Archives des vineyards - Blog World Grands Crus

From Penal Colony to Paradise

guru — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 06:03:26 +0000

Well, sort of… “If there’s something leaving the penal colony to offer you paradise pleasure, – our italian friends say, – it’s not the prisoners staying there, but the wine!”

On the Gorgona Island located off the Tuscany coast in Italy the prisoners work in the vineyard to produce among 2700 and 3000 bottles per year. This wine is then being sold at about fifty euros per bottle to several well-known restaurants praising the incredible taste of it. Moreover, you can find it in one of the best restaurants in Florence, rated three stars by the Michelin Guide.

This prison on the Island was founded in 1969 and has been functioning in almost complete isolation from the continent since. It counts forty prisoners who are not wine growers but real bandits and outriders convicted of murder.

The Gorgona Island prisoners are paid by the Marquesi Francesco de Frescobaldi, a 700-year-old wine-grower dynasty, participating in the “reintegration by agriculture” program.

Planted in 1999 on the rich mineral soils of the smallest Tuscany Archipelago island, 37 kilometers off the Livorno port, the vineyard occupies 2,5 acres (1 hectare) facing east.

Abandoned for some time, the vineyard was brought back to life in 2009 by a sicilian prisoner – wine grower, who left his place after serving his sentence to other prisoners sharing the same passion for the vineyards.

A reintegration program where the vineyard gives as much as it receives,

In Vino Veritas …

(photo: copyright Alessandro Bianchi, Reuters)

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Does mechanical soil labor, have an influence on the wine?

guru — Thu, 25 Sep 2014 08:39:00 +0000

Laboring the soil is essential to the vine’s well being. It helps in eliminating weeds and grasses around the vine’s base, aerate the ground, help water to penetrate but above all promote life in the soil. All these elements are necessary for the vine’s well being, and good soil management will certainly enhance the wine’s quality and the “terroir’s” identity.

The use of pesticides and weed-killers, will, on the contrary, destroy the microorganisms living in the soil making it poorer. The vine will not be able to “feed” itself correctly, affecting directly the grape and hence the wine itself.
The evolution of techniques and equipment has helped the wine maker to maintain his vineyards, and to labor his soil with more simplicity. However, is mechanized labor as efficient as it’s laid out to be?
A century back, tractors didn’t exist, and the plough horse was the main actor in laboring the vineyards.
Nowadays, the tractor has taken over for a majority of the vineyards, allowing the winemaker to gain time on the vineyard’s maintenance.
Certain domains such as Romanée Conti, the horse remains and is the unique means of working the land. The horse tramples the soil and increases the soil’s aeration, without necessarily flattening the ground and this at a great depth, whilst the tractor just with it’s weight and huge wheels, will compact and flatten the soil.
Certain scientists are affirmative, that soil labor will not affect the quality of the grape or the vine, but on the contrary, it would upset more the fragile equilibrium within it.

So, who is right or wrong?

I still think that soil labor is necessary, but in a traditional manner and not mechanically. Otherwise, how can one explain that wines produced by Romanée Conti, maintain themselves amongst the best wines in the world without their horses?
Let’s leave to industrial wines mechanized ploughing, in order to achieve quantity, and leave traditional ploughing for the quality of Grand Crus.
Therefore, dear scientists, shed your white lab coat, leave the laboratory in order to spend more time in the middle of vineyards, with the men and women who make the wine. Your research will probably be less hypothetic and moreover, verifiable.

L’article Does mechanical soil labor, have an influence on the wine? est apparu en premier sur Blog World Grands Crus.

When China awakes… the world shall tremble

guru — Sat, 26 Apr 2014 07:00:10 +0000

In 1973, Alan Peyrefitte, a French journalist, following his return from a trip to China, wrote a book with the above mentioned title, originally attributed to Napoleon in 1816.
Bothe Napoleon as well as Peyreffite where visionaries, and where perfectly right, but not listened to, for China has awakened.
Whatever field we are looking at, China is ominously present, her objective being in the middle of the twenty first century, the world leadership, and this is well on its way.
This month of March 2014, the French government was congratulating itself with the signature of an 18 billion Euro contract with China, aeronautical, automobile, nuclear energy, finance, environment, health, everything is on the table and the government prides itself on the consolidation of the French-Chinese partnership!
The technological transfer is Chinas ultimate target, which, in less than thirty years, won’t need to import a single thing from the rest of the world…
But the worst of all this, it’s when our Chinese friends, which nevertheless, remain our friends, take roots in our territory, they will not need to invade Europe in the next few decades, since they will already be in place, gently without a weapon and under the applause of complacent governments!
As far as we are concerned, us, amateurs of wines and Grand Crus, we deplore the loss of our heritage. Event though we are happy with the annual increase of our wine exports towards China, excepting this year, we willingly close our eyes on the hidden part of the iceberg. Over the last 5 years Chinese investors have bought out 75 properties in the Bordeaux region.
But this is also true for the Burgundy, Loire, Cotes du Rhone, Provence regions, only the Champagne vineyards are resisting the invasion, but for how long?
The icing on the cake arrived on March the 21^st of March, when China renounced on its antidumping investigation of French wines imports. A great sigh of relief blew over wine exporters, but what’s the price to pay? The highest one, since European firms have to give China technical assistance on equipment, materials and all its agricultural and wine making know-how.
Some wine professionals are happy with this agreement, seeing in it a potential increase in wine exports, but they seem to ignore the figures or are closing knowingly their eyes, since wine sales to China have declined, and will continue to decline little by little each year.
Being on the offensive, China could be the sixth world wine producer in 2016 and in 2030 she shall be the… all that will be left for us to export will be our Grand Crus, for I hope, that in this domain we shall never be caught up.

It is time for France to wake up, before becoming a new Chinese province.

L’article When China awakes… the world shall tremble est apparu en premier sur Blog World Grands Crus.