Loire 2025: The Wines
There was an obvious subtext to last year’s Loire vintage report, and that was climate change. Or, to echo the term I used back then, climate chaos.
This subtext remains as we consider the 2025 vintage – although it is perhaps less of a subtext now, and more a central theme. This has been another year of extreme weather conditions in the Loire Valley, albeit at the opposite end of the spectrum to that seen in 2024. We have left behind the persistent rain and mildew of last year, it being replaced by a long, warm and baking drought instead.
My report on the weather of the 2025 season in the Loire Valley describes its potential impact on the vines in detail, but a few facts will help consolidate the message.
French meteorological records inform us that the summer of 2025 was the third hottest since records began (coming in behind 2003 and 2022), with a national average temperature of 22.2ºC, a huge 1.9ºC above the 1991 – 2020 average. The June heatwave bolstered this effect, being 3.3ºC above the norm, and the second of the year’s two heatwaves, in August, was also noteworthy, bringing temperatures above 40ºC to many regions. These are national figures, but the Loire Valley did not escape these extremes, the vines enduring prolonged heat, intense sunshine and very limited rainfall during key stages of the season. The heat and high water stress interfered with the vine’s lifecycle, with the potential to accelerate ripening at some stages, and to shut down photosynthesis and fruit development at others.
In viticultural terms, 2025 will be remembered in the Loire Valley as one of the hottest and driest growing seasons of the modern era, with conditions favouring an early harvest of exceptionally healthy fruit, with many vignerons reporting the cleanest harvest they had ever seen. This is not a vintage in which we should be concerned about dilution, high acidities or the effects of vine maladies such as mildew or rot. This is clearly a vintage in which discerning wine drinkers will be asking what impact this extreme weather has had on freshness and balance, key features in Loire Valley wines.
