THE DAY THE CHABLIS DIED
THE “apocalypse” came to Jean-Christophe Bersan’s vineyard in central France on the last Friday in May. At three o’clock that afternoon his rows of vines looked “beautiful” in the early summer sun. Then the menacing dark clouds arrived.
“Huge hailstones fell,” he said later. “We went to find shelter. For nearly half an hour, the rain ravaged everything in its path. Twenty centimetres (8 inches) of hail and 40 millimetres (1.6 inches) of water were enough to transform our vines into a huge torrent of mud. After the storm, all our hills were white, as if it had snowed.”
In less than 30 minutes his verdant idyll, which has been producing chardonnay grapes to make the distinctively “flinty” white wine called chablis for generations, was reduced to a “lunar landscape”.
And Bersan is just one of dozens of winemakers in the region who have been hit by a perfect storm of meteorological phenomena. Crops already blighted by Hailstones as big as eggs batter grapes – so some wine prices are about to soar frost and heavy rain in April were pummelled shortly afterwards by hailstones the size of eggs. More than 1,000 acres of prized vines have been all but destroyed. The national farming organisation declared a “state of catastrophe”.
“There are different estimates but there are strong signs that the 2016 vintage of chablis could be cut by as much as 50 per cent,” says Richard Bampfield, one of only 206 Masters of Wine in the UK and a consultant to the supermarket chain Lidl.
The looming shortage means prices are bound to rise in the coming months and now is the time to stock up.
The good news is that supermarket chains such as Lidl, which sells around one of every 20 bottles of wine bought in the UK, have plenty of chablis on the shelves as things stand and there are a number of alternatives for wine drinkers prepared to extend their repertoire (see panel below). Lidl’s buyers suggest a muscadet or a white bordeaux for those looking for a value alternative while Bampfield recommends a macon villages or a saint-veran from the southern Burgundy region, which escaped the devastation wreaked on its northern neighbours.
More far-flung options include a picpoul de pinet from the Languedoc in southern France. “It is unoaked, lighter than the chablis, but goes well with fish and other seafood and can play the same role as a chablis even though it is made from a different grape,” says Bampfield.
ARISE in the cost of chablis is not the only problem facing the British wine drinker. The pound has fallen steeply against the currencies of all the major wine-producing countries following the Brexit vote with the result that prices of everything from French claret and Italian chianti to Californian pinot noir and Australian sauvignon blanc are likely to creep upwards in the coming months.
The major beneficiaries of this situation could be UK vineyards. British wines were once seen as a bit of a joke by the snooty Old World producers of Europe but in recent years brands such as Nyetimber, Gusbourne and Chapel Down have been producing white and sparkling wines that have performed well in international competitions.
Indeed, at a blind tasting in Paris organised by the British wine expert and author Matthew Jukes to coincide with St George’s Day on April 23 this year, many English sparkling wines were voted superior to champagne.
Among the successes was a £40 bottle of 2009 Nyetimber sparkling wine produced in West Sussex. Nine members of the 14-member panel considered it better than a £65 bottle of Billecart-Salmon Grand Cru champagne.
“Cheers!” as we say in Britain – or “Sacre bleu!” as they would say in France.
LIDL’S SUPERB CHABLIS OFFERINGS…PLUS TWO TEMPTING ALTERNATIVES