News from the Vineyard

June 29
by Raj Vaidya

What’s happening in the vineyards in Aÿ?

We’ve spent the last few days in Aÿ, a Grand Cru village renowned for its Pinot Noir at the crossroads of the Vallée de la Marne, Montagne de Reims and the Côte des Blancs. The flowering period is winding down, and a fair bit of unevenness between the stage of fruit set amongst vineyards is noticeable.

I wanted to highlight two interesting examples.

First, a prime example of biodynamic farming with Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon of Louis Roederer. He took us to their vineyard in Aÿ and it has exceptional and even ripening. Jean-Baptiste explains that this is due to the vertical training of these vines (as opposed to the traditional ‘Cordon’, or long lateral cane method). Also, biodynamic farming has made it more consistent in its flowering and thereby its fruit set. The fruit produced from these vines always goes into Roederer’s Cristal Rosé bottling.

The second is a rare example of ungrafted vines in Bollinger’s Clos Saint Jacques, also in Aÿ, it is a walled vineyard within the village. This is unique as it is made up of own-rooted or ungrafted vines, and this causes the flowering and subsequent fruit set to be somewhat precocious. The vines tend to have sap running through them earlier than grafted vines do, and so the fruit set tends to be nearly a week ahead of vineyards elsewhere in the village. These vines partially make up the ungrafted cuvée at Bollinger’s known as Vieilles Vignes Françaises.