No later than yesterday, a wine-grower in the heart of the Loire Valley posted on his Facebook page: “Just 10 days ago I struggled to hide my anxiety; today my heart is filled with joy. It is so lovely. We can see grapes at every stage from the onset of concentration through to raisins (through raisining) and preserves (through the noble rot process). Assuredly 2015 will be a vintage that will count in the life of the estate.” For Alexandre Monmousseau of Chateau Gaudrelle, as for thousands of other wine-growers, 2015 is a wonderful year. Exceptionally, Europe is of the same mind as from north to south voices are being raised in praise of these oh so wonderful grapes!
In Portugal they are expecting an exceptional, if not historic, year. In the Douro as in Alentejo it is as yet a memorable year. In the Vinho Verde region some are talking of the “vintage of the century”. In the Douro they say figs are a good barometer for the grape harvest; last year the figs were large and abundant but were not very sweet and fell with the first rains. This year there are fewer figs and they are drier but they taste deliciously sweet. It is an excellent sign for the wines! According to Dirk Niepoort, 2015 will be “better than 2011”.
Let’s head to Italy! From Tuscany to Lombardy, from Trentino Alto Adige to Sicily, from Piedmont to Veneto, all wine-growing regions without exception are agreed; 2015 is a year of excellent quality. And the quantity is up in the majority of Italian wine regions too thanks to a temperate spring and a hot summer while the quality is excellent everywhere. The talk is already of a vintage that will stay in the annals even though some regions have not yet finished their harvest. “A five star harvest,” says Lamberto Frescobaldi, President of the Tuscan Marchesi de Frescobaldi vineyards.
Spain is keeping up with the pace too. After a heat wave summer all the Spanish wine-growing regions are announcing a major year for 2015. While the harvests are not yet over throughout the land, it all points to a very fine 2015. “A very good year in terms of quantity and quality,” declared the President of the Rioja Control Board, José María Daroca. Lastly in Germany too the outlook for 2015 is excellent; the grapes are of a fine quality, very concentrated, auguring for a superb 2015 vintage.
“Healthy, healthy, healthy is the grape” the wine-growers have been telling me over and over and over again since August when I began touring the vineyards around Europe. In the wine world it is rare for a vintage to achieve such unanimity as that. It is rare even for a year to achieve unanimity within one country – just take France, it is not easy to please Burgundy and Bordeaux, the Loire and the Rhone – so unanimity right across Europe is something of a miracle. In 2015 the European miracle has indeed occurred which makes this vintage exceptional already. But to that we must add a second exceptional event: legendary wines will be born out of this vintage, songs of praise that a wine-grower rarely sees in a life time. Numerous prestigious estates are today convinced they possess an extraordinary raw material with which they will create one of the greatest wines of their history – beautiful bottles that will be drunk in 50 years’ time to celebrate this 200% exceptional vintage. In 2015 it’s good to know that Europe can at least agree on wine isn’t it?
(*Since 2003, Guillaume Jourdan has been advising more than 200 prestigious wine estates for their international marketing & communication strategy incl. Chapoutier, Hugel, Dr Loosen, Famille Perrin, Cos d’Estournel, Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie’s Miraval…Write to info@vitabella.fr)
