We started our harvest second week of September, in our youngest vineyards , picking the grapes destinated to our rosé wine. Now we are working on the real harvest. This year we had a fabulous summer, very dry, sunny and warm but not extreme high temperatures. Except for 2 weeks in July we never exceeded the 35° Celsius even during midday. During the nights the temperatures diminished considerably. Almost no rain at all since June 20. However, fortunately we had a lot of rain in Spring and first part of June and the soils were very wet to front the summer. In fact, despite the dry summer, so far in the year we had 600mm of rain considering our year average is about 800mm, it shows we had a lot of rain from January to June and explains the good resistance of the vines. Some light rains in the second week of September , followed by sunny, warm and windy days, permitted to fill the best grapes ripening. Due to the dry season the grapes are very healthy, it is a phenomenal vintage for a quality point of view. Not an important harvest in term of weight (in the Chianti Classico presently we do not irrigate). We delayed a little bit merlot grapes harvest (rich polyphenolic potential when seeds were still green, merlot ripening took longer than usual), habitually harvested before to start picking sangiovese grapes (80% of our production) . Now we are picking both of them at the same time…a big work, excitement and ferment among workers in the vineyards as well as in the cellar!
