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French winemakers are expected to produce nearly a third less wine this year than usual, after their vineyards were hit by frosts, inclement weather and disease in the spring and summer.
The country’s wine production is expected to fall 29% this year from 2020, to its lowest level in decades, according to the French Ministry of Agriculture.
Almost all of France’s wine regions – including Bordeaux, Champagne and Languedoc-Roussillon – were hit by unusual spring frosts, which damaged the grapes growing on the vine which had grown during a heat wave. However, some areas were more affected than others.
Production in Champagne, which includes its eponymous sparkling wine, is expected to drop 36% from last year, after frosts followed by heavy summer rains that brought down the late blight fungus, a disease that causes grapes to dry out and leaves. .
The Bourgogne-Beaujolais region has suffered serious damage from frost, hail and disease, and its total production is expected to fall by almost half compared to 2020.
However, French wine drinkers can breathe a sign of relief that the poor harvest of 2021 is not expected to impact the supply of the wine market, thanks to reserves from previous years.
“The spring frosts have reduced a good part of the production, which will be historically low, lower than those of 1991 and 2017,” said the Ministry of Agriculture in a statement, referring to two years when wine production was affected by severe spring frosts.
The ministry forecasts a production this year of 33.3 million hectoliters, which would be 25% lower than the average national production over the past five years. One hectolitre equals 100 liters, or about 133 full-size bottles of wine.
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French wine producers warned earlier this summer that much of the grape harvest could be lost in the country, which is the world’s second-largest wine producer after Italy.
In April, Julien Denormandie, French Minister of Agriculture, described the devastation caused by freezing temperatures on vine and fruit crops as “probably the biggest agricultural disaster of the beginning of the 21st century”.
The unusually bitter cold snap raised concerns about the climate crisis, and the French government said at the time that the loss of a third of French wine production would cost nearly € 2 billion (1, £ 7 billion) in lost sales.
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