Wine Opinion | Fickle nature robs winemakers of what looked a great 2015 harvest
Fire, floods and a tornado - in France - hit some vineyards just before harvesting in what's predicted to be a vintage year. Champagne, Burgundy and Bordeaux escaped unscathed
It's the time of the year when winemakers need a steady hand and steadier nerves. It's also when when wine drinkers start to get an idea of what we should be looking out for over the next couple of years, when grapes harvested in 2015 make their way into bottles and onto wine lists and shelves.
Autumn 2015 has seen its share of drama for those bringing in their grapes. In California, wildfires raged close to the Napa Valley and Sonoma County. Although most wineries there escaped direct damage, vintners were not as lucky in nearby Lake County, where the blaze destroyed Shed Horn Cellars and damaged several more. Even in Napa, the harvest was interrupted by evacuation orders and road closures stopped pickers getting into the area, while the effect of smoke taint (with its resulting accumulation of guaiacol and eugenol compounds) on the grapes is still being assessed.
In France, there has been flooding in the Hérault department which destroyed whole swathes of vineyards - with winemaker Jerôme Brol in the commune of Le Puech estimating to have lost a third of his 14 hectares of vines, equivalent to 80 tonnes of grapes. There was even a tornado reported in the Charente-Maritime region of southwest France, where Cognac is made, with an estimated loss of 30 hectares of vines. Chablis saw a burst of pre-harvest hail in the first days of September, savagely slicing off some of those just-ripe grapes.
In all of these cases, the devastation was made worse by the fact that 2015 looks set to be a great vintage. Almost right from the start, the growing season was kind. In Burgundy, flowering was quick and even, taking only 10 days from start to finish, according to most people I spoke to. Both Burgundy and Bordeaux then had a sustained heatwave in July and early August that concentrated sugars in the grapes and raised expectations.
Up in northern France, the heatwave means we are certain to get a good crop of vintage champagnes - among them the zero dosage (no added sugar) Louis Roederer Brut Nature, which is only made in years when the chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier grapes have an exceptional level of natural ripeness.
