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Chateau Palmer - Philippe Delfaut
 The 2006 harvest begins smoothly
at Chateau Palmer
-
Margaux
Chateau
Palmer, Tuesday, September 19th 2006
The
harvest
at Chateau Palmer
began this morning with a reduced team of 30 harvesters, to pick the young vines in one
plot of
Merlot as well as 2 early-ripening parcels. Our Danish team of harvesters will arrive tomorrow night
at Palmer to start with a full team as of Friday.
After the rain of the last few days, this first day took place with plenty of sunshine. The
Merlot
are now completely
ripe, and if the recent rains have brought about a slight decrease in degree, the
Merlot
picked today are showing high
sugar levels, with a potential
alcohol degree of 13° to 13°5.
"Already over!"
Chateau Palmer,
Oct. 2nd.
Today, after 2 weeks of frantic work at Chateau
Palmer
to pick all the grapes at peak ripeness, we are celebrating the end of the
harvest with the traditional gerbaude feast. The Gironde department was in throes of a mini-tornado this morning, with heavy rains and very high winds (130 km/h). We could not help feeling satisfied and relieved that we had
rushed picking the last grapes on Monday evening - after
listening the weather forecast announcing the impending storm.
From now, our efforts at
Palmer
will now be totally focused on
the winemaking. We will have to be very careful to maintain strict controls to make the most of this demanding
vintage. Colour and tannins are generally
extracting very
quickly meaning that the vats do not need a great deal of pumping over. High
fermentation temperatures are unnecessary, so we are keeping the
Merlot vats at 26° C. As opposed to colour and tannins, the
future Chateau
Palmer
wine is still taking longer to develop its full
complexity. However, post-fermentation static skin contact (without pumping over) will enhance volume, particularly on the middle
palate. The
Chateau Palmer
2006 high
malic acid content - over 2 g/l - makes them
look somewhat
tart at this stage, but this impression will disappear after
the
malolactic fermentation, which will give them much more
softness.
Almost all the
Merlot
grapes have finished fermenting now. We now spend much of the morning tasting the
coming Chateau
Palmer
2006 to monitor its development during skin contact, as well as supervising the
Cabernets, that will soon be done fermenting. Our first impressions show that both sorts of
Cabernets
have an impressive, yet velvety,
tannic
structure. This confirms what we thought when we tasted the skins prior to picking. The wines'
acidity,
richness, and
structure are indicative
for great potential.
The 2006
harvest
at Chateau Palmer
is now over and we have more moments to share with you. In 3 minutes, you'll see how the
harvest date is decided and you'll meet the young
harvest team from Denmark. Grapes are sorted, crushed, the juice tasted daily.
All this and more in the coming PalmerCast
series.
Philippe Delfaut - Chateau Palmer
http://chateau-palmer.com/fr1
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