The flavor of wet asphalt in wine

France’s 2022 wine harvest is likely to be between 42.6 million and 45.6m hectolitres, up by 13% to 21% on the frost-hit 2021 vintage and more in-line with the country’s five-year average. One hectolitre is equivalent to 100 litres. Yet drought could impact on yields in the coming weeks, adding extra uncertainty in several regions, said the French agriculture ministry’s Agreste statistics unit. Expected vintage quality isn’t covered by the preliminary outlook. It added the 2022 growing season is ...

Australian wine exports dropped by 19% to A$2.08bn in the year to 30 June, said trade body Wine Australia this week. While exports to some countries rose, notably the US, the group’s report for the 2021-22 financial year offered fresh insight into a slide in shipments to China. Mainland China imposed varying import tariffs ranging from 116% to more than 200% on Australian bottled wines from late 2020 onwards. Exports to China, including Hong Kong and Macau, dropped by 74% in the 12 months to 30 ...

How’s the weather been this year? Awful. ‘La nature m’écoeure’, one of my wine-growing friends posted on Facebook on 8 April, having been out to look at the frost-crippled shoots on his vines that morning: ‘Nature disgusts me’. It takes a lot to make a wine-grower feel that. He wasn’t alone. Jeremiads echo around the northern hemisphere as 2021 closes. It’s been the year of all the miseries. None suffered more horribly than the growers of Germany’s Ahr valley, where floodwaters caused by the fou ...