Bordeaux 2013 Primeurs: Pauillac
The story of the 2013 Bordeaux vintage and in particular the race to harvest before all was lost to botrytis was made most clear to me when I visited Château Mouton-Rothschild in October 2013. Here the suave and charming Philippe Dhalluin (pictured) told me of the efforts made in order to bring in the fruit as the rot advanced. Being one of the region’s leading estates, and one of just a handful of first growths, you would imagine that the picking operation at Mouton-Rothschild is an expensive, labour-intensive process, and you would be right. Each October every scrap of flat land between the estate and Le Pouyalet, the little hamlet just to the east, is suddenly crammed with caravans, camper vans and tents, accommodation for the workers who arrive ready to pick the fruit. Philippe has hundreds of pickers at his disposal, but in 2013 even that wasn’t enough.
As the threat was realised every soul who could be persuaded out into the vines was sent out to pick, including any peripheral Rothschild staff, even if they were more used to reclining behind a desk, or shuffling papers around. The number of people out in the vines of the three principal Rothschild estates – Château Mouton-Rothschild, Château d’Armailhac and Château Clerc-Milon – was surely the highest it has ever been at harvest time. Philippe told me the busiest day was October 9th, when the Mouton catering team fed 695 pickers; this is a figure now burned on my mind, as it has made it through into all the Rothschild literature.
