Hail Damage again in Burgundy

According to pictures and comments posted on Twitter, Burgundy just got hit with a major hail storm.

From Oregon’s Scott Paul: Devasted. Major damage in Meursault, Volnay, Pommard - yet another hailstorm 10 mins. ago…

His picture is the one of hail.

From the @BourgogneLive feed: (translated) Very violent fall of #grêle on Meursault at the moment pdt 2 minutes! I cannot imagine in the :frowning:(( vineyards. To which Ray Walker replied: in Nuits Saint Georges and more.

Caroline Parent Gros posted this pic with the caption: In #Beaune vineyard destroyed again by the hail!

Not good news.
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Apparently the Cote de Beaune was hit the worst with some parcels at a 70-80% loss.
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The images from Burgundy are heartbreaking… I really feel for the winemakers. Hope they can survive another low production vintage.

Such a shame

For all of our sakes they need a couple of average years to get some bottles on the market and hold down prices.

Time to invest in cloud seeding?
This is terrible news.

so sad

I saw a pic on Facebook. Breaks my heart. We in Cali have it made…weather wise!

God, they can’t get a break.

Yep, sucks big time. Savigny, unlike last year, seems to have missed the brunt (10-30% depending on the parcel) but my Beaune vineyards, from first calls, from 50-90% wiped out, still too early to see the real impact as the clusters/vines react. Such a promising start to the season, one of the best in recent memory, gone in an afternoon…

Third year in a row the Volnay/Pommard/Beaune sector has been hit with 50%+ losses, with prices for fruit likely to continue skyrocketing (and supply diving too, of course).

All those hoping for a return to “normal” pricing for 2013/14… pileon

I had to double-check the date of this point to confirm that it wasn’t a bump from 2013. Or 2012. Or…

No doubt there will be a few vineyards put up for “métayage/fermage” the next year or so, especially in appellations like Beaune/Pommard/Savigny where stock vs cash flow will put some major strains on less viable domaines.

This is heartbreaking. And, just having been in Burgundy a week ago, unbelievable.

Every winemaker we met last week said that it was early days but that the 2014 vintage was looking potentially excellent. There was talk about possible drought and another 2003 scenario and how they would handle that better than in 2003. (All of course retained an innate and understandable pessimism about a situation like this being possible. Alec Seysses, for example, doesn’t like “4” vintages, mentioning 2004 and 1994).

Now for Beaune blancs it looks like a repeat of the last couple of years. For example Phillipe Brun at Bruno Clair was apologetic that he wasn’t able to show us any 2013 blancs in barrel because although he has some juice he is not sure how he will blend, or what he will do with, the little he has.

You feel for the affected houses. Not so much the larger ones, but the smaller ones. And I see from forecasts T storms and more hail is possible overnight.

It looks like I will be buying 2014 Chablis in volume …

brutal…

Twitter feed:

Caroline PARENT GROS (@cparentgros)
29/06/14 3:13 am
#Beaune and #Pommard destroyed by the hail!!! #Burgundy

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So sorry to hear, Andrew (and all the winemakers in Burgundy). I, too, know how much everyone was praying for a normal, even good vintage this year. This is terrible news, 3rd vintage in a row now.

Terrible news.

Me too.

Gut wrenching. I am so saddened by this news.

Un-funkin’-believable.
I shouldn’t have posted about the good flowering and the “wild card joker” that is hail.
I’ll see what folks have to say in different villages and report back…

I think Bill Nanson jinxed us with his hail talk earlier this season!! :wink: