Winery FloressacVela

The focus of the symposium, unsurprisingly, was on the challenges posed by climate change. As if to illustrate the immediacy of the threat, the symposium took place during a heatwave, with temperatures of over 40°C  in Bordeaux and extreme weather events recorded across the coountry: parts of southwest France saw violent storms and winds of 112kph on the evening of 20 June, while vineyards across the Médoc and St-Emilion were damaged by hailstones ‘the size of golfballs’. As Olivier Bernard of D ...

The Roussillon is home to a range of wine styles, at varying price points. Sweet fortified wines (vin doux naturel) used to dominate production, with still dry wines (vin sec) in the minority. In the last 30 years, however, this has completely changed, and vin sec now makes up the majority (80%) of the Roussillon’s output. The recent Wines of Roussillon tasting, held in London, not only highlighted many good quality dry wines being produced, but also cemented the idea that Roussillon whites are ...

National production from France’s wine harvest in 2023 has been estimated between 44 million and 47 million hectolitres this year, up from 45.4 million hectolitres in 2022. That would be in line with, or exceed, the five-year average. France appears to be doing better than Italy and Spain, which expect below-average volumes. Still, the French agriculture ministry emphasised the preliminary nature of its forecast, citing uncertainty around damage from downy mildew in Bordeaux and southwest ...