Small piece here; "Les vendanges 2026 seront très précoces en Bourgogne" pour Thiébault Huber, président de la CAVB - ICI
The problem with high nighttime temperatures has more to do with acidity than anything else. The plants metabolism stays higher than it should, leading to higher levels of transpiration and loss of acidity.
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Understand but this is at least partially mitigated by earlier harvest due to ripening at lower sugar levels.
I worried about acid levels a lot when I put in my home vineyard, where overnight low temperatures in the 70s is common, but have rarely needed to make acid additions. The first harvest (Barbera) came in at 22.5 brix, 3.6 pH, and 6 TA. That is the only one I remember since it was such a relief. But aside from some odd Sangiovese numbers where TA and pH were out of whack, nothing came in with concerning acidity.
Comparisons between my home vineyard in Maryland and a commercial operation elsewhere are tenuous and only used to add data to the discussion.
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And if there’s any grape where you wouldn’t worry about reduced acid levels, I’d think it would be barbera!
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I have 9 different red and 5 different white varieties a couple of which have two clones. Barbera was the first planted and why I remember the numbers from the first harvest.
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Brian and Larry, thanks to both of you.
I have zero background in viticulture. I had always heard that diurnal swings were important because cool nights slow down sugar accumulation and phenolic maturity is something that happens over an entire season, and slower is better.
Happy to learn more.
As is increasingly the case, the weather in France has been odd! We had a fairly cool spring, even quite cold (but no frost problems), until the weather suddenly changed on May 21, with the earliest heatwave on record from May 22 to 30, then a couple of cold weeks, before it got hotter last week: a full heatwave began in the south, spreading north this week and hitting the whole of France from today onwards. So far, it looks to last until at least 01/07. Judging by my own grapevines, we are probably two weeks ahead of last year.
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Thread drift, but: what do you have growing?
As hot as 2003, which killed 70,000 Europeans? We spent the summer in the growing regions of Provence and Liguria and the heat was brutal.
Just a few grapes for eating - one white vine and one red - very juicy but no idea what sort!
It’s much too early to say, but if the conditions were to continue into July and August, then yes. Of course, everything is relative - people here are starting to moan, but what is abnormal here is normal in Athens for example.
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I’ve asked from a few Provence and Bandol producers how they fared in 2003 and they’ve grinned “oh was it hot?”
They’ve explained that in Provence they never noticed that 2003 was exceptionally hot because it is always hot there during summer. Especially in Bandol the temperatures didn’t differ at all.
The differences were considerably bigger in almost all the other parts of France (except maybe the northernmost parts). I’d imagine it was the same in Liguria.
Of course there might’ve been some hot pockets here and there, but I’ve understood Provence and Liguria didn’t suffer that much in 2003.
In Cannes, the weather was so hot that spontaneous fires caused the transformer serving much of the City to fail. It rained ash from the fires and the temp was never below 100F for weeks. And this was on the coast!
Same with Liguria. Never below 100F, even at night.
We were in Provence and Liguria for a month. It was fucking hot.
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We’ve spent a lot of time in Greece in the summers from 2009. Those summers don’t compete with 2003.
That sounds a bit odd, because according to the Wiki article on the '03 heatwave, of the listed cities, in Nice (right next to Cannes), the temperatures were among the coolest in that year - max temp was 35°C (95°F) and the mean August temperature was 27,5°C (81,5°F) - quite hot, yet still below the regional average. According to the chart in that wiki page, there was only one day that was above 35°C - quite different from all the other places in France! This also pretty much corroborates the anecdotes what I’ve heard from the locals.
Also this map that tracks temperature differences in 2003 compared to the average temps in years 2000-2004 also says that the difference compared to how hot it is usually there is about 1-2°C higher than the average:
I’m not saying it wasn’t hot, because it certainly sounds like it was, and definitely the biggest impact came from the abnormally hot nights - this was one of the most important reasons why there were so many deaths in that summer, especially in France. It doesn’t have to get that hot during the day, but if places don’t cool down sufficiently during the night, things can start to get unbearable quite quickly - we can suffer from that even here in our chilly Finland.
However, to me, it sounds quite implausible that the nighttime temps would’ve stubbornly been above 38°C / 100°F there even at night. 2003 was definitely hot, but those numbers just don’t sound possible. For example 2015 was another abnormally hot heatwave in southern Europe and I remember that even though the daily temps went always above 38°C / 100°F, several times even up to 40-41°C / 104-16°F, the nighttime temps still hovered “only” around 27-28°C / 81-82°F. Even that was abnormally hot and very unpleasant - basically making it impossible to sleep during the nights without an air con - but there was no way temperatures didn’t cool down from the daily highs. That’s just impossible that the temperatures would stay the same, no matter if sun is in the sky or not.
And yeah, it is definitely possible that you were in some hot pockets where the temperatures were warmer than in the surrounding areas. Nevertheless, I’ve heard from multiple different sources that 2003 wasn’t that bad in Provence, which prompted my original comment. Contrasting this to some of my friends who were visiting some other vignobles of France in that year have said that the temperatures were unbearable in those places; for example I’ve heard many times how a wine expo in that summer in Bordeaux was a catastrophe because it was around 39-40°C (102-104°F) during that weekend there, the convention center didn’t have sufficient air conditioning and all the presented wines were basically warm to the touch, while the air in the convention center was baking hot and humid.
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It was. In Cannes and Rapallo/Santa Margherita. One night it was +/- 100F and my then 15 year old daughter got heat stroke. In Santa Margherita at night. Up in the hills above Rapallo, it was hotter.
Regardless, the heat killed 70,000 Europeans that summer and I’ve never regretted my decision not to buy any European wines from the vintage. If 2026 is similar, I’ll pass, too. We will be in France and Portugal from early Sept and Mid Oct. Early Sept may be scorching again.
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I’m about 30 minutes south of Alba now, it is hot for the time of year.
On the other hand, it’s only June, so who knows what the final result will be.
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This is from The Guardian:
*“*Very high temperatures are setting in for the long term across the country,” said the national meteorological service, Météo-France. “Day and night-time temperatures will be exceptional.”
It said temperatures throughout western and central France were likely to exceed 40C from Monday afternoon, hitting 43C in Bordeaux, 41C in Limoges, 40C in Toulouse and Tours and 39C in Paris, and would continue rising until the end of the week.
109 in Bordeaux? Wow.
A close friend is in hospital in the UK recovering from surgery. Temperatures this week will hit mid nineties, and there is no air conditioning, just portable fans which friends and relatives are bringing in. That’s 10 degrees less than we are talking about here. This is horrible, as I gather little was learned from the 2003 disaster. God help them.
I seem to remember 12 days over 100 degrees in Bordeaux in 2022 but ChatGPT says only 6…
No such issues in Edinburgh!
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The no AC thing really sucks. I visited my son in Palo Alto last week with an unusual high of 101F, and no AC in his apartment. Pretty unpleasant.