Winery PouderouxLa Vista

I was with some wine students in Chablis, visiting the affable Guillaume Michel of Domaine Louis Michel. The 2018 vintage in Chablis was prolific, though Guillaume’s team pruned the vines as hard as normal. Guillaume has a little more than a half-hectare of the smallest of the grands crus, Grenouilles (8.74ha in production in 2018, most of which is controlled by the cooperative La Chablisienne): delicious in 2018. And, after a year’s pruning and vine-tending, after hand-harvesting and scrupulous ...

Bordeaux will produce the least wine in six years in the 2023 harvest, after Merlot grapes in particular were ravaged by downy mildew, according to data from the French agriculture ministry. By contrast, Burgundy and the Loire Valley are heading for vintages that are likely to be among the biggest of the past decade. While overall French wine production is forecast to fall 2% to 45 million hectoliters, close to the five-year average, various growing areas had contrasting fortunes, the French agr ...

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 ...