Hi friend,
It's still August, and half of Europe's vineyards have already started picking.
Burgundy just recorded its earliest harvest in almost 500 years.
Champagne is on course for the earliest start in its history.
I picked grapes in Bordeaux myself twenty years ago — it was near the end of September then.
Some of those same vineyards started this year three weeks earlier than that.
We've written up why it's happening, and what it actually does to the wine.
Including the seven things a grower checks to know exactly when to pick — sugar with a refractometer, the taste of the seeds, even the colour of the stems.
No lab required, just decades of instinct and a handful of grapes.
This is exactly why Vivan exists — a direct line between you and the people actually growing the wine, season by season, no matter what the weather throws at them.
Greg
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