A rare enough fact worth noting: the 2023 vintage, generous in quantity and balanced in quality, follows an equally magnificent and tasty 2022 vintage. Winter was once again mild, with little rain. At the end of winter, in February and March, conditions were cooler and more regular. As spring awakens, April was temperate, with no morning frosts or excessively low temperatures. May was cool and rainy, which helped to replenish the water table. This weather continued until mid-June, with warmer days and cool nights. These conditions were excellent for good vine and flower development. 

At the beginning of July, we had a small heat wave with the development of numerous thunderstorms throughout the month, fortunately without any consequences for the vines other than regular rainfall, which kept the soil cool and irrigated the vines. The heat returned at the beginning of August, with wide temperature variations between night and day, which was very favourable to the development of the vines. The stormy weather returned in mid-August in a much hotter environment, alternating with regular rainfall. From August 18th to 24th, we experienced a week of intense heat, with a peak of 37° on August 24th, accompanied by rain the following day.

These conditions pushed the vines to develop very rapidly. Paradoxically, a week before the harvest we also noticed that, depending on the plots, their load and their age, levels of ripeness were very disparate. We started harvesting on August 29th with a reduced team, to give extra ripening time to parcels that needed to wait. From September 2nd, we accelerated the harvest as the heat wave returned. 2023 is the first year that we stopped harvesting at 2pm at the Domaine. It is to be expected that we will have to adopt this tempo in subsequent years.