And relax....

Harvest time is tough, but there's sometimes a moment to relax and take stock.
Several restaurateurs in the area wanted to come and harvest some grapes with us, so we made sure they helped us out with some lunch! Amazing homemade patés, seaweed butter, veal from the Auvergne, Catalan sausages and sea urchins magically appeared at our table. Great fun, although it was hard to get back to work afterwards...
Below Julien's mum with some good old charcuterie, and the team from the amazing l'Atelier restaurant in St. Cyprien, giving a lesson in how to open sea urchins...

Vintage Update 2

At Mas Cristine the Cotes du Roussillon wines are taking shape very nicely.
All our whites are now picked, pressed and racked. Some tanks haven't started to ferment yet but we're not in a hurry. I realised we have over 50 different ferment vessels to keep track of...a full-time job in itself!

Some of the reds we picked early have been pressed already, to keep freshness and fruit in them. This meant a total maceration time of only 10 days or so, but this way we avoid any green notes from the skins. The later  picked reds are coming in with superb colour (the Grenache juice is the colour of Syrah!) and really superb ripeness. Above picture is Olivier and I emptying a 2 tonne tank into the press.

Mas Cristine

We've had a superb crop at Mas Cristine this year, in the Cotes du Roussillon.
All the whites are now in. Roussanne, Grenache Gris and Carignan Blanc looking absolutely superb.
Over 40,000 litres of white now bubbling away.
The first reds have shown incredibly vivid colour - the Grenache looks like Syrah. Another one of those mysteries that is hard to put your finger on, but the 2010 vintage will certainly produce v concentrated colour, without us having to extract a great deal.

Here's how we fill the press  - by hand of course. Around 50 tonnes of white grapes in total have been hand harvested and put into our shiny new press. Also a picture of my son Theo, who loves drinking freshly-pressed the juice of the Muscat grapes (not the wine I hasten to add)....

Harvest Update

Here in the Roussillon a lot of vignernons are reporting very small crops. Hail in the Agly valley, and poor fruit set all around has created a vintage even smaller than the 2009. This could spell absolute disaster for some producers.
At Coume del Mas we will certainly have a small vintage, but our old vines have somehow worn the storm better than most. Perhaps our philosophy of less treatments, careful pruning and leaf and shoot thinning has helped. Our Syrah was all but destroyed in high winds in April, but Grenache is looking pretty good.
At Mas Cristine, we have more fruit than ever! Although on 20km for Banyuls, we have good yields of perfectly ripe fruit for the whites. We have already processed 20,000 litres of juice, and will soon be moving on to the reds. I'm very happy with the quality so far, but rain is forecast tonight so we'll have to see what the coming days bring....