Grapes are looking superbly healthy and there are plenty of them at Domaine de la Cotelleraie in the St Nicolas de Bourgueil appellation here in the Loire valley.
healthy cab franc
Anticipated date of harvest for this domaine is between the 17th and 20th September. Pickers are lined up and ready to go, the beautiful wooden fermentation tanks are being steam cleaned and the optical sorter is ready to eliminate any grapes affected by mildew. The estate is the only one in Indre et Loire to have a machine like this which replaces the equivalent of 10 people manually sorting on a triage table as the grapes come into the winery.
The winery is ready to go and all the tanks have been steam cleaned
Anne-Claire Vallée estimates around 5-10% loss of volume due to mildew this year although also tells us that the size of berries on the bunches is lovely and bigger than can be seen in some of the vineyards around them.
