Last year, frost wreaked so much havoc on French vineyards that what eventuated was the smallest harvest in half a century – and it could happen again.
As some growers worry that history might repeat, producers elsewhere in Europe – and further afield – are also facing new challenges that include war, oversupply and basketballers. Let's take a look at some of the week's wine stories you might have missed.
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France on frost alert this weekend
Exactly one year on from the devastating spring frosts of 2021, France was once again bracing for a cold snap over the weekend, with potential frost nights forecast for Saturday, Sunday and Monday night across the country. According to models posted by French meterologist Dr Serge Zaka, only the west of the country (covering Bordeaux, Cognac and the western Loire) and the very southern regions of Provence and the Languedoc-Roussillon are set to avoid the frost.
However, the cold snap is unlikely to be quite as devastating as that of 2021. While buds have burst on the vines in some areas, the country has not experienced the same level of warm weather as it had last year.
"Most of it is still in cotton [meaning the new growth had not yet burst from the buds]," one winegrower in Givry told Wine-Searcher.com, "and we pruned late this year so we shouldn't get frosted."
Late pruning has been one of the tactics recommended (and often used) to delay early vine growth in order to better weather the spring frost season.
However other factors are also hampering potential frostfighting efforts. According to French wine news website Vitisphere.com, growers have seen insurance costs go up since 2021 and agricultural diesel (the key fuel in a frost-fighting pots – and a minor environmental disaster) is hard to come by due to the energy crisis provoked by the conflict in Ukraine.
"Northern France (Alsace and Champagne) hasn't been through budburst yet," said Zaka. He added that risk factors in early-budding varieties was high in "in the Loire Valley (less in the Pays Nantais [Muscadet], with 20-30 percent damage than in Touraine with 40-70 percent damage), in Beaujolais, [and] Dijonnais [Burgundy]. For Bordeaux and Cognac, there's a lower risk with the Atlantic coast less likely to be hit but, towards the eastern areas, around 30-40 percent of potential losses."
Going into the weekend, the risk factors were revised upwards, with Chablis and the Loire Valley at high risk of severe frost on Sunday night, when temperatures could go as low as -4C (25F) in the Burgundian region. According to Zaka, the wider Rhône region down to the Mediterranean is in the hands of the Mistral, the well-known wind which blows down the valley: "if it stops [blowing], temperatures will drop to between -3 and -4C," he said.
"Nothing left to do but light the frost-pots...and a votive," one grower told Vitisphere.com.
Baller partners with Cos d'Estournel owner
Following the news that he was eyeing his own wine brand, superstar basketballer Tony Parker has shed some light on his new wine venture. The French-born sportsman has teamed up with luxury hotel mogul Michel Reybier, buying a share in the latter's 100-hectare (250-acre) wine estate, Château La Mascaronne, in southern France.
No points for guessing the estate is in Provence and produces a rosé (as well as a red and white) – if there's one thing celebrity wine brands are generally not, it's adventurous. According to reports, Parker has also invested in Reybier's Champagne house, Jeeper & Reybier.
According to new agency Reuters, Parker said he was “committed to investing myself alongside him (Reybier) and taking these exceptional wines and champagnes to the next level".
One of Europe's richest 500 people, businessman and luxury hotel entrepreneur Michel Reybier is also the owner of Bordeaux super-second (growth), Château Cos d'Estournel, which he acquired in 2000. Reybier bought Château La Mascaronne in 2020 and embarked on a joint-venture in Champagne with Domaines Jeeper in 2013.
The Franco-American Parker, who retired from the National Basketball Asssociation in 2019, was first drafted to the San Antonio Spurs in 2001. In his career with the Spurs he won the NBA championship four times.
Australian grapegrowers dump fruit as trade stutters
The best of times and the worst of times in Australia's vast Murray Darling region this year with table grape growers "smiling" in the perfect conditions of high export demand and a bumper 2022 crop. Not so, however, for some of the viticulturists in the region where a perfect storm of slow wine exports due to the global pandemic (and its effect on trade routes), the effects of the Australia-China trade spat, and a low-risk economic climate have seen grape prices plummet.
