Winter 2024 was not a very cold one and unfortunately without snow. This lead to the budding of the vines started earlier than in previous years. Some rain in Spring helped face the early summer months.

We were very careful during the flowering in June, remembering how devastating it was in 2023 and fearing to find any spore of mildew. But the weather helped us in this sense, with a dry June and July followed by rains in August that led our plants to reach a good ripening.
 
The harvest started on September 14th with the red grapes: a week earlier than in previous years. We started from the lowest vines, continuing in elevation. It was the hottest harvest we've ever had, reaching up to 30 Celsius and leading to the driest harvest we have seen in all my years on Etna. The ripening was very similar between one vineyard to another: we harvested the grapes in Nave, our highest vineyard on October 4th, 15 days earlier than usual, finishing the harvest in just 20 days.
 
We can be satisfied with the production this year, with intense, deep reds. By incorporating a new vineyard planted in 2021, the Versante Nord Bianco will have a lower percentage of Minnella and more Carricante. We think that this will help bring more acidity to the wine. 
 
In 2024, we were able to produce the totality of our cuvées, unlike in 2023 where we only produced Versante Nord Rosso and the two whites .

Here is what we can say about the 2024 vintage:

It was a bit of a complicated year...

Frost was extremely localized but it still did its damage on a part of the Pain Perdu parcels, impacting our yields by about 20%.

It was a very cool summer, meaning we didn't have much respite from constant mildew pressure. 

Our September -the critical month before harvest- was also quite rainy, forcing us to manually strip off leaves from both sides on the vines to help accelerate the grapes' extremely slow maturation. 

Harvest itself was quite nice, it was the inauguration of our "new" very old vertical press for the whites and, for the first time, the reds as well. 

Yields are lower than 2023 but the juices are fresh with lower alcohol than recent vintages. 

Here are some photos: 

“2022 leaves us with the impression that we've seen what the future holds in terms of climate change: spring frost, lack of rain, summer heat.”

I wrote this for the 2022 harvest report. I was so wrong. So either I’m a total fool or the climate is changing and unpredictable. Most likely both.

2024 was super rainy and it still is as I’m writing this on December 11th. It’s been raining for pretty much a year here. So we had to adapt our work in the vineyard, no plowing, just cutting the grass, a lot of spraying against mildew. But at the end we had a reasonably good harvest. And we realize how lucky we were this year compared to a lot of other regions of France.

We hired a large team of young and motivated Europeans so the harvest was fast, finished in 3 weeks which is very comfortable compared to some vintages where it seems to last forever.

Yields and maturity were almost normal. The juices are fermenting very slowly in our brand new cellar but we stay patient. You can expect bright acidity and the whole range to be produced this vintage.

2024 was marked by a record amount of rainfall in France and Chinon was not spared. After avoiding any issues with frost, we were under intense mildew pressure from early May through mid-August. We spent all Spring and Summer fighting against this illness, which gnawed at the leaves and many grapes in certain parcels. 

We were hoping for an Indian summer that never came: September was just as rainy and forced us to push back our harvest start date to October. We then hoped that this extra time would give the grapes more time to concentrate in sugars but this remained fairly limited. 

Despite the weather conditions, the Cabernet Franc resisted fairly well but mildew still severely reduced our crop to about 30hl/h. With the Chenin, itself a thin-skinned variety, we had to find very short windows to pick so that the grapes not be diluted from water. 

The 2024 reds have nice color and structure, clocking in between 11.5 and 12.5 and without any agressive green notes. It's a little early to tell, but 2024 seems very promising and already superior to 2023, another vintage marked by heavy rain.  

After a dramatic 2023,  we were very worried about the seasonal trends we started seeing in 2024. The winter was hot and dry and caused early budding and flowering. Spring was normal with the right amount of rain. The vines were beautiful and full of grapes. This is perhaps due to the fact that last year the plants had practically no production in 2023 and had accumulated reserves for the following year.

Throughout the spring we let cover crops grow vigorously: broad beans, mustard, barley and vetch accompanied the vegetative push of the vines. July and August were extremely hot and above all completely without rain. Some areas of the vineyards suffered and there we had to harvest very early because the grapes were burning. But more generally, the stress blocked the ripening of the grapes: a year that seemed very precocious in the end was one of the slowest in recent years. With the beginning of September very nice rains arrived that helped plump up the grapes.

It was a joyful harvest. We harvested a lot of grapes, very healthy and with excellent acidity. Alcohol this year was lower than usual. We will have light and fresh wines, very easy to drink but the Crus will be also complex wines thanks to the beautiful acidity that will guarantee excellent evolution over time. Now we are waiting for the oxidation-reduction processes related to the fine lees to enrich the wines during the winter.

Here is a quick recap of this "exceptional" vintage.

-A lot of cumulative rainfall in the 2023/2024 winter that was so intense it did not permit us to finish planting our cover crops. The ones we did plant had to get ripped out as they had rotted in the soil. 

