"'Catastrophic’ hail in Chablis, Beaujolais and Cognac"

[Robin Garr]

From Decanter. This looks really bad.

http://www.decanter.com/wine-news/hail- ... he-305536/

[David M. Bueker]

Lots of photos around the web. It looks tragic. Bad for this year, and bad for next year.

That article gives the impression of having been written by someone without much knowledge.

Reference to vineyards' being "destroyed" seems hyperbole. Presumably he means this year's crop, which is bad enough, with some impact on next year.

Also -
"Parts of Cognac were damaged, too, such as the Madiran and Pacherenc vineyards."
shows a woeful ignorance of French wine geography.

Cognac was damaged. I need to check about Madiran and Pacherenc.

The weather here has been very strange. The low pressure system seemed to stay more or less stationary over SW Germany and Eastern and Central France even returning westward. We were on the edge of it but further to the west in Brittany it was very dry.

It might be worth checking if there has been damage to German vineyards. Very bad floods there.

PS: Headline in the newspaper Sud-Ouest says that 10-15% of Madiran damaged. I can't read the whole article without a subscription. It sounds much less bad than in Chablis and Beaujolias crus. I wonder what the effect on prices will be.

[Robin Garr]

That article gives the impression of having been written by someone without much knowledge.

Once upon a time, I thought Decanter was a fine wine journal. I don't follow it regularly these days, but I have a bad feeling that it has become something more like a British version of Wine Spectator. Would you say that's a fair analysis, Tim?

[David M. Bueker]

I think you are overestimating Decanter's historical value Robin.

Of course as we have all become more knowledgeable we have also become more critical of every mistake, and often (not always here) dismissive of material not written for experts.

And yes, there seems to have also been damage in Germany - mostly around Baden-Wurttemburg from what I have heard. Not much in the way of details though, so who really knows.

That article gives the impression of having been written by someone without much knowledge.

Once upon a time, I thought Decanter was a fine wine journal. I don't follow it regularly these days, but I have a bad feeling that it has become something more like a British version of Wine Spectator. Would you say that's a fair analysis, Tim?

Robin, I stopped my subscription to Decanter about 5 years ago. They had a few very good contributors but far too many superficial articles. I also got increasingly irritated by the "expert" panel discussions of various wine types. The last straw was a panel on red Loire wines where none of the contributors seemed to have any affinity for the wine type and dissed many fine examples.

Somehow I get communications from Decanter China in my inbox. It's amusing to see all those headlines in Chinese characters but the articles are in English too with occasional good ones by Andrew Jefford.

[James Roscoe]

I spoke with a French importer today about the hail and frost and he says it is universally bad across the country. Evidently there was a frost in the Loire just a few weeks ago. It was so bad some vines are gone. This was from someone with visual first hand knowledge. Buy those 2015!

James, although most regions had some hail, the bad damage was patchier than that statement from the French importer implies. As you know hail damage can be very local; one field devastated and next door nothing. The areas which according to my Googling were badly damaged are Cognac, N.Burgundy round Chablis and Auxerre, Beaujolais crus, Mâconnais. Also there was bad frost damage in April, particularly round Saumur and to some extent in Birgundy.

For those who can read French, here is an article summarising the situation http://www.larvf.com/,desolation-dans-d ... 486699.asp . Note that there is no mention of damage at Bordeaux.

Also there is an interesting comments towards the end of the article, which I summarise as follows - "It is too soon to prejudge the 2016 vintage. At this period hail affects quantity not quality."

Nevertheless your advice to stock up on 2015 is good. If the miracle happens and conditions are good from now through to the harvest, prices will go up due to the reduced quantities.