The impact of frost on this year’s vintage by Laurent Mottey

Just a few words about our 2021 vintage. It’s off to a complicated start. We had very heavy frosts in the beginning of the month... of April. It went down to -6°, approximately, between -5 and -7,.. depending on the plot. So with the two weeks of warm weather before then... the vines had already begun... already begun showing a lot of new growth... and most of it froze… At this point, mid-May, we can see much of this new growth was damaged. So there’s very little vegetation on the canes. So only... a few buds are appearing in places… But the problem is with our whites... Everything that hasn't grown... Everything that grows after the first buds will not bear fruit. There’ll be no fruit and that’s a big worry... This means a lot of work representing a huge loss. Next a great deal of work in the vineyard: nothing will be uniform. As we can see on the vines, there are some branches... that already have 3 or 4 leaves… While on others, leaves are hardly open, and some won’t open up at all… A lot of work, as it'll all be more fragile, more prone to disease… The height for raising up the vines is a problem when we tie it up. Either half will be left to one side, or else if we wait a bit... it may break when there’s some wind as it’ll be so fragile… This will be a very, very complicated year… A year requiring twice as much work... for less than half the quantity of grapes… The treatments required will need... at least as numerous or even more so, because the vines become more fragile than usual when exposed to frost. So, the production costs which will become much higher... for what we expect to be a very small harvest… We can only hope that for the rest of the season... we get milder weather without any hail... or violent storms. Today, when we see the results… Here we can see everything is all black, there won’t be any fruit, none at all… That's the problem. Here is a small bunch which is already red. This means coulure instead of flowering. meaning that much less fruit for juice, which is a problem for making wine… We’ll have a small yield and hope it'll be of exceptional quality. Depending on the weather we'll get... cross our fingers, we may get good quality, we hope... but for now, things are looking extremely complicated. Here we are mid-May, and we weren't able to treat at all yet. With all the rain we've had, this is our first nice day in two weeks… Too much rain to use the sprayer, so impossible to treat… It's really complicated. We hope to be able to begin using it next week. Then we can start protecting the vineyard... So that it doesn't develop any diseases. This is a plot growing chardonnay, white wine, The problem we had with the heavy frosts, the result has us estimate a 60 – 70% potential loss... in our yields. As I explained earlier, everything that doesn't have fruit today, and even all the buds we see now, won’t develop any grapes. What we see today is all there is, there’ll be nothing more… It’s different with the pinots. The pinots were less effected because they were less developed. There's a difference between the pinot and the chardonnay. For the pinot's second budding, when it begins to develop... it will develop some fruit... less than the first buds, but there will be some… So the loss is expected to be less with the reds than with the whites. Fortunately, we do have more reds than whites, but there was damage on both, and will effect the red as well. So I believe, for the red, we'll have a 25-30% loss. To compare it with the white. The whites were damaged the most…