The 2021 Vintage

We started from a mild winter with a few cold days in January, to arrive at very hot days (for the period) at the end of February. The average of 20 °C was reached in the last week of February, only to have a small decline during the first two weeks of March to rise and also touch the peak of 25 °C on March 31st.
All these sunny and dry days, alternating with a few days of rain, triggered the awakening of the plant, leading to the appearance of the first shoots as early as mid-March on the earliest and most exposed varieties. In the mornings of 7/8 April, the minimum temperatures stood at -5 ° and -7 °. This led to the burning of the newly emitted shoots from the plant. The frost affected a good 30% of the production, the brown buds also suffered (ie those that had not yet released the sprout) going to necrotize the internal lymph. At these low temperatures, other colder days followed, which undoubtedly slowed down the whole phenological phase of budding. Each plot reacted in its own way: the oldest and belatedly pruned vines did not suffer any damage and their path was fairly regular, the others suffered in addition to the frost a strong slowdown in the growth of the shoots. Fortunately, the basal buds that produced the shoot developed, some with the fruit and some without, but this was very important to have the buds for the 2022 winter pruning.
From mid-May onwards, temperatures rose to meet a hot and dry summer. The average maximum temperature from May 1st to August 31st was 31.5 ° with a total of 92 mm of water. As can be seen, it was a very hot year with very little and almost no water. But our plants reacted well, algae were used as biostimulants for the plant to prevent it from suffering and bring the bunches to maturity. At the level of diseases, there were no symptoms present, obviously without the rains and high temperatures, even the pathogens did not have the opportunity to attack the plants. The clusters reached full maturity, there were no significant symptoms of withering, something appeared on the varieties such as merlot with smaller berry, but on average the cluster appeared healthy with a consistent and crunchy skin and soft tannins.
The harvest, in terms of timing, was in line with the other vintages, slightly earlier but not so much. Fermentations took place regularly, there were no large peaks in alcohol concentration, unlike 2017, the alcohol is lower and above all it has kept acidity very well on both the white and red grape varieties.