The 2024 vintage was an exhausting and finally disheartening one for most French winegrowers. Some claimed that they had spent twice as long in the vineyards, made twice as many anti-fungal treatments and spent twice as much on chemical products and on labour as they usually did – at the end of which they were finally rewarded with a harvest that was 23.5% smaller than the admittedly generous harvest of 2023. France’s 2024 total of 36.1 million hl (OIV figures, published April 2025) means that this was the nation’s smallest harvest since 2017 and historically one of the smallest since 1945 (alongside 1957 and 1991).

Was 2023 a good vintage in France? Or a bad one?  It was both – and neither.  The word that probably best sums it up is ‘chaos’; it was France’s most chaotic vintage since 2017.  This is exactly what winegrowers should expect as we slide towards 2030, setting fire to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement goals as we go.  Climate change will, we know, bring climate chaos; 2023 offered a foretaste.