At 5 a.m. this Friday, the Codognan cellar kicked off the 2024 harvest!

Les premiers raisins, du pinot destiné à faire des vins effervescents, ont été apportés à la cave de Codognan ce vendredi matin.

La cave gardoise de la Voie d’Héraclès à Codognan est la plus grosse coopérative de vin bio de France. Elle a reçu les premières grappes du millésime 2024 ce vendredi matin.

The first grapes of the 2024 harvest arrived at the Codognan cellar this Friday morning around 5 o'clock. Pinot intended to make sparkling wines and therefore requiring a moderate alcohol content. If last year the largest organic cooperative winery in France had started the harvest on August 12, the 2022 and 2020 vintages were also early. “In 2002, we kicked off on July 28. We can say that this year is the third earliest in the history of the winery, even if we are not at the Olympic Games and it is not a competition!", smiles Frédéric Saccoman, director of this large structure that harvests grapes from 70 cooperators.

65 different types of wine

While it is too early to assess the quality and quantities of the grapes, the season has been mixed: a rather dry winter, followed by a very rainy spring and the start of summer without a heatwave peak (before the one of these days). “In organic farming, winegrowers do not eradicate cryptogamic diseases such as mildew or powdery mildew but contain them. Only Bordeaux mixture, which acts through contact with the leaf, is authorized. Which required great vigilance and increased work in the vineyard this spring”, analyzes the director.

Since 2022, the Codognan winery has only vinified grapes grown using organic farming methods. Midi Libre – GIACOMO ITALIANO

Of the 1,250 hectares of vines, for a production of 100,000 hectolitres, two thirds are irrigated. For the remaining third, the spring rains will have been beneficial on the volumes. The cellar of the Voie d'Héraclès now offers 65 different types of wines from 33 grape varieties. 99% of the production is sold in bulk to the trade, the rest in its cellar, for direct sale. This expanded offer makes it possible to overcome the current disenchantment (or the less well-stocked wallets) of consumers for organic products and, always, to adapt to the market. “Sparkling wines are popular, we have a customer for these grape varieties and we are adapting ! Orange wine (a white wine vinified like red wine, with maceration, editor's note) is all the rage ? We are adapting and producing it. The key, in our opinion, is diversification."

The Vignerons d’Héraclès wine cellar sells wine in bulk to the trade, for 99% of its production. Midi Libre – GIACOMO ITALIANO

No problem, as in 2022, of overstocking in the vats, the 2023 vintage is well underway and the new harvest can be welcomed. On Monday, the cellar will welcome the first chardonnays (around 200 hectares) intended for white wines, then traditionally the fruits that will result in rosés will be processed, then those transformed into red wines. The harvest will extend until mid-September or beyond as the characteristics of the terroirs of the 70 contributors are varied. The Lattois or Grand-Mottois vineyards under maritime influence have different specificities from those of the Lédignan plain at the foot of the Cévennes. This is a high-precision job that began this Friday in the vineyards and in the cellar.

Why harvest at night ?

&In Codognan, the cellar is open from 5 a.m. to noon. The harvesting machines began to work at 3 a.m. this Friday, with the harvested Pinot plots being close to the cellar, in order to keep the grapes as fresh as possible. The current heatwave is disrupting this notion considerably, but the hotter the grape clusters are when they arrive, the more they will need to be cooled in the vat. The aromatic qualities of the fruit, which we hope to find in the wine, are in fact degraded as the temperature rises… This is the start of an intense period of night work for the winegrowers.

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