The hail on july 28th 2008

A quick look back on this climate calamity which devastated 30% of the vineyard. It damaged one side of the bunches and disturbed the normal maturation of a certain quantity of berries which were still intact. It was important to be able to seperate theses berries in different vats. So at the end of august, at a time where we had no certitude on the issu of this vintage except that august was cooler than usually, and the financial markets where pointing down, I decided to invest 85 000€ in the system to sort out the berries.
This system can seperate the berries which are less matured than the others by a very simple and clever density control of each berry. The result in terms of quality of work was worth the money we put in.
This hail didn't affect too much the global yield but forced us to declassify 15% of the wine produced in basic Saint-Emilion instead of Grand Cru Classé.
So the 4100 litres of wine produced by hectare gave only 2800 litres of Grand Cru Classé.
This decision saved the quality of Laroze 2008 and will improve it in the future vintages.

In fact, this decision which I basically had no choice about, once the weather had done its damage, and which forced me to take out a loan in the middle of violent stock market turbulence, had a positive impact on the quality of the harvest, not only because it totally erased the effects of the hailstorm, but also by refining our wine’s taste profile.
I expect this enhancement in quality to be confirmed in future vintages.
So the moral is, if you believe in the quality potential of your terroir, and your fundamental guideline is that every bottle of Laroze must be quite simply delicious, you take the right decisions even in a hostile economic context!
And that’s why I have a bone to pick with the cork suppliers, the majority of whom are incapable of doing what is necessary – but that’s another story, so see the article below.