2003

A vintage easy to describe and that will go down in history for its record-breaking, year-long heat wave. Thanks to precipitation accumulated in 2002 (a notoriously wet year), it got off to an early start. The first of at least 3 significant African heat waves arrived at the beginning of May, bringing exceptionally high temperatures (both daytime and night), as well as high humidity, which was relieved only occasionally by very brief, light showers. The most important wave, during the first 2 weeks of August, accelerated ripening enough that it meant, in some cases, white varieties had to be picked immediately after the 15th of the month, with the entire harvest in by the 25th of September. The vintage was also characterized by numerous cases of sunburnt fruit and widespread withering on the vine.

The 2003 vintage was marked by continuously stable, sunny conditions and by scarce rains, a combination of factors that resulted in temperatures rising above this area’s historical maximums and holding up for and an exceptionally long period. When comparing the data in our possession, it can be noticed that the summation of temperatures higher than 10°C between January and the end of August reached 1740°C, compared to the 1392°C of the same period in 2002.
In 1997, one of the hottest vintages of the twentieth century, we can observe that the temperature summation, at the end of August, reached 1400°C. Therefore, at the end of August 2003, the summation of heat that is useful for the plants was similar to what was recorded at the end of September 1997 and at the end of October 2002.
From a physiological point of view, the vintage began later than the usual trends, with buds opening about 15 days late, but, after a short time, due to the rise of the temperatures, the blossoming occurred at the end of May just as it did in the previous warm years. Further confirmation to this 15-day delay in the vegetative cycle of the vines came with the the veraison phase which, with early-ripeners like Dolcetto, began in the first half of July and, for late-ripeners like Nebbiolo, relatively closer in time, at the end of July.
In regards to rainfall, the vintage was quite stingy, reaching only 265 mm of rain by the end of August as opposed to the 830 mm in 2002, and 390 mm in 1997 by the same date.
Although the weather was still fine at the beginning of September, there was a general sharp drop in temperatures, interspersed with some timely, though limited rains.
The Dolcetto vintage was over by the middle of September, and early winery data guaranteed wines of great potential, with excellent levels of alcohol, balanced acidity, and very intense colour.