Is France’s 2024 vintage the worst in a century?
French winemakers had a bad year: crops were small, and the quality is questionable (we’ll have to see how fermentation goes to know for sure). But are thing really as bad as the headlines are suggesting? Julien Miquel investigates…
Transcript:
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Hello and welcome to your new Bonner Private Wines video where we learn about wine together weekly. I'm your host, Julien Miquel, Bordeaux-trained winemaker. All my winemaking friends here in France, the French wine growers that I talk to who are right now currently harvesting the grapes of vintage 2024 and turning them into delicious vino in their wineries —
00:00:23:19 - 00:00:51:16
a lot of grape juice is as you’re watching this video right now, fermenting, bubbling — those friends have been telling me how bad, how terrible the weather has been this year for grape growing and how bad the crop is going to be this year. And then last week I saw this headline on an important wine industry news publication: France to produce one of the smallest vintages in a century.
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And even I was surprised. What is going on here? Is French wine in total decline? Is it a total disaster? Our wine prices is going to go through the roof globally, in the largest wine country on earth. Hardly makes any wine this year. Let's talk about it. While they whine, we wine.
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As I said, as we speak, vintners are harvesting the grapes that will make the vintage 2024 all over Europe. And also in the United States and Canada and so on. France has had a particularly difficult year this year because it's been remarkably wet. It's essentially rained a lot all along the wine growing season. How does rain affect the amount of grapes that you can produce,
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though, you may be wondering. Well, it's twofold. One, if it rains a lot during the flowering of the vines — yes, vines have flowers which look like this. I think I have a good footage of a vine flowers — the rain washes away the pollen of the flowers so they can't get fertilized. And for each flower that is not fertilized, you get one less berry and the grapes are very small.
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Secondly, rain brings humidity, and humidity creates favorable conditions for a fungus called mildew to grow on the vines. They destroy the leaves and the grapes. So again you lose crop because it rains so much all over France for so long. Pretty much every French wine region has been affected by those two factors, except the vineyards on the Mediterranean coast, because it's still been sunny here as usual.
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On top of that, we got localized weather events like spring frosts that destroyed the buds, early on in the season, and hails that are increasingly frequent thanks to climate change of course. Champagne is expected to have a crop 16% lower than in 2023. Burgundy and Beaujolais, about 25% lower, the Loire valley, Alsace, even the vineyards of cognac that make the famous French brandy are expecting to have a very small crop, especially compared to last year.
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It's pretty bad. But is it the lowest production in a century, as the article suggests? And what would that have as consequences for you? For wine prices, for example?
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No. Rest assured you will be able to find and buy delicious French vino from vintage 2024. If you look at the historical data of wine production since World War two from 1945, you can see that wine production in France has been steadily declining since the 1980s. It's a long term trend, mainly because we French drink much less wine that then our parents and grandparents did.
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Most people now don't drink wine anymore for lunch at every meal, especially at work, than we used to; we drink a lot less. So of course, any given new vintage is bound to be one of the smallest in the past 80 years. 2024 won't be a huge drop. France is estimated to produce about 3.9 billion liters of wine this year.
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And yes, that's about 5 billion bottles of wine. While the past five year average is around 4.5 billion liters or 6 million bottles. So five is less than six, but it's still a fair amount. 5 billion bottles still. Vintage 2021 had a smaller crop, and before that, vintage 2017 was also smaller. So the one of the smallest vintage in a century is just a catchy headline.
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Not all false, but it doesn't give you the real full picture.
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So what does that mean for you, wine lover? And why is this happening? Well, you see, the problem with France is that it's influenced by the Atlantic Ocean a lot in its weather. Countries like Italy and Spain, which are now bigger producing nations than France, don't have as much trouble with their Mediterranean climate, except sometimes they have a problem with drought.
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But that's another story. France is cooler and wetter overall, which is part of why it makes so fine wines as well. Many wine regions in France have a rare finesse in their wines, because those grapes ripen slower under cooler climates, and that helps with finesse. You make fine wines overall in France with the cooler climate, but in very difficult vintages.
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Some years it's going to be pretty bad, like 2024. What's concerning, though, for the French wine industry is that those very bad vintages are more frequent. 17, 21, and now again, 24. It's really painful for businesses and the growers. In terms of wine prices, I don't think this will play much of a role. Wine consumption globally has fallen quite dramatically over the past few years, so there's plenty, if not too much, wine being produced at the moment because it's slow to slow down wine production to meet demand.
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You can't just slow down. It's not a factory. You can't just slow down the production. Globally. Like this. Wine prices may continue to go up because of inflation. Everything goes upwards these days, but not because of the small vintage 2024 in France. For the quality of the vintage, it's too early to call as the wines are fully fermented, aren't fully fermented yet.
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It's probably not going to be the best vintage of the century, but there is no reason to think it would be bad either. Wine growers and winemakers can do magic these days, even if the growing conditions are difficult. It's more work for them to make better wine. These may be poor quality grapes, but they still make delicious vino for 2024.
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And that was it for me today. Subscribe to the channel if you aren't already. Here are a couple videos that I suggest watching, the ten most expensive Bordeaux wines. Fascinating. Any related weather issue? The rising alcohol levels in wine? Why is this happening? It's unexplained here. Drink tasty and safe. I will see you soon in the wonderful world of wine.
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Cheers!
