Domaine Evremond Harvest 2019

The Domaine Evremond journey continues as our 2019 harvest and our first, marks another milestone.

Each day we continue to learn about our young vineyard, understanding the vines, their relationship with the soils and with the climate. How this impacts the fruit – its quality, its style, its flavours. Our knowledge will only grow with each vintage and we are at the very beginning. Every vineyard, each block is different, we apply principles, we discover, and our experiences each vintage will colour the picture for the future.

For 2019, in general terms the winter was mild and flowering was good in the spring with no frost. In addition, we planted a further 8.5ha of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vines. A coolish summer followed but the vines and fruit developed slowly but surely. Things were looking good. The challenge arrived in mid to late September with the rain followed by further rain in October leading to predictions of Autumn 2019 being one of the wettest on record.

It was a fine balance for the viticulture team, when to bring in the first Domaine Evremond harvest, aiming for optimum ripeness but also working with the difficult wet conditions. Selection in the vineyard was key with the bar set high by the Taittinger team. It was essential that we eliminated any bunches that were affected by the onset of rot as a result of the rain. Some blocks of Chardonnay were affected by powdery mildew and this therefore reduced the size of the Chardonnay crop. Picking commenced on 15th October with our Pinot Meunier blocks and finished on 23rd October with Pinot Noir with a final count of 42 tonnes.

Mark Gaskain and his team of pickers did a superb job. Our first vintage was always going to be a learning process but overall Mark was very happy with the smooth running of the picking teams and the use of our new large picking bins.

The first taste from tank indicates that the rigorous selection has paid off with clean musts, displaying good minerality, acidity and flavour profiles. All encouraging indicators for the future but as the winemakers always say in Champagne … only time will tell and now we have to wait.

November 2019

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