Arnoux-Lachaux Viticulture – Procès 5

Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Procès

The flowers

After the frost and (prudently) late pruning, it’s time to see the fruits of the labour: flowering!

Harvest time: How long is a piece of string?

Predicting the start of the Burgundy harvest is always tricky, as there is significant variation in timing amongst the growers. 

According to various of my sources, harvest for most is likely to start around September 15, with a likelihood towards a somewhat later date in the Côte de Nuits.

The variation from grower to grower can be large, so one could well see some start earlier than the date above, and others not attack until significantly later.

The theory – or rule of thumb – is that harvest starts 100 days after mid-flowering. 

But in reality, if the summer is hot and dry, 100 days could well prove too many. What’s more, calculating them is complicated, because “mid-flowering” is a moving target. In hot, dry, still years, flowering can take less than a week from start to finish, as was largely the case this year. In wet, cool, windy years, it can drag out for more than two weeks. 

For some growers, a better harvest-date gauge is 40 days from mid-veraison (colour change, easiest to see in the red grapes). But then again, what is “mid-veraison”? 

How’s that for accuracy?