By Mireia Torres and Montse Escoté, Jean Leon winemakers
With the last vats finishing their fermentations, we can consider the 2024 harvest to be over. Although the work in the winery continues, the time has come to evaluate the effort made.
This year has been very different from previous years. It started out as a dry year, but in mid-May the rain began to fall and, after a lull in the summer, they returned during the harvest.
2024 was a year of fairly moderate temperatures and, although they were high at the end of July and beginning of August, they were far from the values of the last three years. In fact, they have been very different, since at the end of August and beginning of September temperatures were low for the time of year, with a strong contrast between day and night temperatures. This helped us to achieve an optimal ripening of the grapes and a good preservation of their aromas.
In general, the 2024 harvest was a little later and a little longer than usual in recent years, with a total of 58 days from the beginning.
We started the harvest of our estates with the white varieties, in our case with the chardonnay, destined to our Vinya Gigi Chardonnay and the chardonnay of the 3055 range.
Secondly, it was the turn of the pinot noir variety, destined to our young and delicate 3055 rosé and, later, the red grenache, to complete its blending.
In mid-September it was the turn of the white forcada variety, an ancestral variety that has been recovered and is the protagonist of a new project that we will be revealing to you little by little. We also continued with the Merlot destined for the Vinya Palau Merlot Qualified Single Vineyard Wine and the youngest red 3055 Petit Verdot – Merlot. And then we continued with another ancestral variety, the moneu.
The last week of September saw the entry of the Petit Verdot variety, also destined for our 3055 range of reds, followed by the Cabernet Sauvignon variety, our most emblematic red variety, destined for our most special Qualified Single Vineyard Wines: Vinya Le Havre and the Gran Reserva Vinya La Scala.
At the beginning of October, we finished the harvest of the white varieties with the old-vine, goblet-grown xarel.lo. A later ripening variety that is iconic in the Penedès.
And finally, we finish the 2024 vintage with our Cabernet Franc for Vinya Le Havre, and with one of Jean Leon’s oldest plots, the La Scala plot, whose grapes are destined exclusively for our Gran Reserva wine.
In general, we can describe this harvest as atypical, as it has been a little longer than usual and quite rainy, for what we are used to. However, the moderate weather played an important role in the good and optimal ripening of the grapes.
And although in some plots the yields have been somewhat lower than last year, the rainfall since May gives us optimism for next year.
We are sure that a great harvest 2024 awaits us!
