Weather woes halve Burgundy wine harvest

Grape pickers are at work during the wine harvest in the Domaine Cheveau on September 22, 2021 in Solutre-Pouilly, on the first days of the harvest in this part of Burgundy. AFP

MEURSAULT, France — Burgundy vineyards lost around half their yield as a result of this year’s spring frost, an industry body said Tuesday.

The region can expect to produce 750,000 hectoliters compared with 1.56 million in 2020, said Francois Labet, head of the region’s wine producers federation BIVB.

“According to a purely theoretical estimate, we will have 50 percent of the usual harvest this year,” he told a news conference in Mersault, in the heart of Burgundy.

The frost occurred in April, just as vines were budding in several of France’s wine-growing regions.

With reserves of no more than two years’ worth of production, the sector is hoping for a “full 2022 harvest”, Labet said.

But he noted that Burgundy in the past decade has seen only two “normal” years, 2017 and 2018. “The average yield has decreased by an average of 30 percent per year in the past decade.”

But Labet did not predict massive price hikes, saying Burgundy winegrowers would be “reasonable” despite their weather woes.