Regular readers may recall that the prognosis for last year’s French wine crop was not good. A series of late April freezes coated vines with ice that froze and killed new buds.
Early reports from the Loire were not hopeful. “In the memory of vignerons, there are two major freezes: 1991 and 1994. This is on the level of 1994. It’s historic,” said Guillaume Lapaque, director of the Federation of the Indre-Loire wines trade group and the Bourgueil wine syndicate.
Well, 2017 might be worse. For the second year in a row, cold April weather is devastating vineyards in France and England.
France “Bordeaux vineyards in southwest France could lose about half of their harvest this year after two nights of frost damaged the crop at the end of April, a wine industry official said on Saturday. … Wines from the Cognac, Bergerac, and Lot-et-Garonne regions had also been affected … ‘For Bordeaux wines…we estimate that the impact will be a loss of about 50 percent, depend on how many buds can regrow’”
Good thing the settled scientists didn’t settle for calling it global warming. That would be embarrassing.
H/T WUWT
