Chardonnay harvest - a cut from the vine

This is the second in a short series of videos in which My Man In Champagne follows the Champagne House Henriet-Bazin with producer Marie-Noëlle, and their 2011 Champagne harvest.

In this particular video we see the Chardonnay grapes being cut by hand and transferred first to plastic bucket (in the past this was a basket), then to a larger plastic crate.

Pardon the "Franglais" in this clip, but "raisins" in French is in fact "grapes" in English...perhaps the author of this article did not have enough champagne with breakfast to be able to differentiate his languages for the filming.

As you'll note in the video, the harvesters are hunched over as the grapes tend to grow more in between the bottom and the middle of the vines, thus bending over more to efficiently cut the grapes is necessary.

A very difficult and meticulous job to be done correctly, as these harvesters clearly are exhibiting!

Great grape quality for these 2011 Chardonnay grapes, the producer Marie-Noëlle confided to My Man In Champagne.

Look out perhaps in a few years time for a vintage 2011 Blanc de blancs...