In the December Newsletter by ombiasyPR & WineTours Annette Schiller provides an overview of the 6 winetours she is offering in 2018. For the first time, she will go to the Rhône Valley, but the tour is already fully booked. She also shares her impressions on the 2017 harvest in France and Germany, based on the ombiasy fall 2017 tours.
For the overview of the 6 winetours she is offering in 2018 go here: Ombiasy Wine Tours 2018: 3 x France and 3 x Germany - Ombiasy Newsletter December 2017
Below, you find Annette's impressions on the 2017 harvest in France and Germany.
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Smallest Harvest since 1945 in both France and Germany
Annette Schiller: The fall tours usually coincide with some aspects of the harvest season. It is always exciting to travel to wine regions during the harvest season to feel the tension: will this be a good vintage? Sometimes we only catch the preparation stage, sometimes we just see the last truck loaded with grapes pulling into the winery, sometimes -like this year- we witness harvest season in full swing.
Across the board in France and Germany the weather in 2017 was incredibly chaotic and vintners will certainly remember 2017 as one of the most volatile and difficult growing seasons.
March was unseasonably warm and triggered early bud break. In Germany it was the warmest March since 1881 according to weather statistics. Fresh shoots were already appearing when all of the sudden frost hit in the second half of April affecting most regions in France as well as in Germany. Despite tremendous efforts fighting off the freezing temperatures in the vineyards by bringing in buckets with burning parrafin and hovering helicopters many of the shoots were destroyed. However secondary growth set in and things began to look much brighter. The summer was warm but patterns of irregular heavy rainfall and severe hailstorms caused further damage. September started cool and rainy but the second half brought sunny and beautiful weather stimulating the final boost of ripeness and overall quality.
Overall yields in Germany are about 20% lower than usual and numbers vary among the wine regions and wineries. Some vintners lost 80 - 100% others almost nothing. It all depended on the location of the vineyard. Interestingly the northernmost regions -Saale-Unstrut and Sachsen- sitting on 51 of latitude were untroubled by the catastrophic weather patterns and showed a yield increase of 30%.
In France the picture is pretty much the same with a harvest of 17% below the average over the past five years. The situation also varies greatly from region to region. Alsace lost about 25%, the Rhône experienced severe droughts that lowered the yield, Chablis and the Mâconnais in Burgundy were hit hard with frost and hailstorms, but the rest of Burgundy did well and for the first time since 2010 overall yields in Burgundy were up by 12% from the 2016 harvest.
Bordeaux was hit much harder than the rest of France and experienced a loss of almost 50%. Bordeaux with its oceanic climate seldomly registers winter temperatures below 43 F and the spring frost came as a shock. As in Germany damages are greatly uneven with losses between 80 and 100% for some producers and none for others.
The least affected area is the Médoc and particularly the appellations adjacent to the Gironde Estuary Saint-Julien, Pauillac, and Saint-Estèphe remained almost unscathed. Graves, some plots in Sauterne, and the Right Bank suffered severe damages but the degree depended heavily on the situation of the vineyards.
During our wine tour in early September we visited Château Climens in Barsac. Looking at the state of the grapes made us very, very sad. Owner and winemaker Bérénice Lurton predicted that there won't be any 2017 Château Climens unless a miracle happens - and she was right. Didier Cuvelier, owner of Château Léoville-Poyférré in Saint-Julien reported no or only minor damages and predicted an excellent vintage.
The vintage 2017 may be the smallest one in a long time but will be remembered as a vintage of exceptionally high quality. The remaining grapes reached phenolic maturity early and developed unseasonably high must weight and incipient botrytis.
That called for an early harvest and in both France and Germany the vintners worked frantically day and night to pick the grapes, and to process the harvest before any drama could occur again.
Rhône, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, and Germany started harvesting two weeks earlier than usual and filled the barrels or tanks in record time. I quote Fritz Gröbe, owner and winemaker of Weingut Gröbe in Rheinhessen, Germany: "This is a historical vintage. It was the earliest and shortest harvest season ever. Our harvest ended on September 28, which has never happened before."
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