After a wet fall (over 280 mm of rainfall in November), it is a late but vigorous winter that struck southern France in general and Catalonia in particular; The coldest in 40 years, with temperatures of -11°C for more than 10 days causing severe damage to vineyards, especially the oldest vines.
On April 10, the Agly Valley was hit by hail, seriously degrading many of the finest Grenache vines. As a consequence of these climatic phenomena, this area of Roussillon was marked by shifted budding within the same plot. This created a lot of difficulties during the harvest with very heterogeneous ripeness, sometimes on the same stock.
Most of the Syrah were great at harvest, rich and concentrated, while the best Grenache were harvested rather late, for some mid-October with extremely low yields.
2012 doesn’t have the usual depth of the great years in Catalonia, but finally the vintage is well-balanced, with greedy wines, aromatic and with a strong personality but unfortunately too scarce.
