A good winemaker has to balance the talent of an artist with the skills of a chemist. As any successful business person will tell you, it’s all about making the right decisions at the right time. The problem is that you only have ONE SHOT at getting it right.
This, after all, is farming. Once you have “managed” the growing season with all the weather and disease problems that MOTHER NATURE will throw at you, you have to predict the right time to harvest the grapes. That in itself is quite a challenge.
Once you harve harvested the grapes in the best sanitary conditions, you have to make the wine. The vinification process is complicated and generally involves the winemaker having little sleep during this three-week period! Each wine maker has his own little recipe which he or she adapts to each tiny plot of vineyards (called Climats) that they have.
A winemaker starts to worry in April when the vines start budding until late October when the wine is finally barrelled…(or tanked). Then the famous “Trois glorieuses” weekend in November, is culminated by the famous winemaker’s celebration “la Paulée”…a festive dinner to celebrate the end of the harvest.
We at Great Burgundies wish to honour these wine makers, and in particular the young generation – the Millenial winemakers – born between 1980 and 2000. This young generation of winemakers has the responsability of making exceptional burgundy wines and keeping Burgundy’s reputation at the summet in an ever increasing wine production market.
WineTime France News 