Berries to Barrels: Wrapping up the Harvest 2024

The harvest season is wrapping up in Burgundy. The last grapes are being clipped from the vines while others are already cosying up in their fermentation tanks.

Harvest time at estates like Domaine Follin-Arbelet is like a particle accelerator for friendships. Bonds form, sometimes new and sometimes renewed friendships, love, wine, and even the art of learning bawdy songs, thriving in communal living. It’s about facing diverse weather conditions and meeting people from all walks of life. Nowadays, it’s rare to have access to this rich tapestry of varied encounters, especially when most of us are cooped up in the same job, in the same city, with the same people. The harvest is a micro-bubble where community spirit and teamwork come alive, not for political or religious reasons, but purely for the love of wine.

The kitchen crew fires up the stoves starting at 8 AM to prepare utterly delicious and generous snacks, lunch, and dinner. The grape pickers begin their work at 7:30 AM, while the porters bravely traverse the rows, carrying baskets brimming with grapes to deposit into crates.

Around 8:30 AM, the first songs and laughs begin to echo through the vineyard. Aches in the back, knees, and feet make themselves known but start to ease up after the third day. It’s a well-rehearsed choreography that resembles a weaving loom: the straight rows of vines are the threads, and the porters who straddle the alleys are the weavers, creating the fabric of the harvest.

It was an incredible, intense and rich week that will take some time for me to fully digest.

Aside from the joyful mood of the harvesters, there’s a slight melancholy among the winemakers due to a lower-than-expected grape yield. The Côte de Nuits was hit the hardest. For Thibault Liger-Bélair (check out the video here), and for Jeremy and Alec Seysses, Domaine Dujac (video here), this vintage has been the most challenging of their careers. At Comte Liger-Bélair (interview of their Technical Director Pierre-Marie Segalen here), some wines might not even see the light of day. Some compare it to 1993, but even the old-timers say they’ve never seen anything like this before.

Jean-Michel Chartron

The Côte de Beaune fared a bit better, like at Follin-Arbelet (interview here), but the tanks are still only half-full, meaning no foot-stomping pigeonage (much to the dismay of the pickers!).

Over at JM Gaunoux and Jean Chartron, spirits are a bit higher; Chardonnay, being a tad more resilient, fared better, so they’re not entirely displeased. As Thibault Liger-Bélair says, “This brings us back to our roots, our job as farmers, and makes us more humble.” We must learn to accept what nature imposes on us and hope for a more generous harvest next year!

Now it’s time for fermentation to begin, and I can already start to hear the grapes gossiping amongst themselves. I’ll do my best to translate their juicy secrets for you.

Bises
Manon

*Illustrations by Pops Tawen