Early harvest, great vintage?

The harvest promises to be particularly early in 2015, in Burgundy as in the other wine regions of France. In Burgundy they should begin at the beginning of September, or even at the end of August for the south of the region and the harvest of Crémants. Is it a guarantee of quality? Yes, without a doubt: all the great vintages have matured early: 2003, 2005, 2009….Without wanting to be too optimistic, winegrowers hope for an exceptional vintage, everything is for the moment together: maturity, healthy grapes, little disease …. all this thanks to a very correct spring and especially almost 7 weeks in a row in full sun and without water, so much so that the rare rains of early August were experienced as a blessing: the vine does not require much water, but there it was still beginning to stress, with the consequence in particular of a limitation of the development of the size of the grape berries … and therefore harvest quantities revised downwards. So everything looks good: very beautiful natural degrees, healthy grapes, no hail … but the number of parameters that make it possible to make the big years is immense, it is a fragile balance and it is necessary to wait several months after the harvest to get a real idea of the quality of the wine. And the winegrowers of Burgundy have experienced enough hard blows not to sell the skin of the grapes before having harvested it… and therefore wait for the end of the harvest and especially the first results of analysis to risk the first predictions for this (big?) vintage 2015 !