Indian Summer, great wine !
After a gloomy summer, sunny skies are smiling on Bordeaux, France’s premier wine-growing region, since the start of September, sparking sudden talk of high-end vintages.
“We are making up an awful lot of ground,” says Antoine Medeville, a winemaking consultant for several vineyards in the Medoc region. “This September sunshine is a godsend.”
The harvest is well under way for white varieties in Bordeaux, and picking has just begun for the reds.
August just simply wasn’t hot enough for the vines but the exceptionally hot September has gone some way to make up for the heat deficit.
Thanks to the unexpected Indian summer, the outlook is rosy for white varieties, including sweet wines, that make up some 12 percent of the 112,600 hectares (272,000 acres) given over to vineyards in Bordeaux.
This year the white wine grapes are reported to be acid, sweet, fruity and healthy, which are the four perfect ingredients for great wine.
As for the reds, they have been left on the vines for as long as possible in the hope that the heat of the Indian summer will burn off their acidity.
Unlike for white wine, a good red requires low acidity and the longer the grapes are left to ripen the more fruitier they become.
The unexpected turnaround in the weather is welcome news in Bordeaux, which saw harvests nearly wiped out by severe hailstorms in 2013.
So 2014 could be a very very good ‘wine year’ !
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