Wine and Song: The Upper Loire, 2026. The 2024 Vintage
This is the first of three collections of tasting notes on the wines of France’s Massif Central to be published in 2026. In this report I focus on the 2024 vintage. To read my introduction to this report, with a background to the region and its wines as well as brief primers on the four main appellations, see Wine and Song: The Upper Loire. Subsequent reports will cover the 2023 and 2022 vintages.
Before presenting my tasting notes, a short briefing on the 2024 vintage as it pertains to this region is warranted.
The 2024 Vintage
Everywhere you look – in those appellations that lie further downstream on the Loire and its tributaries, from Sancerre down to Muscadet, and also further afield in Bordeaux, Burgundy and the like – the 2024 season was defined by rain. The average rainfall across France was 1075 mm, making it the seventh wettest year since French meteorological records began (behind 1960, 1999, 1965, 1994, 2000 and 1981).
The Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, where we find the vineyards of the Massif Central, was not an exception to this rule, with an average recorded rainfall of 1084 mm, 16% higher than the average. The 2024 vintage here was thus characterised by rain, starting early in spring and progressing right through summer and the harvest. The weather station at Clermont-Ferrand, for example, recorded an annual rainfall of 715 mm; although this seems low compared to the figures above, Clermont-Ferrand sits in the rain shadow of the Chaînes des Puys (a chain of extinct volcanoes in the Auvergne), and this level of rainfall is at least 150 mm above the average. Along with this, there were also below-average hours of sunshine. Similar patterns were seen across the weather stations positioned in or close to the other three vineyards.
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