Just when it seemed the year could not get more awful for French winemakers, it got worse.
With coronavirus lockdowns sending sales plummeting, some have had to turn their unsold stock into alcoholic hand disinfectant.
This is all more depressing because 2019 was a vintage year in many of the country’s wine regions.
But 2020 has also brought the creeping spectra of climate change into sharp focus, as winemakers were forced to start picking their grapes in early August in parts of southern France, a whole month ahead of the norm two generations ago.
The first signs are not good, with a meagre crop riddled with mildew from topsy-turvy weather.
In some vineyards, there are hardly any grapes left to pick.
The Algy valley, upriver from Riversaltes, the village which gives its name to the renowned fortified wine, is the sunniest in France, with 300 days of sunshine a year.
Yet even here they have not seen a year like it with grape-pickers working under blistering temperatures nearing 40 degrees Centigrade.
Farmers have been forced to harvest by machine at night or handpick from the crack of dawn to keep the grapes at their cool best.
“It is the first time I have seen anything like this, and I have been working in the vineyards since I was 17,” 68-year-old Jean-Marie Dereu told AFP in his fields 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the Spanish border.
Adding, “normally, the Tramontane sea breeze blows and dries the vines but this year there was no wind. And now it’s almost a drought,” said Dereu, who works seven days a week despite his age.
The French government say climate change is almost certainly to blame.
The environment ministry said, “on average harvests across France are taking place 18 days earlier than they were 40 years ago.”
This was a clear “marker of global warming,” it added.#s63 #winemakers #wines #France #French #Bars #Alcohol #climatechange #climateactivist #climatecrisis #climate