Last week, hailstones fell on many plots in Rully and in the surrounding areas. Only a very few areas were spared, as if by miracle. Jean-Claude invited me to go on a tour of his Champ Cloux vineyard, to examine the condition of the grapes after the bombardment from the sky. I was surprised to see how well the grapes had resisted. I thought they would be in tatters. While some berries at the tops of bunches had indeed burst, the others were fine. Nature is kind.

But Jean-Claude is worried about something. He's fretting about harvesting the grapes at the best possible time. There is a whole art to this, to picking grapes when they are at their optimum level of ripeness. Jean-Claude has already checked potential alcohol levels using a refractometer and – to refine the analysis – he has sent a sample taken from the whole plot to a wine laboratory.

In 2004, in a similar situation, two weeks of warm dry wind saved a harvest that was initially expected to be very problematical. But even that year all the wine-makers had decided – as a precautionary measure – to pick the bunches that had been damaged by hail as quickly as possible.

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