Here are some assorted comments on the 2006 harvest kindly supplied from some of Europe's wine regions:
James Lawther of Bordeaux: The harvest was more or less over when the gale struck earlier this week (winds of 165 km/hr on the coast, 90 km/hr inland) but some had to stop because of the power cuts. Pumps and cooling systems would have been temporarily affected. It's been a weird year anyhow – heat in July, cool August, humidity high, nearly 200mm of rain in September over eight days. So there's been everything in the vineyards – rot, raisined berries, unripe berries and then some quality fruit. Not sure that the Cabernet will have got to full ripeness. Perhaps best for Merlot and dry whites? At this stage a petit millésime. The gale headed east and I heard that Alsace had not only the wind but buckets of rain.
Charles Sydney, Loire Valley: After a few scares with storms coming in 
from the west mid September, we're pretty well there – as you'll see from this picture of a refractometer captioned by Philippe Vatan "vraiement la moyenne" (honestly the average). Muscadets are fine – nice degrees and a healthy crop where growers grassed through their vineyards... The dry Chenins are coming in, with good concentration on early-picked wines. Reds are great – virtually everything is now in, with degrees at harvest between 12.5 and 13.8... And the Sauvignons are great – the growers are saying 'maybe even better than last year' and they may not be wrong... So it may not be over yet.... but it's looking pretty good!
Klaus Peter Keller of Rheinhessen: 2006 harvest has just begun. It is quite a selective picking – but Hubacker, Morstein and Kirchspiel are still looking beautiful. Acidity now for the Rieslings now around 8 g/l – 9 g/l so that we can start next week probably. In style it could perhaps be close to 2002 or 1998. But it is too early to say…..
