The Abeille-Fabre Family share with us their insights from the 2015 harvest at Château Mont-Redon, which reaches its end today, somewhat earlier than expected.
“2015 has been a quite easy year on the climatic point of
view all along the vegetative cycle, featuring a dry year with a hot summer
marked by temperatures exceeding 40°C, thus accelerating the maturities and
dropping acidity. This lasted until the beginning of September. We have had a
crop with rarely equaled, healthy conditions, but experienced again a
gap between alcoholic maturity and the phenolic one, therefore we had to wait quite a while in order to meet our expectations."
"We started our harvest with the white grape
varieties, immediately followed by the syrahs. Some rains, but with no harmful
consequences, have happened between the crop of our precious varieties and
the grenaches. At the opposite, these rains have had a beneficial action by
releasing the balances which had been stopped by drought and very high
temperatures, thus allowing us to pick up our grenaches and mourvedres in ideal
conditions, with a light and good mistral wind.
The first white and rosé wines are not yet finished,
but we expect very beautiful results with an attractive and intense aromatic
nose. For the reds, it is quite early to be accurate but we can already tell
that we will get a very successful vintage, with deep color and full-bodied
wines. The volumes should at last get close to the outputs of the different
appellations.
In Cotes de Provence, at Chateau Riotor, we have had the
same climatic conditions as in Mont-Redon, with rains of the end of
August/beginning of September, followed by drought. This may have negative consequences on volumes. To sum up, the wines have a
very nice color and an intense fruit profile but we blame a deficit in
quantity.”