Nothing like the gentle warning that Christmas is only two weeks away to illustrate how Rives-Blanques managed to slip into December and clamber half way up the month before any of us even realised it. And yet the month seemed well and truly done long before its undoing actually began. So much going on! Unusually […]
November fell in through the roof, as huge swathes of the Languedoc were covered in enough water to launch a ship. The rain over Rives-Blanques was infinitely kinder, what we call a ‘bonne pluie’, just what the doctor ordered for the newly seeded oats and vetch to grow between the vines – not to mention […]
An unbroken streak of mindlessly magnificent weather which accompanied our harvest of 2011 spilled over into October – when the harvest was already over and done with. Now our attention turns away from the mountains sprawled across a blamelessly blue sky, and into the winery, where the wines are happily bubbling in their barrels at […]
Well almost. As the calendar turned into September we were congratulating ourselves on our magnificent grapes. Impeccable! Round, clean, healthy, beautiful grapes hanging in happy fat bunches. Hanging just as happily as on these paintings by an amateur group of artists on their annual La Cima Painting Course. The harvest approaches and it looks […]
« We presume an excellent millésime 2011 » says Limoux’s wine syndicate, pointing out that the grapes are glowing with health and happiness, weigh about 30% more than last year, and look really good. So we are presuming too. It’s been a curious lead-up; some say all the up/down weather we’ve been having is because of this […]