Harvest in Provence 2015 is a Corker

It’s not even the end of September and the grapes are pretty much in the cellars all over Provence, our life has moved on to winemaking and the growers are enjoying a break and time for the “chasse”, or wild boar hunting.  As far as they’re concerned 2015 has been a dreamy year.  Why?  Because we’ve enjoyed an exceptionally dry and hot summer, that was preceded by a wet spring that allowed for enough ground water levels to comfortably sustain the vines.  The grapes were not as plentiful as last year, but much healthier with beautifully concentrated juice, that will make for very aromatic Rosés and Reds in particular.

On average the harvest was about a week earlier than last year, with more drawn out differences in timing in various areas: for example our partner vineyards have finished the harvest already and last year they harvested into the second week of October.  The harvest was easy in terms of weather, interrupted only by a couple of brief thunderstorms and without long periods of rain that would disrupt proceedings and bring disease to the vineyards.

What does this mean to us for Mirabeau 2015? Well for starters it looks like the quality will be excellent and some people in the business have talked about this being one of the most promising vintages they can remember. The fact that we’re running nice and early is also a great advantage, because the window between sampling, selling and shipping to far-flung destinations is very short for Rosé wines.  Being able to sample a customer 2 weeks earlier with a good quality wine makes the process a lot more comfortable and potentially fruitful.   And of course we are chomping at the bit to see the best wines from the vineyards we work with to decide on our 2015 blend and to make something very special that we hope our customers and the wine critics will love.

We’ll keep you posted on progress and our blending activity over the next few weeks.  In the meantime don’t stop drinking Rosé, the 2014 is still in very nice shape and tastes delicious! Watch the video below to see how the grapes are harvested at night for our delicious rosé.

Our range