Bordeaux Grape Crop Seen Two Weeks Late in Worst Year Since 1991

(Bloomberg) - The Bordeaux region grape harvest is about two weeks delayed after a cold start to the season, with production set to fall to the lowest level in 22 years, according to the region’s wine bureau.

Some growers in Pessac Leognan will start picking sauvignon blanc grapes for dry white wines next week and most will begin Sept. 23, compared with last year’s Sept. 4 start, Valerie Descudet, a spokeswoman for industry group Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux, said by phone yesterday.

The wine bureau has predicted this year’s vintage will slump 20 percent from last year’s 5.25 million hectoliters (139 million gallons), for the smallest volume since 2.58 million hectoliters in 1991. Bordeaux suffered from a cold spring that hurt pollination, followed by damaging hailstorms last month.

“We’re going to see the lowest crop we’ve seen in Bordeaux since 1991, so the pricing will be really interesting to see, how it comes out onto the market,” Tom Gearing, director of Cult Wines Ltd., a wine investment company based in Richmond, England, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “The Pulse” with Guy Johnson yesterday.

The Liv-ex Fine Wine 50 index, which tracks leading Bordeaux vintages, gained 5.5 percent in the past 12 months.

Red wine grapes won’t be picked before the start of October, compared with a Sept. 24 start to the merlot harvest in Saint-Emilion last year, while harvesting of grapes for the sweet Sauternes white wines is expected to start in the first week of next month, Descudet said.

Descudet declined to provide a precise harvest estimate, saying production figures will be more certain at the start of next year after growers have declared their crops.