Bordeaux 2017: The Harvest
After an early budbreak, and deliriously warm weather throughout much of the growing season, this was always going to be an early vintage. Before looking at the progress of picking, though, it is worthwhile returning to the story of the frost for a moment.
On page 2 of this weather and vintage report I presented a map, distributed by the Bordeaux Chambre d’Agriculture, which serves to illustrate which parts of Bordeaux were worst or least affected by the 2017 frost. Of course, it is only after the harvest, once the region’s many châteaux have submitted their harvest figures in their annual déclaration de récolte, that the true and complete picture of April’s defoliation became clear.
For this reason it is worth returning here to explore the effect the frost had on the 2017 harvest.
The Frost Effect
The volume of the harvest in Bordeaux has been in gradual decline in recent years, but this trend was reversed in the 2016 vintage. The harvest in 2016 produced 577 million litres of wine, a volume not seen since the 2006 vintage. As a consequence of the frost, however, the volume in 2017 has been dramatically reduced, to an estimated 320 million litres. This is a lower yield even than the 2013 vintage, which was a complete wash-out widely regarded within the region as the worst Bordeaux vintage in thirty years. Compared to the ten-year average for the harvest, which sits at 530 million litres, the 2017 harvest is more than 220 million litres short, a loss of 40% across the region.
