By now with incredible frequency, when attempting to sum up the year one inexorably speaks of exceptional events and anomalies, we would rather not adapt to this realisation that often also becomes an alibi, and we continue to analyse the weather patterns and the response of the vineyards to grow our mutual wealth of experience and thus always be able to best address these cases, which we hope will still remain rare.
2014 will certainly go down in history for its bizarre anomalies and frequent excesses.
The winter of 2013-2014 brought little snow and much rain, further enriching the water table which was already plentiful from the previous season. These weather events, associated in an abnormal manner to mild winter temperatures led to very early budding. The experimental station of Tebano (Faenza, RA) detected early budding peaks which in a Trebbiano field was recorded at 25 days early with respect to the average of the last 10 years. This event represents the first great anomaly as never before in the past did you see a season that starts early after such a wet winter, since early budding is generally associated to dry winters. All this led to some difficulties in completing pruning operations on time and especially to a strong pressure by pathogens (which easily got through the winter), and simultaneously a strong vegetative luxuriance poorly supported by roots slowed down in their activities by the excesses of water in the soil (with cold and sometimes asphyxiated soils) resulting in yellowing leaves.
The spring and summer course especially from flowering onwards saw a decrease in the initial early vegetation, because of the frequent rains and low thermal peaks.
Like few times so intensely in the past, the vineyard needed a lot of care to counter fungal parasites (downy mildew, powdery mildew and botrytis proved all very virulent) and to better manage the canopy. Too bad that in this vintage the negative economic environment would have suggested some economies also in vineyard management and more time spent selling rather than in the vineyard, but none of this was possible and indeed only round-the-clock presence in the vineyard proved successful at the end of the season.
The veraison occurred slightly early by 3-5 days compared to the historical average, effectively cancelling out almost completely the early start of the season.
Ripening of the grapes took place in fairly critical conditions characterised by low temperatures (especially the highs), little sunshine (with sun veiled by much humidity) and the extremely abundant rains (with the wettest July in the last 66 years and the disastrous storms of September 21 on both sides of the Tuscan-Romagna Apennines and rainfall intensity with similar precedents only in 1962).
In fact the vineyards reached the harvest with obvious difficulty to accumulate sugar and colour; losing the early start of the season and going from early to a few days late with harvesting guided not so much by the ripening of the grapes as by the need to protect their health, the thickness of the skins and the drop (often abnormal) in acidity.
Among the good news one should record an aromaticness of red grapes altogether more accomplished than that of 2013 (more vegetation) and a framework which might have been more catastrophic if the season had not started early and with a load of grapes still below the vintage 2013.
In the cellar one had to accommodate the vintage striving to separate the rare batches of the best grapes and processing with the utmost caution the extremely delicate skins and fragile musts and sensitive to oxygen.
The cornerstones of this season and the harvest were the vegetative balance, wisdom in nutrition, the speed in the defence, the militancy in the vineyard and the deep knowledge of one’s grapes in the countryside and in the cellar. All eternally valuable concepts which, however, should never be forgotten.
On our side the hope of being able to enjoy and narrate more regular and deeper vintages

Sant’Agata 01/01/2015

Remigio Bordini                                                                                                                                             Francesco Bordini