Chenin Blanc Voyage into Noble Rot Wine

We have made a late harvest Chenin Blanc beginning in 2019 and have kept track of the numbers for each year.
This year, we bagged around 750 bunches of Chenin Blanc grapes in organza wedding bags and to ensure that the varmints running around in the vineyard didn't get tempted to pull at the wedding bags, we dropped the nets on the areas that we had the bagged grapes. We monitored the berries from green grapes to noble rot infected grapes and this is what it looked like:

On Sunday, November 26, we brought in a representative bunch of grapes and weighed it and extracted the juice from it. The bunch of grapes weighed 92 grams and we were able to extract 25 mL of juice from it. The initially extracted juice was greenish dark brown so we let it settle overnight.

We did sample berries from green to raisined in the harvested bunch and this is what we got:

There was no way to extract even a drop of juice from the raisined grapes to get a refractometer reading. So, one of the reasons for settling the extracted juice overnight was to get an accurate reading of the Brix by taking 5 mL of juice and diluting it with 5 mL of water and taking a reading. That worked and showed that the Brix was at 22, so doubling the reading makes the juice at 44 degrees Brix! The pH is 3.62 and the TA is 14.8 g/L. My husband gave it a thumbs up!

Tasting the 2005 Blain-Gagnard Chassagne Montrachet

Recently, my husband opened this 2005 Blain Gagnard Chassagne Montrachet. The color of the wine was golden yellow in color and given it's age, suggestive of oxidation. On the nose it smelled of citrus and butterscotch. The taste of the wine was one of lemon curd and butterscotch. It reminded me of drinking an aged Kistler.
We had it with blackfish that our hunter gave us. It was the perfect foil for the wine which is now 18 years old.
The last time we drank this wine was in February, 2016, which might have been the perfect time for imbibing this Chardonnay.
In my previous blog, I didn't do any research into the background so this time I thought I would do a little Internet digging. I learned that the domaine ​was formed in 1980 when Jean-Marc Blain married Claudine Gagnard, of the Domaine Gagnard-Delagrange family.¹

On the Burgundy Report, I found this hand written geneology which traces the lineage of the Blain-Gagnard family.²
Currently, Jean-Marc and Claudine run this domaine with the help of their son Marc-Antonin. They now control 20.5 acres of vines in Chassagne-Montrachet, including holdings in three grands crus: Croits-Bâtard-Montrachet, Bâtard-Montrachet, and Le Montrachet.
The grand crus characteristics include: Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet (elegant, mineral, creamy, good length), Bâtard-Montrachet (broad, thick on attack, but tapering to a fine more taut finish), and Le Montrachet (very fine, detailed, rich, mineral and full, grand but discreet, with fine acidity).
This 2005 has grapes from Chassagne-Montrachet which lies towards the southern end of the Côte de Beaune. Les Caillerets is located at the southern end of the village and sits above Les Champs Gain at an elevation between 250 and 280 meters. The name “Caillerets” refers to the chalky soil found here which contributes to the elegance and finesse typical of wines from this site, and is from vines planted between 1954 and 1987.
My husband says that he has more of this wine so we need to drink it fast!
Reference:
1. Winebow: Domaine Blain-Gagnard.
2. Burgundy Report, Profile: Domaine Blain-Gagnard.
3. The Reserve: Domaine Blain-Gagnard.
4. Domaine Blain-Gagnard.

2019-2023 Grape Variety Statistics

The 2023 vintage is in and it is time to sumarize the statistics of that harvest and append it to the harvest of the previous years. Here are the yearly numbers at harvest for comparison:

