Oenological: What a year that was!
At the moment I am standing in the vineyard of Domaine de Ravoire, looking out over the most beautiful east-west valley in the world. Bright blue sky, ripe grapes, peace, joy, Rhone blood.
And then the past year passes before my mind’s eye. I quickly close it again (the mind’s eye). But one moment has stayed with me: This summer, as I was roaming the vines with my son, and all the weather-related unpleasantness was manifesting itself on the vine, he said, curtly, “Father, what’s going on?” (He needed more martial words, which I won’t reproduce here, but he got to the heart of the matter).
Well, in the above-mentioned East-West Valley we press wonderfully ripe grapes. The beautiful weather of recent months has pleased morale and vine. The yield is small, but fine. After the years 2019 and 2020, which were convincing in terms of quantity and quality and still give us great pleasure, we harvest significantly less in 2021.
At the beginning of the year we were looking forward to the vine work. And as always, we asked ourselves questions. How will the budding? How will the flowering time? Do we have enough water? Are there physiological problems on the vine? Will the grapes ripen well? For one grapevine season, nature gave us answers. In short, yes, we had enough water and the grape ripening went on flawlessly. We have cultivated grapes in weather conditions completely unknown to us and have worked out an excellent harvest in the subtropical climate.
Once again we have taken care of our “vine children” for a season. In recent years we worked with vines from Valais that kept telling us: “Leave us alone, we are satisfied and happy in Valais, we thank you with excellent grapes.” With pleasure we took over the fruits and accompanied them to your home. In 2021, the vines needed a little more support. They needed care, a lot of encouragement and even more attention. We were able to give all this to our vines in – at the risk of repeating myself – the most beautiful east-west valley in the world. And they thanked us with few, but all the more excellent grapes.
Admittedly, at first my son’s question made me think. I was all the more pleased to be able to answer him after a little time for reflection: It goes on.
The 21 is coming. I say now already: Santé!
