After a particularly mild winter, rain set in during the spring. Frequent and
often heavy showers accompanied the first few months of the vine cycle. As a
result, flowering occurred rather late and took longer than usual.

Fortunately the sun always returns, as was the case from mid-July, ushering
in a hot and particularly dry summer. These favourable conditions lasted until
the onset of autumn and mitigated the differences in maturity caused by the
long flowering period.

The weather then turned again, bringing a lot of rain just a few days before we
started picking the first Merlot parcels.

Anticipating the possibility of harvests in the rain, however, we had installed
a third sorting line.

Although no rain at all would have been ideal, careful sorting ensured that only
perfectly ripe grapes filled the vats.