Drink Feature
HERE’S SOME BAD NEWS: THE WORLD IS FACING A SHORTAGE OF WINE
Venue Insight spoke to Lanchester Wines’ Head of Sales, Mark Roberts about what wine lovers can expect from the 2017 harvest.
Fires, floods, frosts and devastating heatwaves. It sounds like the stuff of biblical tales, but unfortunately these are the factors which have affected 2018 wine harvests across the globe.
When pouring a glass of your favourite wine, it can be easy to forget that the grapes it’s made from are an agricultural crop. As with any living element, these crops need the right growing environment to thrive – too hot and they die, too cold and they die, too wet and they die… you get the picture.
The 2017 growing season could surely be named an annus horribilis. Some reports are saying it’s the worst wine harvest in 36 years:
12 FEBRUARY 2018
WWW.VENUE-INSIGHT.COM
• Grapes in France were damaged by unseasonal spring frosts and then heavy hail – the grapes become bruised and unusable. This is an historic low, 16% lower than the five-year average and worse than 1991.
• In Italy, these devastating spring frosts struck again and were combined with isolated hailstorms and a heatwave known as ‘Lucifer’ resulting in one of the country’s smallest wine harvests for 60 years in 2017, down by 25% on last year.
• spanish harvests are down 20% from 2016 thanks to the combination of frost and drought. Frosts in Rioja caused volumes to be down by volumes down by between 25 – 40%.
• The German harvest is expected to be 18 % down on the previous year after April frosts damaged crops.
• Portuguese most vines remained frost- free but vineyards in northern Portugal were hit by fires in late summer. • California experienced the worst
Mark Roberts, Head of Sales, Lanchester Wines.
wildfires in decades decimating vines across the Sonoma wine region while a Napa heat wave hit 47°C seriously damaging grapes.
• South African yields are likely to plummet by up to 50% this year due to drought on the Western Cape. Most of the industry’s large irrigation dams are only 30 to 40% full meaning
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