A gorgeous Sunday here in Bordeaux, hot and sunny and perfect for walking along the quais in Chartrons (and for ripening the grapes; two weeks ago Jean Luc Thunevin of Chateau Valandraud said to me, on the first day of this September sunshine, 'if the weather stays like this for three weeks, we are going to be calling this the miracle vintage'. It has been uninterrupted sun ever since).
The organic market this morning was packed with people enjoying the sunshine, and several stands were selling the classic start-of-harvest drink - borru. This is a cloudy liquid that looks like organic cider, and tastes like sweet fruit juice, with a slight fizz. It's in fact unfermented, or partially fermented, grape juice from the new harvest. We had a glass that came from just crushed semillon grapes from the Graves, and it tasted excellent. Ideally, borru should be very sweet, but with good acidity - two things that bode well for a wine (as the sweetness, of course, is the sugar that will turn into alcohol during the rest of the vinification process).
