We are pleased to announce the launch of our new PRIMEUR 2023 campaign. The primeur sales are an opportunity to access preferential rates on all our Grands Vins de Terroirs thanks to a differential of about 30% below the official rate at the time of their delivery. By buying in primeur, you can be sure of having access to an allocation of our rarest vintages. More than a reservation, it is the possibility of committing yourself with us to excellence and fine wines and to weave together a bond of trust.
Dear Friends,
Dear Customers,
Spring is always a crucial time in our work as winegrowers, a time of intense activity when tending the soil, caring for the new-born plants and the pressure of the weather cycles combine to create, as the days lengthen, that tense pre-dawn exhilaration, that tension in the day's work, a thousand intentions and projects added to the haste to reach the end of the harvest in serenity, wondering every day how we're going to get everything right by then.... Spring in 2024? To put it bluntly, there was no spring in 2024! A cycle of light ended with the end of the 2023 harvest and we plunged into a dark, damp tunnel: a year of rain fell between November and May, day after day without let-up (except on Sundays!), accompanied by mild temperatures but no light, which led to early budburst, a major risk of frost which we miraculously escaped, and stressed vegetation waiting to sprout for long weeks. For once, disbudding wasn't a race against time before the trellising and the infernal cycle of treatments began: we were able to do everything meticulously and it was only with a timid return of less rotten weather at the beginning of June that the vines blossomed into a fine crop. . Today, 14 June, fruit set has been reached in most plots, and after a serious downy mildew scare at the end of May, things are looking fairly positive. It's reasonable to expect a harvest at the end of September, and that alone is a measure of the gap between 2023 and 2024. Last year we had a torrid year, with extreme drought starting in 2022, heatwave weather, thirsty plants and grapes threatened by drosophila, wasps and other Asian hornets, with miraculous flavours that had to be sorted out, low acidity and generally dreadful vinification... In fact, contrary to all expectations, after this very tedious and costly sorting episode, where the losses, like for the other fruits of the vintage, were immense, the vinification of the 2023s which will be discussed in this Primeur 2023 offer, was easy, the juices fermenting easily and if the titratable acidities are minimal, already pointing to those bitter freshnesses which mark the great vintages of our new climatic position. The following description of the wines will show you just how much the great terroirs are resisting the sky that has gone mad, disorganised by our persistent collective erring ways, this incoherence in the upkeep of Maia, our common home. . Why do we need to deploy AI, which will force us to double the world's electricity production by 2030, not to mention the enormous consumption of water to cool data centres, water that is in short supply for the most everyday uses... while the lucidity, common intelligence and simple common sense of the multitudes suddenly seem to be in short supply? For fake news to flourish, and for the damning lies spouted by political elites and the populism of social networks to be believed, voters/consumers must first be gullible, overwhelmed by propaganda and devoid of any analytical mind! This is the way the world is, and our secluded position, subject to the protection of the Queen of Nature, is a world tossed back and forth between irreconcilable imperatives, and all we have to do, happily, is close our eyes before a glass of wine, or even more simply, thread a row of vines in the evening after a tiring day, put a vine shoot back in order, thin out a passing bunch of grapes or humbly aerate a vine stock, to rediscover a powerful sense of what is essential: to pass on to those who will come all the gestures of the peasant rite and a small piece of our blue planet in better condition than we received it so little time ago ....
I hope you enjoy reading these notes. May the trust between us be nurtured by a benevolent and boundless salivation, may the past bottles, even when empty, continue to emit strong signals, powerful moments of emotion and memories of sharing, and may the wait for the delivery of the 2023 primeurs to which these lines are dedicated be exhilarating, full of poetry and a little of the springtime we've been deprived of!
Jean-Michel Deiss