The Winery Luis a Huero of Rio Negro of Patagonia

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 ...

Frost returned to French vineyards early this month as France recorded its coldest April night since 1947. Temperatures plunged to minus nine degrees Celsius in some parts of the Champagne region on the night between 3 and 4 April, with minus seven reported in areas around Bordeaux and minus six in Chablis. Some winemakers lit candles and fires between vineyard rows to help protect young buds. Yet while scenes were reminiscent of the devastating frosts that struck French vineyards in April 2021, ...

The proposal reduces the mandatory density of planting from 8,000 vines per hectare to approximately 6,000. This would be accomplished by allowing 2.2 metres between rows, essentially removing every other row. The stated purposes include reducing the cost of maintaining the vineyards and therefore the time necessary to maintain them. This has been put forward as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and proponents estimate that such emissions would be 20% lower under the measure, leading som ...