Belles Feuilles

The prettiest Chardonnay are from "Belles Feuilles"

The fifth day is through, and every grape in “Belles Feuilles” has been harvested and driven to Vertus. “Belles Feuilles” means pretty leaves, and it is the name of one of the three areas, we will harvest. That takes places otday, fridag, in pretty sunshine, 20 degrees Celsius and mild wind.

The plants don’t let the rather demanding name down, because this is where we find the probably most beautiful Chardonnay-grapes, we will see this year. The skin is green turning slightly yellow with little black dots. Perfectly mature and without any kind of problems. On top of that add, that there has never been more grapes here according to uncle Michel who harvest the rows next to ours and in his sixty years something life haz seen quite a few grapes.

These “Belles Feuilles” he has planted himself back in 1968 with Alains father and grandfather, so they are carry a bit of familyhistory. Before they had many problems for instance with taking the necessary nutriments from the soil. Alain explains how it has been necessary to dig little holes at each plants root to put iron and water, that the plants were not able to take out of the ground themselves. The wineplants are more or less their how weight worth in gold, and is caressed and taken care of like little children.

Today these plants deliver the most perfectly matured and healthy green grapes from this farm. The amount of grapes however is less than that from the other areas “Vieilles Grandmeres” and “les Crochettes”, so even the most tiny grape is harvested, and nothing is left at the foot any longer. All in all we manage to harvest 6000 kilos, a bit less than the other days. The muscles are now less sore, the tiredness is getting worse… Anyway, todays resultat is not at all bad, says foreman Gerard, who however doesn’t want to ruin the good working habits of the team with too much positive talking. After all there is still work for probably another 2,5 days.

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