X-mas - Noël - Jul

A merry christmas to everybody who celebrates it, and happy holidays for everybody else.

Snow is rare this very warm year. Vineyards of 17 degrees Celsius as late as December 17th. Further north, in Denmark, temperatures are more like early spring than heart of winter.

We will celebrate anyway, with angels of light seen in the low skies over the christmas market of Reims, and a few bubbly bottles.

This year we'll go for this type.

 

17th of December thus 17 degrees Celsius

17th of December. Another day in the vineyards, and a warm one of them.

Today the degrees of Celsius in Loisy-en-Brie happened to match the date around lunchtime, and that is certainly not an everyday thing. Yet at least. And actually it is not very comfortable.

Temperatures like this make you wonder how the vines pass the wintertime. A bit of cold - definition: below zero - is good for plants, maybe persons as well. As a winegrower you can also fear an early start of the vines which means that yourself, you must speed up your pruning. Since our days have the same amount of daylight, it is not really possible to speed up very much.

So, let this be a loner please.

No logical follow up the 18th and the days to come, please.

Multipurpose vendangeoir Noël style

Every year we do a x-mas party the Danish way for our children and adult friends in Champagne.

The party takes place in the afternoon, now and then well into the evening as well, with an atelier of decorations, x-mas cookies and beignets and vin chaud, gloegg in Danish, which is of course prepared with our local redwine, and it does a good job in this set-up as well. Your vin chaud can never be better than the wine was from the start, so it actually makes a difference with a wine of several years even a bit on the light side like our Coteaux Champenois.

But party or not, you can still glue som labels in the morning as you wait for the arrival of your guests .

And so we did.

Some of these Selection of 2006 even left the building a few hours later.

To help securing a merry x-mas somewhere.

A hand or two before x-mas

Champagnes being prepared for last deliveries before the coming-up holiday celebrations.

X-mas Reims-style

1st plot tasting and it asks for more

The tasting sessions are on.

The wines from september are still young. This means not very stable, you must treat them a bit like kids. Give them the best you can but do not expect to see them deliver fully yet. A wine that you may find great one day, can be quite different the following week. Just do not judge it to hard, after all these wines are not adult yet, they may be as capricious as teenagers and it is okay.

Patience often pays though. Also today.

The wines are so much better than last week. It was, in fact, a bit disappointing.

Plot wines upa
This week amongst others a line of parcellaires are up. Plot wines, thus important to each of the tasters, as most do at least one or two plot wines.

We care for ours. The third in a line of three, not yet for sale but oh, are we looking forward for that moment?

So far we name it Vieilles vignes because we can... in fact all our vines are old, we have just not bottled one so far. That will change,

In this 100% Chardonnay we find both the acidity necessary for a wine to keep and develop but also fruits and a certain souplesse or softness.

And today it received both charmeur and prometteur from the hardest Vertus-gang who basically like only Chardonnay from Vertus, and the grandfather of all maintained the comments even as it was revealed to be a simple autres crus from yours truly.

COP21 åbner i varmest målte år

I dag begynder COP21 i Paris.

Billedet er fra november. Det er taget på en dag så varm, at det kaldte på et billede med dato og temperatur direkte fra instrumentbrædtet. Bare for at huske utroligheden.

Konference i Paris
Det er i den anledning af delegationer fra hele verden - 40.000 personer - fra i dag samles i Paris for at nå en eller anden enighed om hvad man skal gøre. Med højdepunkt når næsten 150 regeringschefer mødes senere på konferencen og forhåbentlig med et brugbart resultat først og fremmest for de mennesker på jorden, der står forrest i skudlinjen.

Læs mere om opvarmningen her.

For os andre betyder det bl.a. artikler i franske medier om, hvordan man bedst cirkulerer i den franske hovedstad de næste to uger. Har man prøvet at køre ind i Paris på en normal dag, ved man godt, at det kan betale sig at overveje sin ankomst. En stor international konference har en meget indgribende betydning for, hvordan man kan komme rundt i og ind i byen ikke mindst set i lyset af terrorhandlingerne for bare to uger siden.

Vi leverer normalt champagne i december, i år bliver det nok først, efter at COP21 er slut midt i december.

Varmt år
Opvarmningen mærker vi i år ikke mindst på grund af de ekstraordinært varme temperaturer i juli måneders hedebølge, hvor vi havde omkring 35 grader i det meste af en måned. Men også dette efterår, hvor vi foreløbig stort set ikke har haft nattefrost, og dagene har budt på ret varmt vejr. Et varmere år er aldrig målt. Og i 2014 var det dette år, der tog rekorden.

Der tales allerede om, at 2016 kan blive endnu varmere.

Varmen har en betydning for alt levende på jorden. Her i Champagne har vi med 1,2 grader varmere vejr i snit de sidste 30 år foreløbig fået bedre vine ud af opvarmningen. Hvilken betydning det på sigt vil få for vintyper, vines udvikling, de praksisser vi anvender f.eks. i forbindelse med beskæring, må tiden vise.

I Champagne har professionen - blandt andre Comité Champagnes teknikere - forsket i sagen i årevis. Det vil bl.a. sige, at de driver forsøgsvinmarker over længere årrækker for at udlede viden, og det kan meget vel blive på basis heraf, at eventuelt nye dyrkningsteknikker vil blive besluttet.

One icy morning in Loisy-en-Brie

One icy morning... In Loisy-en-Brie.

It almost goes like an Irish traditional, does it not?

However, it is a true story from the daily lives of a winegrower in Loisy-en-Brie, Champagne, and surely many others.

The icy coating does not prevent your daily task of pruning though. It just makes your finger turn blue :-)

Only temperatures below minus 2 may change your daily program as the vines then may be damaged by the frost. We don't discuss fingers here.

The vines now lay dormant for the rest of the winter that may still come.

So far tuesday this week is the only day we have seen frost.

And 2015 as far as I have learned is still candidate of the warmest year ever measured. COP21 coming up this sunday in Paris.

Before your fingers become sympathecially blue, you must know, that the icy morninghours were followed by the first tasting of the wines of 2015.

Champagne i 3D

Champagne i 3D

To prune or not to prune

Welcome to our upper vineyard of Chardonnays in Loisy-en-Brie

At pruning time.

Sunday and monday with temperatures that suits the season better than what we had lately. Cool and closer to zero degrees Celsius than 10 or even 15.

Tuesday even with a possibility of a little snow. Want to see the flakes before I believe that one though.


But a bit of temperatures below should suit the vines well.

So far the wood has not been very great. Maybe due to the unusually warm temperatures this autumn.

This is the wood where next years grapes are due, so the quality is quite important.

These ones are ready.

Next spring we'll know more.


Until then there is another 24.000 vines to deal with.

Approximately.

We actually don't count them :-)