According to local news outlet The Weekly Times, one grape grower near Mildura was filmed dumping his Shiraz crop on the ground. “I’ve done the first 10 acres and will do the other 10 today,” he said.
According to Murray Valley Winegrowers Incorporated (MVWI) chief executive Paul Derrico, wine grape prices had halved in the last two years.
“As we expected it’s all coming to a head now that the reds are ripening or over ripen,” added MVWI chairman Chris Dent. “There haven’t been any wineries active in the spot market.”
According to The Weekly Times, Australia's national association of wine grape and wine producers (AGW) has stated that the closure of the Chinese market, freight shortages and a bumper 2021 vintage had converged to create a concerning supply-demand imbalance.
Castilla-La Mancha pushes quality
The Spanish government is set to ratify the so-called "Vine and Wine Law" – a series of measures aimed at boosting the high-volume wine sector in Spain's Castilla-La Mancha wine region – before summer, it has emerged.
The law looks to give grape growers and producers greater flexibility in terms of producing foreign grape varieties "to adapt to consumer demand" while "not forgetting" indigenous plants (whatever that means). Indeed, while the bill does seem eminently laudable, parts of it are clearly questionable.
According to most news outlets in the country, part of the law includes further expansion of the wine sector's self-regulation – a move that may appear benign but, given the massive regional spat (and accusations of fraud) between two major wine producers in Valdepeñas last year, surely a more independent regulator is needed?
Furthermore, "matters relating to winemaking practices and procedures for processing geographical indications will be made more flexible", says online news outlet El Diario.
Other measures include greater promotional funding for bottled wine (a sector that generates four to five times the value of bulk wine sales – a major part of the region's wine business) and traceability – a move that could include use of blockchain technology and digital tracing.
Castilla - La Mancha counts 85,000 winegrowers and 600 wineries and cooperatives. Exports of the region's wines have doubled in the last 20 years, representing 55 percent of Spain's wine exports. According to El Español, the new law is part of the 2019 Strategic Plan for the Castilla-La Mancha wine sector.
Australian town bans "goon bag" wine
A remote coastal town in Western Australia is trialling a five-day ban on 4-liter cask wines, known as "goon bags" after their internal bladder which is regularly removed from its packaging for consumption. Police in Geraldton, over 400km (260 miles) north of Perth, made the move after a spike in alcohol-related violence
“We have had an increase in violence and anti-social behaviour along the foreshore,” local police chief (Acting Senior Sergeant) Stuart Gerreyn told local newspaper, the Geraldton Guardian.
As a result, a five-day ban on four-liter casks of Fruity Lexia and Tawny Port is in place over the weekend. Further restrictions on sales of two-liter cask wines (one cask per person, per day) are also in place.
"Fruity Lexia and Tawny Port are popular brands of cask wine which provide punters with a sweet tasting, highly concentrated alcohol for low prices," said national news outlet News.com.au.
The ban, however, does not encompass tourists, farm workers and miners planning to consume the elixirs out-of-town.
War in Ukraine costs Spanish wine
The war in Ukraine could hit Spanish wine exports to the tune of €91.3 million ($100.8 million), according to the country's wine market analysts. The Spanish Wine Market Observatory (OEMV) had initially said the conflict, now in its second month, could cost the country's wine sector around €40m in lost revenue but has since revised this figure upwards after taking into account the indirect transfer of wine, must and vinegar predominantly to the Russian Federation.
According to the OEMV, "Spanish wines, musts and vinegars go to Russia, not only directly but, to a significant extent, via Latvia and Lithuania. Furthermore, a marked portion of the wine sold to Russia by other producing countries such as Italy, France and Germany, is made with a very significant quantity of wine imported from Spain in bulk, which can legally be re-exported as wine from the European Union."
Although its initial figure of around €40m was deirived mainly through the value of direct sales to Ukraine and Russia, the OEMV now believes the combined volume of direct and indirect exports to the two nations totals 98.2m liters of wines, at a cost of over €91.3m. This would account for just under 3 percent of Spain's exports by value (and just over 3 percent by volume).
