Bird's nest in the vineyard of Domaine de la Soufrandière

Jérôme's tasting of the 2002 Burgundy...

Probably one of the best wines I tasted today: complex,elegant with an amazing ageing potential.

2002 vintage at Domaine Alain Burguet (see above) has been my first winemaking experience, so it has been great to try it today. 

Some of my favorite wines today: Domaine Romanée Conti, Michel Lafarge, Georges Roumier and

 Jean Marc Boillot.

Cow horn silica preparation sprayed in Beaujolais

Today (17th of May) we have a leaf day in biodynamic calendar and so the vineyard workers started their work very early today, before 6 a.m.,spraying a cow horn silica preparation in Beaujolais. They used 2 to 3 grams of silica in 35 litres of water per hectare. This preparation is always applied in the very early morning as a fine mist that drifts over plants. This spray enhances the photosynthesis of the leaf.

Domaine Albert Mann awarded Winemakers of the year 2012

Albert Mann Estate received the award "Winemakers of the year 2012" by the leading french wine 

publication "Revue du Vin de France".

It is the collaborative and complementary dynamic between two familie that has paid off here.  Jacky and Maurice Barthelmé, with their wives, Marie-Thérèse and Marie-Claire, have run the winery, Domaine Albert Mann in Alsace since 1989 with rigour and conviction without fault. On the 21 hectare estate, every year, Maurice, in charges of the vineyards, delivers Jacky, the winemaker, the grapes which express the nuances of their terroir with the exactness of a goldsmith. The result of Riesling Schlossberg is crystalline minerality: of Gewurztraminer Furstentum, intense, exotique flavours; of the late harvest and noble rote, or the complex Pinot Noirs, each of the estate's wine are impeccably defined in their expression. And as behind every great winegrower, there is often a great women, one must acknowledge the work of Marie-Claire, who manages the estate, and Marie-Thérèse, who, with finesse, oversees the global marketing of the winery. In a region which is comparatively unrecognised for the greatness of its best wines, Domaine Albert Mann is more than the benchmark, it's the epitome.

Vines on the 1st of May in South Burgundy

Fisrt of May is the day when  Lilly of the Valley is  ready to be picked up,but we still have to wait a few more months for the harvest....After an early budding, the vines are now back to a schedule in Burgundy, thanks to the cool and wet weather of the last 2 weeks.

Unhappy vines

Sad example of vines where chemical products killed any kind of live in the soil!

Neglected vineyard where the vines are fighting against the wild plants to survive.

Biodynamic farming

Biodynamic farming is a form of organic viticulture which developed out of lectures given by an Austrian scientist Rudolf Steiner(1861-1925) to a group of farmers.Since 1920's biodynamic exist in wine growing and reflects the relation between the natural elements. It is a farming that not only, like in organic winegrowing, excludes the use of synthetic chemical products such as herbicides, insecticides and atificial fertilizers, but also uses the seasonal calendar based on the movements of the moon (created by Maria Thun).
Biodynamic makes use of composts and preparations made accordingly to Stainer's instructions to dynamise the vines and the vineyard.The solutions are based on manure and/or preparations made of medical plants and minerals.There are 9 biodynamic preparations described by Stainer that we still use in vineyards today to enchance the soil quality and stimulate plant life.
Horn-manure, which is a cow manure fermented in a cow horn that is burried in the soil for 6 months (autum and winter),
horn-silica made from powdered quartz packed inside a cow horn and burried in soil for 6 months (spring and summer)
and plantes: yarrow blossoms, chamomile blossoms, stinging nettle, oak bark, dandelion flowers, valarian flowers. The last, liquid preparation, is made from silica-rich horsetail plant and used as a foliar spray to suppress fungal diseases in plants.

The preparations are used in homeopathic quantities, meaning they produce an effect in extremely diluted amounts.In the film we can see the prescribed stirring technique. Small amounts of preparations (a 300 grams mixture of horn manure, yarrow blossoms, chamomile blossoms, stinging nettle, oak bark, dandelion flowers, valerian flowers) have been added to warm water (37°C), than stirred in a circular fashion to create a vortex. Than the direction of stirring has been reversed to recreate a vortex in the other direction. Stirring lasts for an hour. Result is a water vitalised by only a small amount of preparation material. This liquid preparation has than been used to dynamise the soil.