The 2004 Growing Season

Vineyards: 2004 Growing season

The 2004 growing season has been quite different to the extraordinary year in 2003.

After a wet and relatively cool spring, the summer has been dry and hot during the day, cool at night.  Perfect growing conditions for vines!  The first week of August however brought storms and heavy rain.  Luckily the storms that have affected the micro-region around Domaine de Sainte Rose have not included hail.  In other parts of the Herault region there have been hail storms, which have seriously damaged the fruit on the vines.

The remainder of August was surprisingly cool and has undoubtedly pushed out maturity, which is good in terms of concentrating flavours, however bad in terms of potential viticultural risk i.e. weather and disease. We started our harvest with the Chardonnay on 1st of September (2002: 27th August and 2003: 13th August).

Skies on our opening night 1st September 2004.

The 2004 Vintage

The 2004 vintage commenced on the 1st of September.

1. 2004 Chardonnay harvest began on 1st of September.

2. 2004 Grenache harvest began on 9th of September.

3. 2004 Roussanne was harvested on 20th of September.

4. 2004 Merlot was harvested on 21st of September.

5. 2004 Syrah was harvested on 23rd of September.

6. 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon was harvested on 25th of September.

Domaine Sainte Rose uses a combination of machine and hand-picking to harvest the grapes.