This year, the wine producers in many parts of the world have had severe weather problems: heat, fires, floodings, frost, diseases. Spring frosts affected almost all wine regions in France for several nights in April.
Because the budding, after a mild winter, had already come a long way, the ravages of the frost were enormous. Masses of rain, with subsequent downy mildew attacks, made a difficult situation worse.
This means that the French Ministry of Agriculture estimates that the harvest in 2021 will be up to 30% smaller than usual. It may be the lowest volume in 45 years, between 32.6 and 35.6 million hectolitres, less than in both 1991 and 2017, years that were also hit by severe spring frost.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the vineyard area in France was higher than it is today and yearly production never went below 50 million hl. Only five years between 1970 and 1990 produced less than 60 million hl. 1973 and 1979 were record years with over 80 million. In the last six years, production has been between 36.4 million hl (2017) and 49.2 (2018).
Read more: Production viticole 2021.
