The weather is fine, but the sky is changeable. A high-altitude wind chases huge clouds across the sky and the light changes suddenly from bright to dark. It is the 13th of May today, the last Ice Saint’s day (see note ), and there is a lot of movement in the sky.

Christophe-Jean, like all wine-makers, watches Nature carefully. His profession means that he has to watch out for the signs sent by Nature when deciding when to carry out work in the vineyard. We are in his house on his wine estate, He makes me a coffee and takes out the notebook in which for many years he has been recording flowering dates, the date on which he sees the first swallows, and the dates of hailstorms and heat-waves. Reading from his notes, he can tell me that this year plums were in flower on 1st April precisely and that swallows arrived on the 9th exactly. As regards vines, he can tell me that on 7th April the Chardonnay varieties budded and on the 15th of the same month they had already sprouted five beautiful leaves.

From the walls of his house, his estate stretches out a long way into the distance, towards Chagny. We go out and walk through the first rows of vines. He shows me hundred-year-old vines – this is where vines were replanted after the phylloxera epidemic in the first decade of the last century. An American rootstock was left in the middle of a row as a reminder. It is already flowering, before the other vines have begun doing so. Further along the row, Christophe has me smell a Chardonnay flower and I can smell acacia honey, a flavour that is also present in the wine he produces.

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