- We had a spring frost in mid-April that destroyed between 1/4 to 1/3rd of the buds depending on the parcels.

-Over 300mm of rain in May and June which led to a simultaneous coulure and agressive attack of mildew on the buds. Even though coulure seemed to be responsible for the worst of the damage, mildew continued destroying buds all the way to veraison in mid-August. In total we did 14 treatments, four of which were on foot because the tractors couldn't get into the vines. 

-We had a two week break with no rain in the summer but it started up again in late August and continued through September. This led to grey rot during harvest, forcing us to leave many bunches on the floor during harvest. It also forced us to finish our harvest as quickly as possible in order to lose the minimum amount of grapes, which were already on the verge of dilution. It is the first time in our history that we did a double pass selection of the grapes, first in the vines and again in the cellar. 

In the end we brought in about 1/4 of a crop partially compensated by purchased fruit since our cellar was less than half full. The wines are extremely light (from 10 to 12.5%) but still precise and free of flaws. The only satisfaction of this vintage was the vinifications, which went very smoothly thanks to very high acidities and low alcoholic potential. It was also a first for us: the lowest levels of volatile acidity in the history of the estate!

2024 in Fabbrica di San Martino has been a classical year. By classical I mean such as those of 15 years ago. We almost forgot about them.

Lots of rain during the spring and until the end of June but we started with the treatments at the right moment and were lucky not to suffer much from mildew. The summer was hot, but the plants did have good water reserves.

At the end of August, we started to harvest some reds but had to stop as most of the others were not ready, with acidities too high and sugars too low. So, we actually started on the 27th of August and finished on the 16th of September! A super long harvest which was quite tricky to manage the harvest team: small selections of plots and long waiting times.

In the end however we had unexpected quantity and quality. Grapes were healthy and plump. Fermentations were fast with no stops or troubles. The alcohol content in the musts was low but taste and aromas are beautiful.

I think we can resume 2024 with: we can’t wait for 2025!

After 2017, 2021 and 2022, we have “again” gone through a severe episode of April frost, with negative temperatures for five nights. 100% of the vines that produce Cerdon was affected!

In April, we had not finished pruning the Gamay and because of the frost, had decided to leave two canes instead of the one we usually leave. This decision did help us limit some of the damage because we were able to get some secondary growth, which of course were lesser and smaller bunches. The May that followed was very cold and rainy, delaying any revived vigor in the vines. By the end of the month, some of the vegetation hadn’t grown back at all and you could still visibly see the frost damage.

The rain continued through mid-July, and then we finally had a beautiful August. We’d originally planned to start picking on September 16th, but the previous week was cold and very rainy, delaying the maturity of the grapes. In the end we began on September 20th to end on the 29th with a great team of about 25 pickers from all over France.

In total, we lost about 65% of our crop! The sector of Rivelle (the large parcel with a vue on the village of Cerdon) was the area that suffered the least from frost, helping us to actually bring in some Poulsard: in all our other Poulsard parcels we averaged 5hl/h!!!!

If this wasn’t enough, we had another major change in 2024. Due to the density of our vines, following a restructuration of our surface to ensure we can work in the best way possible, we lost 1.4 hectares in the designated zone for Bugey Cerdon. The wines from these parcels will now bear the IGP Côteau de l’Ain designation. We’ve decided to make an ancestral bubble from this land from Gamay (Au Commencement) and a tiny cuvée of still red Poulsard (Cuvée Meÿthe).

2024 was a particular year and very much as a result of three consecutive years of drought. At this point our climate feels like a desert, leading to extremely low yields of 7hl/h, representing about 70% of losses from a normal crop. We were "saved" by rains in March and April (cue the shouts of praise and joy!) that helped the vegetation regain some vigor and provide excellent quality in what was picked. 

The vintage was a challenge but ultimately a benediction for us. 2023 was the first year in our brand new cellar, so in 2024 we'd had a year to execute the changes and tweaks we'd been waiting for so long, leading to a much more personal touch. The entire family is now directly implicated in every aspect of production, from the work in the vines to the cellar. 

The blends and cuvées were worked with more precision and to our personal affinities and desires, all while adapting to the quality and the quantity of the grapes harvested on our two terroirs (Collioure and Saint André). The new proximity of the cellar permits more control in each step of the vinification, giving us wines that are more precise, balanced and a better reflection of their environment and identity. 

Year after year the vine's growing cycle is getting shorter due to high summer temperatures (reaching up to 115°F) and low rainfall (about 150 mm/year). Our vineyards are not irrigated but I think irrigation will become necessary if things continue this way! Strangely enough, the younger vineyards have coped better with the stress than the older ones, and I think this made me realize that within a farm there should always be a balance between young, mid-life and old vines!

It is inexplicable that the Catarratto produced more than 2023, while the Nero d'Avola was down about 30 percent. The wines always have a certain freshness, and I really don't understand where it comes from this year, as they are slightly higher in alcohol. 

A big hug.

Stefania e Turi