R de Rieussec

Another vintage that stood out from its predecessors. We thought we were back to a normal vintage, with a fairly cool start to the year and vines 2 weeks later in comparison with previous years. Apart from a fairly low cumulated rainfall, we were off to a good start.
In April, early morning frosts at the very beginning of the month affected our early terroirs. Fortunately, the most affected areas had not started budding yet (late pruning). The rest was fairly straightforward: very little water and lots of sunshine until the harvest. In a very short space of time, the vines caught up their delay, needing very little intervention on the sanitary level. The team had to devote itself to watering the young vines for much of the summer to limit losses. The harvest was very early for our dry whites (17/08), but for the sweet wines we had to wait for the humidity to kick in before the botrytis could start. An initial pass was carried out to save the damage caused by the sun. Then, thanks to a few rainy spells, things were finally able to get going. There was virtually no waste, with days where the degrees just kept rising, and even the grapes from the lower-quality plots finally made it to the cellar.