Focus on France Ian Sparks reports from Paris

EURO-REPORT

FOCUS ON... France

Ian Sparks reports from Paris on bad news from France’s vineyards.

France has suffered the worst grape harvest in more than 30 years – with some of the country’s most famous vineyards seeing their crops almost totally wiped out by freak weather, figures from the Ministry of Agriculture have revealed.

For thousands of winemakers, grapes have been destroyed by late frosts last April, heavy summer rain and ‘hailstones as big as ping pong balls’ in central and eastern France, and mildew and drought near the Mediterranean.

Across the country, national production plummeted by 12 per cent, but key wine regions like Champagne, Burgundy and the Loire Valley lost around 50 per cent of their crops to bad weather, and winemakers in famous chateaux around the towns of Chablis and Chiroubles lost almost their entire harvests.

Only Bordeaux in south-west France was spared the blight, which could send French wine prices soaring next year.

Winemaker Jean-Jacques Robert, who owns the Domaine Robert-Denogent in Fuisse, Burgundy, said: “It wasn’t so much a harvest this year, as a hunt for grapes.

“I had around three-quarters of my crop wiped out in a single hailstorm in April. It’s a catastrophe, the worst harvest for 30 or 40 years, and we have lost more than 300,000 euros. Our insurance will hopefully cover 100,000 euros of that but the rest we have to absorb.”

Also among the most severely hit were organic winemakers and those from France’s growing ‘vin nature’ movement, which campaigns for a return to more natural wines. Unable to spray damaged crops, they had to watch as mildew ripped through their vines. And for a few staring ruin in the face, that meant ‘going against our principles’ and using chemicals.

Winemaker Vincent Dureuil-Janthial, from Rully in Burgundy, resorted to spraying his vines, knowing he would lose the organic certification he had held for a decade.

He said: “It was the most difficult decision I have ever taken. It felt like a personal failure. But with six employees to pay, I had to take a decision as a business owner to save what little of the crop was left to save.”

Such dilemmas prompted more than 130 restaurateurs and wine shops to launch a donations drive to save organic winemakers from going to the wall.

Laurie Lacroix, spokeswoman for the Vendanges Solidaires group, said: “Many winemakers who could not afford insurance are now in a very bad situation. And for those just starting out in the winemaking business, it has been disastrous. There is no state support or compensation, so grape growing is a real high-wire act. And with climate change too, we may be seeing a far more capricious environment for winemakers.”

One saving grace is that the grapes that have been harvested are of very good quality. Thibault Liger-Belair, whose vines in the Domaine de Roches Roses, in Moulina-Vent, southern France, were also ravaged by bad weather, said: “They are of very good quality even if we will have only 20 per cent of the wine we would normally produce.

“The worrying thing for many winemakers is that this comes after a below average harvest in 2015 due to hot weather. Unfortunately, if you have a miserable year in terms of quantity you cannot just pass that on.”

Louis-Fabrice Latour, of the Burgundy wine producers group BIVB, said he had already sensed a slowdown in the market which would only get worse because of Britain’s exit from the EU and uncertainty over the US presidential elections.

For thousands of winemakers, grapes have been destroyed by late frosts last April, heavy summer rain and ‘hailstones as big as ping pong balls’ in central and eastern France, and mildew and drought near the Mediterranean.

Faking it

The record low harvest has also driven some unscrupulous winemakers to pass off low-grade plonk as top vintages, in order to recoup some of their lost profits.

French wine customs inspectors said they are ‘noticeably busier’ this year due to the poor crop. Their work involves tracking the wine produced by France’s tens of thousands of vineyards to ensure drinkers are getting what they are paying for. Officials launch unannounced spot checks on vineyards to inspect vats, barrels, pallets, bottles and vines.

Bordeaux regional customs chief Bertrand Bernard said: “The vast majority of winemakers are honest, but there is an increasing number of people out there who try to bend the rules to a greater or lesser extent.

“The most common trick is to blend high quality wine with a cheaper wine, which basically amounts to defrauding the consumer, and culprits can be fined up to a million euros.”

The biggest scandals in recent years were in 2010, when 12 French winemakers and dealers were convicted of selling millions of bottles of fake Pinot Noir to the US firm E&J Gallo.

Before that, in 2006 legendary Beaujolais winemaker Georges Duboeuf was fined more than 30,000 euros for blending grapes from different vineyards to disguise the poor quality of certain prized vintages.

Mr Bernard added: “We hope the latest low harvest won’t drive anyone to frauds on that scale this year.” n