Chateau Teyssier 2002
The significant point about the crop of 2002 is that there wasn’t much of it. The reason for this was not due to crop thinning in search of higher and higher quality but the wildly erratic weather that Bordeaux experienced at the start of the summer. This arrived at the moment of flowering, particularly affecting the Merlot – in principle our staple crop. Millerandage is the word for failed flowering, and a word that vignerons hate to hear.
At Château Teyssier we lost twenty-five per cent of our harvest.
The bad news continued – morbid weather in the summer, coupled with reports of lost crops in Italy and other regions of France seemed to signal an unhappy harvest. Nothing could have been further from the truth! With the arrival of September the wind swung around to the east and the sun shone until the last grape was picked in October. Someone, somewhere in Bordeaux was prompted to announce – “the vintage of the miracle”! Yeah!
The year had started, for a change, with a winter that felt like winter. Robert Fortin, our Vineyard Manager, and his team spent the three months out in vineyards that it takes to prune here in cold, sometimes freezing temperatures. But as least it stayed dry.
And it continued dry and cool through spring – a complete change from the previous few vintages. Budding as a result was protracted and perhaps a little down on the norm.
The catastrophic flowering was followed by a dismal summer. Actually it didn’t rain as much as it felt it did. There was a sensation that the first run of green harvesting should be conducted with the loss of production from millerandage in mind. But with our Le Dôme, Château Laforge, and Clos Nardian vineyards we decided against it. Final production, therefore remained down.
I suspect that 2002 is going to be known as a ‘winemaker’s year’. In fact, I believe the key will be found, as it usually is, in the work undertaken in the vineyard.
For the winemaking team here September wasn’t our first harvest of 2002. In March we endured the flight to Australia where we made the first vintage of The Colonial Wine Company in the Barossa Valley (www.colonialwine.com.au – coming soon). This is to be an annual pilgrimage, and one we believe will enhance our experience and knowledge.
2002 saw the arrival of a second vibrating triage table – not just bunches are sorted but now, after destemming, individual grapes are checked before being lightly crushed. The colours, tannins, aromas and alcohol levels were strong. Our approach has been modified only slightly with this vintage to increase the amount of lees working after secondary fermentation.
Early tasting shows a promising vintage with, as seems to happen in even years, a major contribution by Cabernet Franc.