English wine crop ruined as late frosts bite after a warm spell

A SERIES of late frosts have wiped out grape crops, hitting wine producers across England and much of the Continent.

English winemakers, who have enjoyed remarkable plaudits and sales growth, are reporting ‘catastrophic’ damage to their crops.

A warm spell earlier this year encouraged vines to produce plentiful buds that should have turned into grapes through the spring and summer.

But a sudden sharp fall in ground and air temperatures over the past week or so, to as low as -6C, killed off many of the delicate buds.

As a result, leading vineyards responsible for producing internationally celebrated English sparkling wines fear crop yields will collapse by as much as 80 per cent. Some English producers lit thousands of candles in between their vines to try and mitigate the worst of the ground frost, but these were useless against air frosts.

Nick Wenman, owner of the organic Albury vineyard near Guilford, said: ‘We can normally cope with ground frosts – they can be damaging but nothing like the air frost we experienced.

‘It was like an Arctic wind blowing through the vineyard which froze everything in its path. And because of the warm start to the year the buds were early and quite well-developed when it struck.

Second buds are never quite as fruitful and we may not have enough time for them to ripen properly – in our case this means a 50 per cent shortfall which is not good for the longterm view.’

The bitter frosts and ensuing failure of harvests this year will hit the shelves in 2019 and 2020. Chief executive of the award winning Denbies Wine Estate, in Surrey, Chris White, said it was ‘heart breaking’ for his staff.

‘Second buds are not as fruitful’