything three times. The French do love their bureaucracy, so anything to reduce the huge piles on Philippe's desk is most welcome (I can barely see him some days, as drowns in paperwork...).
In reality, it means we have more time to concentrate on the most important things: vineyards and winemaking! Nothing has changed except the blog title, and we remain as committed as ever to quality and control. Our new Consolation range of tiny cuvées reflects this commitment and our drive to keep on learning and experimenting. These wines just garnered some very nice reviews in the 2011 editions of Revue des Vins de France and the Gault-Millau guide.
Explanation over, now it's time to pick some Grenache Gris....

First Day of Harvest

We started picking today...a lovely morning in Banyuls, with clear blue skies.
Our first day is always a family and friends day, so there were a lot of helpers to make short work of the Roussanne vineyard. Unfortunately, high winds in the spring meant we had even lower yields than last year (less than 10hl/Ha for this vineyard), but the grapes looked lovely!
These grapes will eventually be part of our cuvée C'est Pas du Pipo 2010, which will be blended with our Vermentino. The grapes are pressed, will settle overnight and then be racked to barrel to ferment. Always a very frothy ferment with Roussanne, no-one really seems to know why.

Holiday

Sometimes even wine needs a holiday...so we sent some of ours to Islay.
Unfortunately, they were consumed by a marauding team of marathon runners.
Here they are visting Bowmore distillery....

And relaxing on the beach....

Full Speed Ahead

Well harvest is fast approaching, with estimates for picking whites being first week of September.
This is later than last year, perhaps because of a bout of rain and cooler weather 2 weeks ago, which hepled the vines immensely and slowed down the rapid sugar rising.
Despite initial forecasts, the crop this year looks to be small again. We averaged under 20hl/ha last year, so would very much like to make a little more wine this year! There is very little disease, in fact we haven't sprayed most of our vineyards since the middle of June.
In our Peyrefitte vineyard, seen below, we feared there would be no Syrah crop this year due to the fierce spring winds, but we've ended up with a little at least. Hopefully we'll be able to make a little Abysses this year.
Grenache Gris is showing 12.4% potential alcohol already, so we'll be up at 4.30am before we know it, and out with the secateurs...