Obtaining grapes that are ripe enough presupposes a perfect control of the phyto-sanitary condition of the vineyard. During the last thirty years, the quality of treatment products, their efficiency and their ease of use, hasn’t stopped improving. The power and precision of the new spraying equipment have also contributed a great deal to this success.

Mildew, powdery mildew, black-rot, excoriation, almost all fungal diseases, with the notable exception of the wood diseases, esca and eutypiose, that particularly affect the Cabernet Sauvignon variety, are now well controlled. Powdery mildew is controlled by sulphur and mildew by spraying copper sulphate, the famous “Bordeaux mixture”.

The case of grey rot (Botrytis cinerea) is certainly more delicate, but the low instance of vigour in our vines and their traditional behaviour create rather unfavourable conditions for the development of this disease.

The problem presented by parasites, insects and spiders is complex in a different way. In the nineteen eighties we questioned all of our vineyard protection policy with the objective of finding an alternative method to chemicals to preserve the balance of the spider and insect populations. After a few years of work, we were able to stabilise the situation. Since then, all these populations cohabit and autoregulate themselves without us having to take any action, or only in an organic way. At the end of the nineteen nineties, sexual confusion was developed in order to stop the grape worms reproducing. Not one insecticide is now used in our vineyards.

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Protection against frost

Among all the risks that are the farmers’ lot in life, frost and hail are the two most terrible and unfair. In just a few minutes they can reduce to nothing a whole year, or even several years’ efforts. But by some sort of miracle, the great terroirs more often than not, escape these misfortunes. Hail is almost unknown at Château Margaux.

Why ? We really don’t know. On the one hand, if frost misses the greater part of our vineyard, it’s thanks to its particular situation, close to the river where the thermal inertia protects its surroundings from the cold and is sufficiently elevated to escape the accumulation of masses of icy air. Every rule has its exceptions… our white plot presents such a sensitivity to spring frosts that we decided, as of 1983, to install an anti-frost system. The principle is simple: we spray the vines with water for as long as the frost lasts, generally until dawn. The heat produced by the formation of ice enables the maintenance of the temperature above the limit below which the vegetation is destroyed. Before starting the sprinklers, we have to take into account the temperature, the wind and the air humidity, and all this at three o’clock in the morning! When the decision has been taken, in spite of fatigue, it’s a huge consolation to save the harvest and to be present at the fairy-like show given by the ice as it forms around the buds.

In the vineyard

Pruning

Planting

Ploughing

Protection of the vines

Thinnings

Trellising

Ripening

Manure

Harvest

Gerbaude