Bauduc 2011 White Harvest in Pictures
October 5th 2011, by Gavin
With the growing season almost three weeks ahead of last year, the harvest of our white grapes at Château Bauduc kicked off at the end of August. It wasn’t the easiest vintage, as we had four months of near-drought from March to early July and a tad too much rain from mid-July to the beginning of September. The summer was cool overall but at times it was very humid, which caused problems. In the end, after getting hands-on in the vines to sort the grapes, we’re pretty pleased with the result.
Here’s the story of the white harvest in photos. Click on an image to enlarge it.
2010: a Remarkable Vintage for Bauduc
October 28th 2010, by Gavin
We harvested our red grapes in perfect condition during October. Whether other Châteaux in Bordeaux are making wines as good as or even better than last year remains to be seen, but after frost here at Bauduc in April 2008 and hail in May 2009, it’s a welcome change for us to bring in such quality, and quantity.
2010 has been a remarkable year for us in so many ways.
1. No major natural disasters: no Spring frost to decimate the yield by nipping the shoots in the bud. No late Spring hail to destroy the young shoots and baby bunches. Even the drought conditions this Summer didn’t dry up our hopes for a splendid crop. Let’s pray that there’ll be no repeat of any damaging storms this Winter.
2. No man-made catestrophes: no tractors catching fire during the harvest (above right, in 2009), and no trailors full of grapes tipping over: our former employee, Sebastien, pictured right, was probably wishing he’d taken a sicky the day I took this shot in late September, 2005. I’ve not published this photo before as it wasn’t exactly our finest hour. We ended up selling the tank of wine that these grapes went into, in ‘bulk’ and at a loss.
Dealing with Mr. Angry online
July 28th 2010, by Gavin
We hardly ever get emails from irate customers, or potential customers, so this one really stood out. Forgive me for the length of this article but I thought I’d reproduce the exchange in full, excluding contact blurb etc. The customer’s emails are in Blue, my wife Angela’s in Mauve, mine in black.
ARE YOU IDIOTS DELIBERATELY TRYING TO STOP PEOPLE BUYING YOUR WINE? AFTER 17 ATTEMPTS TO PUT IN MY PASSWORD I GAVE UP. I THOUGHT YOU COULD STICK IT.
Really sorry you had so much trouble with the website – I will try and find out why your password didn’t work. If you let me know what wine you would like we can arrange to have it delivered for you.
All the best, Angela
From: Gavin Quinney Subject: Re: Password, idiots and so on
Dear xxxx Thanks for the email. Obviously our website gave you some problems, so sorry about that. I’m afraid I can’t find you registered on our system at all. When you put in your email address, at the question:
‘Are you a new or existing online customer?’
Did you click ‘I am a new customer’ or ‘I am an existing customer, and my password is..’?
If you click ‘I am a new customer’ it should work. By all means give me a call.
Kind regards, Gavin Quinney (aka Chief Idiot)
Plot to Poison Vines and other Conspiracies
May 8th 2010, by Gavin
There was an extraordinary story in both the Torygraph and the Grauniad this week about one of the world’s greatest wine estates being blackmailed by some chap who threatened to poison the precious vines. The dastardly villain, who must be a bunch short of a full basket, tried to extract €1 million from Aubert de Villaine, the co-director of Domaine de la Romanée Conti in Burgundy, and to prove his evil intentions he nobbled a priceless Pinot. Monsieur de Villaine, who was named recently by Decanter magazine as their ‘Man of the Year’, managed to trap the plonker with the aid of the local gendarmes and a stash of false banknotes.
Four years ago, I thought we had a similar situation on our hands at Bauduc when I found a row of young vines (above) which looked for all the world like they’d been poisoned. Over 100 recently planted Sauvignon Blanc vines had died in mysterious circumstances and there appeared to be no natural reason as to why the leaves had literally withered on the vine.