2022 vintage

The 2022 vintage looks good in most French wine regions. A comfort after the disasters of frost and hail in 2021. But the underlying trend of warming, lack of water and spring vagaries remains worrying.

This new vintage will indisputably be a very good vintage from a qualitative point of view. The weather conditions during the harvest were particularly favourable to the ripening of the grapes. The whites are very aromatic, and the reds benefit from these beautiful weeks at the end of September to soften their tannins.

Regarding the quantity, it will vary greatly from one area to another. The harvest potential, which was considered significant, may have reduced due to the summer water deficit. The rains at the end of August were nevertheless a luck to develop the grapes and thus allow them to recover a few hectoliters. But the summer drought has, at least, had the merit of keeping diseases away from a harvest that looks good overall. The unprecedented maturity of the grapes has also, almost everywhere, beaten records for early harvesting. In the West, the first bunches were collected at the end of August.

The Nantes vineyard, once again affected by frost this spring, regained some volume, thanks to a few final showers.

For Jean-Pierre Gouvazé of InterLoire, in Anjou and Touraine, the situations are contrasting. "For the Chenins and the Cabernet Francs, we can speak of a certain heterogeneity, the drought has sometimes blocked the vine." Indeed, the volumes for the reds are 20% below average, while the Chenin harvest for the Crémant de Loire was particularly good.

In Centre-Loire, we generally never talk about the quality of a vintage before the grapes are in the cellar, but 2022 is looking very good. The winegrowers praise the quality of the yields and the beautiful aromatic balance, enough to boost their enthusiasm, after a complicated 2021 vintage. The harvest, which started early at the end of August, revealed "a very promising aromatic potential and good balance", confirms François Dal, viticultural adviser at the Interprofessional Service for Agronomic Advice on Winemaking and Center Analysis (Sicavac) in Sancerre.

However, whether they have brought in a generous harvest or a reduced harvest again, there is not a vineyard that is not facing the same situation: all prices are rising. From electricity contracts to dry materials (bottles, caps, cases, labels… and so on), the wine sector finds itself between the hammer of inflation, hitting its production costs, and the anvil of recession, influencing the capacity of the markets to accept price increases.