On June 28, 2019, when the mercury was 46 ° C on his land, Rodolphe Coulondre, winemaker who produces, among other things, muscat, lost, on certain plots, 80% of his harvest. "The leaves burned in an hour," recalls the owner-operator of the Château de Vérargues, a small village in Hérault, which, since this sultry Friday, eleven months ago, has held the record for the highest temperature ever registered in France.
So with a summer weather forecast that is once again overheating, he is "a little afraid" that history will repeat itself and that the clusters will not hold the shock. The town of 800 souls, although accustomed to the waves of furnaces, would have done well with this absolute record which still feeds the distress of certain winegrowers condemned to adapt.
For this 2020 vintage, Rodolphe Coulondre therefore “tried to anticipate”. The toppings, consisting of cutting the upper leaves to create passages in the vines, have been reduced. "We keep as many leaves as possible to have maximum shade," he describes. He also let the grass grow which "brings a bit of moisture".
"32 ° C in May, what's it going to be in July?"
"The good idea to deal with the heat wave, we have not yet found it," he regrets. For the moment, its branches are carrying like a charm, the spring rains not having fallen into excess. “But a big heatstroke can destroy all our efforts. Every day, he dissects weather data on his smartphone. "Before, I rarely looked at them," he explains. He is hardly optimistic when he projects himself into the country's climate future. "In about thirty years, it will be hard to make wine in the south of France," he predicts.
Luc, retired from the corner, also dreads a suffocating summer. "The mercury has just risen to 32 ° C, and it's only May. So what is it going to be in July? Wonders, worried, the septuagenarian who is also a beekeeper. June 28, 2019 is etched in his memory. " I've never seen that ! He says. His garden suffered a lot, depriving him of tomatoes for two good months. But it is especially the hives which have suffered the full force of the madness of the thermometer. “The wax melted in two hours. The bees are dead, roasted, ”recalls the man who suffered“ 50% loss ”on his honey harvest. To avoid a new hecatomb, he is currently installing a sheet metal flysheet on his hives in order to create a "draft".
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About ten kilometers from there, in Gallargues-le-Montueux (Gard), city of 3800 inhabitants who endured a June 28, 2019 at 45.9 ° C, the mayor without label Freddy Cerda shows himself to be rather serene . "The fire that fell from the sky" that afternoon was well under control. "If this happens again, we will take care of the elderly as the last priority," he says.
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To put his fiefdom a little more in the shade, in recent months he has continued to plant trees, particularly on the side of the sports hall. The owners of tourist accommodation, too, are not alarmed by a recurrence of a heat wave. “I was not penalized last year. We have air conditioning and a swimming pool to cool off. Frankly, we are not the most to complain about, ”we breathe in a guest house rental. In the region, hoteliers are much more worried about the effects of Covid-19 on bookings, which are often close to zero for the time being.
