Ode to Autumn and exceptionaly fine vintage weather
Our 13th harvest at Cortes de Cima started on the 25th August, and ended more than 6 weeks later on October 9th. A total of 938 tones of grapes were harvested, a reduction of 18% from 2007. The harvest workforce peaked at 70, 2/3 women and 1/3 men from the local villages.
Breakdown by variety is – Syrah 42%, Aragonez (Tempranillo) 36%, Touriga Nacional 8%, Alicante Bouschet 2.5%, Cabernet 2.5%, and white varieties Antão Vaz, Viognier, and Verdelho 3.5%.
With the exception of a short rainy spell which quickly passed, the harvest weather was the finest in memory, of dry, warm sunny days, affording us the luxury of fine tuning the harvest tempo according to the ripeness of a particular grape variety, a particular vineyard parcel, and even a particular row of vines.
Keat’s Ode to Autumn was brought to mind-
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;…
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Adegga
Thursday November 11th, 2010
[...] 2010 is a good year, for most varieties equal to 2009, but not as excellent as 2008. Generally, the best fruit from vintage 2010 came from the grapes which were harvested latest, [...]
Tuesday November 8th, 2011
[...] Incógnito are our ‘Top of the Range’ wines, only bottled in exceptional years. Vintage 2008 was just such a year, one of our greatest vintages of the decade, with the growing season of dry, [...]
Tuesday November 15th, 2011
[...] Kierkegaard, we can declare Vintage 2011 to have been a very good year, the best vintage since the excellent 2008. Furthermore, as it was an especially good year for Syrah, 2011 will be an ‘Incógnito’ [...]