By Sybille de La Hamaide
PARIS, July 7 (Reuters) – France’s scorching summer is stunting grape growth in wine regions including Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy, threatening a smaller crop and bringing one of the earliest harvests on record, producers said on Tuesday.
A record-breaking heatwave in late June, followed by more hot, dry weather since last week, has slowed grape growth and damaged younger vines in France, the world’s second-largest wine producer.
“We can see the potential melting away in the sun,” said Laurent Delaunay, chairman of Burgundy wine industry group BIVB, adding that growers were mainly worried about the lack of water.
Forecasters expect little or no rain in France’s main wine-producing regions before July 14, extending a dry spell that will have lasted more than three weeks in many areas.
EARLIEST CHAMPAGNE HARVEST ON RECORD
In Champagne, producers expect the earliest harvest ever, with picking likely to start around August 15, about a month earlier than was typical a few decades ago.
They currently expect grape yields to be around 10% smaller than last year, although production may not fall by the same amount because producers can draw on reserves, said Maxime Toubart, chairman of the Champagne wine growers union.
“We were lucky to have a very wet winter, so the soil was not too dry to begin with. But now we can see the grapes are not getting any bigger,” Toubart said.
Champagne producers could still revise their forecast if the region receives heavy rain, without storms, within the next two weeks, he added.
In Bordeaux and Burgundy where the heatwave was even more severe, producers said it was too early to give precise output estimates but warned the decline would be “significant”.
Wine quality may not necessarily suffer, producers said, but heat and drought can raise sugar levels in grapes, potentially affecting flavour and alcohol content.
Harvesting is set to start unusually early in several regions, with Bordeaux’s first grapes for cremant sparkling wines expected in the first week of August and Burgundy’s first picking likely around August 20.
(Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide. Editing by Mark Potter)
