Bordeaux 2018: The Harvest
After a protracted period of warm and dry weather which allowed the vines, as they drank up the ground water, to fully ripen their grapes, it should come as no surprise that the 2018 harvest was a relatively early one. It was not, however, an entirely straightforward one.
The natural order of picking – which tends to progress westwards from the left bank to the right, and from Pomerol to St Emilion and to Castillon, first the Merlots, then the Cabernets and other varieties, was disrupted this year. Some left-bank vineyards finished their Cabernet harvest before some on the right-bank had finished. Some domaines in Castillon and St Emilion were picked before some in Pomerol, the reverse of the norm, and so on.
These deviations from the norm partly reflect regional differences in weather patterns, for example there were some cooler temperatures and higher levels of rainfall recorded on the right bank compared to the left bank. But they also reflect, in part at least, the fact that picking decisions were largely down to the personal preferences of the team at each châteaux. Some technical directors and proprietors (especially around St Emilion) still prefer later-picked fruit, regardless of what you might have read about the turbo-charged St Emilion style being a thing of the past. With no external pressures such as looming storm clouds to prompt a region-wide flurry of picking before the harvest was ruined, technical directors were free to wait as long as their style preferences demanded.
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