Loire 2023: A Fabulous Floraison
While the increasingly wily Mademoiselle Agricultrice has an admittedly fanciful solution for her harvest of Chenin Blanc, sadly contaminated with acid rot, this is not an option for real world vignerons (yes, in case you were uncertain, Mademoiselle Agricultrice is a figment of my over-active imagination). And this is relevant in the 2023 vintage, which culminated in a complicated harvest with variable results, the quality and sanitary condition of the fruit differing markedly between regions, appellations, domaines and even vineyards. The biggest problem was, as Mademoiselle Agricultrice discovered, acid rot.
There is much more to any vintage than what happens at the harvest though. The words of the late Pierre Couly (1935 – 2019) – who once proclaimed that “there are only six weeks that matter when it comes to wines of the Loire, three for the flowering and three for the harvest” – might be catchy but they are not wholly true. This was a difficult season which delivered very wet summer weather to some Loire Valley vineyards, many of which were plagued by mildew.
In this review of the 2023 vintage I provide an account of the weather throughout the season, based on data from from the principal weather stations dotted along the Loire Valley (acknowledging that these are not always right next to the vineyards), combined with reports from the vignerons themselves, as well as what I saw with my own eyes during visits to the vineyards in spring, summer and at harvest.
Winter
The year kicked off in positively balmy style with an unseasonably warm New Year’s Day, the peak temperature ranging from a heady 14.5ºC in the Nantais to a positively tropical 18.4ºC in the Upper Loire, both of which are warmer than a typical summer’s day here in Scotland.
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