From Decanter, August 12:
French harvest 2024: Mildew and poor fruit set to lower volumes
France will produce less wine than usual in 2024, as vineyards were hit by spring frost, hail and a wet start to the summer that created favourable conditions for downy mildew, according to an official forecast.
France’s wine harvest is forecast to fall as much as 16% in 2024 from a year earlier, with unusually rainy conditions during flowering hurting fruit set and a wet early summer prompting outbreaks of downy mildew in vineyards from Bordeaux to Alsace, said the French agriculture ministry’s Agreste statistics unit.
National production may fall to between 40 million and 43 million hectolitres this year, from 47.9 million hectolitres in 2023, according to the first official forecast published last Friday. That would potentially be one of the smallest harvests of the past hundred years.
‘Downy mildew, favoured by wet conditions in early summer, is affecting most wine-growing areas and could cause major losses,’ Agreste said. ‘Episodes of frost or hail have also locally reduced production volumes.’
French winemakers have faced significant challenges from extreme or unusual weather in recent years, with frost in 2017 and 2021 pushing production below 40 million hectolitres. Volumes fell below that level only six times in the past hundred years, including three vintages during and right after World War II, according to official production data.
‘Production is expected to fall in almost all wine-growing basins,’ Agreste said.
The estimates are provisional in light of various grape-health issues and weather events affecting French vineyards, while high soil moisture levels could still limit the decline, Agreste noted. Vine development is one to two weeks delayed compared to last year, according to the report....
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