Bordeaux is as hot as I can remember …

… the cicadas are going frantic, their Latin rhythms, shaking their tiny maraccas, they are now deafening out in the noonday sun. Humans, apart the odd – very odd – mad Englishman, are lying low inside dark, shuttered houses. Most have been up since five when outside work is possible.

The vines, though, are lapping up the intense sunshine. Grapes are swelling; almost as you watch.Lovely stuff.

But … isn't that just typical? Those XXXXXXs are at it again!!!!

Someone has again been spreading rumours of a Bordeaux vintage disaster. Someone seems to do that every year now. Who is it? The Burgundians? The Australians? Who is always dissing Bordeaux … every damn summer?

Hailstorms, this time.

Yes, we've had hailstorms. EVERY hot summer we get hail. Golf ball-sized hail that shreds every green thing growing, including vines; the new young shoots. Though not the tough, old brown stumps. 

What some don't understand is hail like this will hit an area no bigger than … imagine something shaped like a hundred or two hundred metres of motorway. Afterwards, it looks like God went through with a giant Flymo. But it’s only a tiny fraction of the total vine area. Tough, if it’s your tiny area. But usually it isn't, and even if you are right next door your vines will be quite untouched.

Our La Clarière vineyard was only once hit, in part, in 1991. It wasn't significant, as we'd already been hit by frost and had very few bunches left anyway. But that's another story.

So really the situation here is 'Great-So-Far' with just a few tiny patches where it’s 'wipe-out'.

I'm not saying this will be a Great Vintage. There are two months or more to go and...

"Vintage Is Never Over Until The Gros Mansengs! "

I know I used that one last year. But. I make no excuses for repeating the best wine joke I ever made. (Not a wine expert? Gros Manseng is a grape variety grown in a late-ripening region near here).

Jancis … something for the next edition of your Vine Varieties book?  

Much better than "Keep Calm and Carignan", anyway.

Back to weather.

And Vintages.

Lége Cap Ferret

Wise old greybeards here, do say that when ‘The Great and Good of the Bordeaux Wine Trade' are seen frolicking in great shoals off their beach houses at Cap Ferret, it is going to be a good 'un. 

We went over to Le Cap yesterday. They are definitely frolicking! 

We went to do one of the best things you traditionally do in this area on hot days: go to 'Le Bassin'.

A pinnace

You go get one of the oyster farmers to take you out in his old pinnace to where his oysters lie fattening, deep in the salty waters of the  'Bassin' d' Arcachon'; to swim with them, to walk, racing the tide on the Isle des Oiseaux. Then you go to eat too many fresh-landed oysters in his pretty shack-village.

The oyster village

Finish off the day in the bar of the enormous – and enormously popular – 'C(o)orniche' restaurant, high up on the Great Dune of Pilat looking out over the boats on the wide and glittering Atlantic … and just watch the sun set.