French Wine Regions Slammed by Hailstorms

(WineSpectator) - Vouvray is reeling from a historically brutal storm; Chinon and Cahors hit as well.

"I was at Vinexpo and I got a call at 6 a.m. in bed," said Benoît Gautier, proprietor of Domaine de la Châtaigneraie and a vice president of the Syndicat des Vignerons de Vouvray, in the central Loire Valley of France. On the other end of the line: "'We have a catastrophe.'"

Even old-timers cannot remember the last time Vouvray saw a hailstorm as bad and as late as the one that hit in the early hours of June 17. "For people like my parents, never something of that scale," said Céline Champalou of Domaine Champalou. "Even the old people of Vouvray never saw something like that." The most recent comparable storm vignerons could think of struck in 1930.

According to early estimates, two-thirds of the appellation was hit by hailstones, some of them bigger than golf balls, with damage to parcels ranging from 20 to 100 percent. Gautier estimates harvest will bring 50 percent of a typical yield across the appellation, "perhaps." In his own vineyards, he estimates only 10 percent of the crop is salvageable, after a frost- and mildew-plagued 2012 that cost him half his crop last year.

But despite the evident damage, vintners noted that they will not have a clear picture of the extent of the damage until weeks from now, as vignerons and the vines themselves tend to their wounds