Extreme frosts in late April could hike the price of French wine prices from regions including the Loire Valley, Burgundy and Champagne
Severe frosts that hit French wine-making regions at the end of April have caused concerns that wine production could be affected and could force a price hike.
Areas including the Loire valley and Champagne, which lends its name to the famous bubbly, were hit with the unseasonably cold weather, which reached its apex on 27 April.
The wine-growing region Burgundy was the area worst-hit by the frosts. In the town of Chablis in Burgundy, Benjamin Laroche, of Le Manufacture (from whom he sources wine for Naked Wines) estimates between 15 and 25 per cent of the vine buds were destroyed by the frosts in the 18 villages that comprise the total appellation.
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Laroche, who has said one wine grower had almost 70 per cent of his first buds destroyed, warned that the prices of wine from the region could be affected.
"I think it will affect prices because now even if we were to produce 100 per cent of what we can, the demand is bigger than we can offer anyway. So you can imagine when you add to that 25 per cent less production after the frosts, prices could be affected dramatically.
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"However, it's still a bit early to say – there can be a second bud after the first one (although the first bud is the biggest), and depending on the weather we could still get some second buds and still have 80 to 85 per cent of the total volume produced."
The Bourgogne Wine Board (BIVB), a non-profit organisation representing the local wine trade, said in a statement that it was still "too early to provide a detailed analysis" in a statement on its website, but that early reports suggested that the entire region had been hit by the "unusual" weather event.