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The particularly early 2022 harvest due to drought and high temperatures

2022-08-11T10:10:01.312Z


Despite harvests starting at the end of July, the Rhône and Champagne winegrowers are confident about the quality of the vintage.


The 2022 harvest, which has already started in Hérault or Haute-Corse, promises to be particularly early.

Thus, in all the wine-growing areas of the country, the lack of water and the high temperatures will bring the harvests forward by ten days to three weeks, with certain Languedoc-Roussillon winegrowers having given the first strokes of the pruning shears at the end of July.

“In more than 30 years, I have never started my harvest on August 9,” said Jérôme Despey, winegrower in Hérault and general secretary of the FNSEA agricultural union, astonished.

As for François Capdellayre, president of the Dom Brial cooperative cellar in Baixas, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, he had to rush out his tools on August 3 with the muscat, followed by the chardonnay and the grenache blanc: “We were all a little surprised, the maturity has evolved very quickly over the last few days.

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Quality deteriorated by heat

Despite a high capacity to resist and to draw water with its deep roots, the vine suffers in all the production basins, even in regions such as the Center or the Val-de-Loire.

When it lacks water, “water stress” causes it to lose its leaves and it stops feeding its clusters.

The ripening of the berries is accelerating and urges the winegrowers to harvest them.

While the mercury sometimes reached 38 or 40 degrees, the grapes “burned, they were dry, they lost volume and quality”, the heat raising the degree of alcohol to a level “too high for consumers”, explains Pierre Champetier, president of the IGP of Ardèche, who already started his harvest on Monday, whereas "40 years ago, we harvested around September 20".

Read alsoWalk in Bordeaux in the footsteps of wine

A good vintage in the Rhône?

Despite these early harvests, the hope of having a good vintage did not completely fade away.

Thus, in the Rhône Valley, if the heat wave "caused an advance in maturity of more than 20 days compared to last year", according to the Inter-Rhône inter-professional organization, the quality of the wine will be there. the organism.

Ditto for the Champagne Committee (CIVC), which plans to start in the last ten days of August and shows its confidence in the quality of the vintage.

In Alsace, where it has not rained "a drop for two months", "we will have a very, very small harvest", regrets Gilles Ehrhart, president of the association of winegrowers of Alsace (AVA), which plans to begin harvesting around August 26.

On August 1, the statistical service of the Ministry of Agriculture, Agreste, estimated between 42.6 and 45.6 million hectoliters the 2022 production - up from 13 to 21% compared to the 2021 harvest.

Source: leparis

All business articles on 2022-08-11

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