Variety	Harvest Date	Brix	pH	TA g/L	Lbs	Gals
Auxerrois
	9/23/2019	19.6	3.23	7.35	636	50
	9/17/2020	19.0	3.07	7.5	1670	133
	9/28/2021	18.0	3.25	7.5	1638	130
	9/25/2022	20.0	3.16	7.1	3097	248
	10/2/2023	18.6	3.4	5.6	~500	~40
Chenin Blanc
	10/14/2019	21.6	3.15	13.5	3930	305
	10/11/2020	23.3	3.09	12.1	8201	655
	10/17-18/2021	20.4	3.17	14.6	6200	496
	10/16-17/2022	21.0	3.07	8.9	4901	392
	10/22/2023	20.0	3.05	8.7	1410	120
Chardonnay
	9/28/2019	21.5	3.17	9.4	291	26
	9/24/2020	23.5	3.0	10.0	1136	80
	10/3/2021	20.4	3.28	8.2	2625	210
	10/2/2022	22.5	3.05 - 3.11	7.5 - 8.9	2306	185
	10/5/2023	18.8	3.4	9.9	~500	~40
Cabernet Sauvignon
	11/3/2019	19	3.25	11.1	332	30
	10/22/2020	22.4	3.08	10.7	888	80
	10/24/2021	20.1	3.07	10.4	561	45
	10/21/2022	21.0	3.26	-	~1300	104
	10/31/2023	18.8	3.15	10.4	369	30
Cabernet Franc
	10/26/2019	23	3.23	11.3	377	32
	10/22/2020	23.3	3.27	11.3	872	80
	10/24/2021	19.8	3.20	7.4	402	32
	10/21/2022	22.0	3.27	-	~1200	96
	10/31/2023	20.4	3.24	7.9	287	23
Barbera
	10/21/2022	22.5	3.00	-	~600	48

This view provides us with a snapshot of how each vintage compares for each variety and if any vintage stands out. We have always thought that our 2020 vintage was a special year and this is one way to verify our recollection.
All of the 2023 harvest has finished fermenting and we are letting the wine sit on the lees for a few weeks.
Again, thank you to all of our friends who helped us to bring in the 2023 harvest! See you all in early December!

Details of Our Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc Fermentation

In the previous blogpost, Vintage 2023: Harvesting Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Barbera I wrote up to the point of fermentation.

On Friday, November 3, we began the process of rehydrating and tempering the yeast that we would use for the fermentation. We chose FX10 and began the rehydration at 10:46. In general, we spend 30 minutes at the rehydration stage and then we add the appropriate juice in 10 minute intervals to acclimate the yeast to the environment of the juice. We used 40 grams of FX10 in 400 mL of spring water for the Cabernet Sauvignon because we calculated that we had approximately 30 gallons of juice and used 20 grams of FX10 in 200 mL of spring water for the Cabernet Franc for approximately 23 gallons of juice. After the completion of the rehydration and tempering steps, we inoculated the Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc at approximately 11:50. On Saturday, November 4, when we went to check on the inoculated grapes, the fermenation had begun!

Vintage 2023: Harvesting Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Barbera

As grape farmers, we are always looking at the weather. This time it was to decide when to harvest our red varieties so that it could achieve the best level of ripeness that this season was going to give us. We wanted to take advantage of the warm days coming up and avoid the rain that was in the forecast so it happened that our penultimate harvest of this season occurred on Tuesday, October 31.
A great group of 15 or so of our friends came to help us on a week day. Since there were 6 rows of red grapes with two rows of each variety, we harvested two rows at a time so as not to confuse the Cabernet Sauvignon with the Cabernet Franc.

We began at 9:30 and finished up at 11! By that time, the sun had come out and it was a beautiful day. Our friends got together to have a bite to eat which included a hearty Cowboy bean soup provided by our friend, Laurie.

After lunch, Curt graciously offered to help us take one of the half ton bins to Jonathan Edwards so that it could be weighed and destemmed.

Zak and Jon helped us with the destemming of the grapes. During part of the destemming, my husband noticed the abundance of rachis and jacks falling into the destemmed grapes. Although he asked if there was a speed control on the destemmer, we finished the destemming without any adjustments to the machine. Curt and my husband brought the two half ton bins of destemmed Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc back to our industrial site where they sat overnight.

The following morning, we did our best to remove the jacks and rachis from the two bins. We calculated the amount of juice that we would get from the weight of the grapes and the theoretical yield would be 23 gallons of Cabernet Franc and 30 gallons of Cabernet Sauvignon. This amount of juice was very reminiscent of our 2019 harvest and when we referred to the blogpost Progress Report on Our Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon we found that the grapes and juice were fermented in a 50 gallon plastic container. My husband, aka Procurement found that Misto Grapes carried those containers, however, when he called, the containers were in high demand and sold out for the season. We went to Plan B, which was to put the grapes and juice into 44 gallon plastic Brute containers. We scooped the Cab Franc into the container first and in the process found a bolt that must have come off from the destemmer at Jon's. We brought it back and learned that Jon also thought that the destemmer was running too fast, so hopefully he made the adjustment for his harvest.
Back at the industrial space, our Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc were in the 44-gallon containers continuing to extract out color from the skins. Next up, fermentation!