Miserable weather during the growing season means that many Chablis winemakers saw a relatively small 2024 harvest.
Figures were still being finalised, but the overall Chablis 2024 harvest was likely to be less than half of the level seen in 2023, said Paul Espitalié, president of the Chablis Commission, which is part of the regional Bourgogne Wine Bureau (BIVB).
Frost, hail, mildew and above-average rainfall in spring and early summer all presented challenges for growers, said Espitalié, although he said producers were happy with the quality of grapes that survived the climate’s onslaught.
‘The wine is tasting good today with a lot of fruit. Of course, it’s more grapefruit and lemon flavours than ripe fruit. [It’s a] very fresh, clean style of Chablis wines.’
A BIVB report on the Chablis 2024 harvest said that yields varied considerably, sometimes within a single village.
While some growers harvested below 10 hectolitres per hectare, a few managed to pick a full crop and the region’s south-east was seemingly spared, it said.
Reserve stocks built up in the 2022 and 2023 vintages should help to cover shortfalls from the smaller 2024 crop, maintaining supplies of Chablis for consumers, according to Espitalié.
Climate change in Chablis
Yet, he said conditions in 2024 add to a sense of climate change throwing up more unpredictable weather patterns in Chablis.
‘It’s not only global warming; we are talking about [the] climate being crazy,’ he said.
‘Some years we will have drought and heatwaves, and the following year we will have two or three times more water.’
Chablis winemakers contended with drought in 2023. In the 2024 growing season, producers saw 50% more rainfall than normal up to the end of August.
‘This year, Chablis town was flooded twice. We had an amount of rain which was quite incredible,’ said Espitalié. He added that hailstorms hit the region’s vineyards in May, earlier in the year than the usual high-risk period.
Meanwhile, warmer weather in February and March can leave more young vine buds exposed to frost if temperatures plunge in April.
‘We need to find solutions’
Growers are trying to find solutions, especially to frost, said Espitalié. ‘If you visit Chablis today, you will see a real evolution.
‘You will find a lot of big propellers with heating systems to heat the air a little bit. You will find more and more vines equipped with heating wires to prevent the frost around the buds.’ Pruning vines later in the season can help to delay bud-burst in the following growth cycle, too.
There is work to explore rootstocks within the Chardonnay grape variety.
Earlier-ripening variants have historically been highly prized, ‘because we were very far north, and the challenge was to have enough sugar and ripe grapes’,’ said Espitalié. ‘Now, we are thinking differently.’
Earlier picking can also help to preserve freshness and acidity in the grapes, he said, quipping that winemakers have stopped taking holidays at the end of August.
Chablis is also helped by its terroir, however, he added. ‘We really have a specific terroir that gives minerality and saltiness to our wine.
‘Even in quite ripe years in the past, even if at the beginning we had very ripe wines…with a few years of ageing you will find this freshness and minerality.’
Espitalié said that Chablis winemakers were considering asking France’s appellation authority, INAO, for greater leeway in terms of how much wine can be set aside in producers’ reserves in larger vintages.
Some wineries had to throw away good stock from the 2023 harvest, he said. An ability to hold bigger reserves could help winemakers to manage stocks, and also help to maintain more stable pricing in export markets.
Broadening Chablis wines’ appeal in UK
Regarding consumer demand for Chablis, Espitalié said sales were showing a good dynamic globally, but he pointed to several years of declining export volumes to the UK.
While the UK remains a major destination for the region’s wines, exports fell 4.7% in the first seven months of 2024, versus the same period of 2023, to 1.67m bottles. By value, exports dropped 7.8% to €17.5m.
Economic factors are considered partly responsible for this, but a new marketing campaign set to launch next year will seek to broaden Chablis wines’ appeal by presenting them as wines for every occasion – a move that it’s hoped could also attract a younger generation of drinkers.
‘I think a big challenge for us is to try to do more communication for younger people,’ said Espitalié.
Rise in organics and tourism
In Chablis itself, research in 2022 found that almost quarter of estate managers and co-managers in Chablis were under the age of 40.
This has been linked to various innovations, including a rise in vineyards converting to organic in recent years, according to the BIVB.
More producers have also switched on to tourism opportunities, according to Espitalié, such as by opening shops in Chablis village. This has been accompanied by a growing restaurant scene, and Espitalié said tourist numbers were rising 20% year-on-year.
In 2023, 500,000 tourists visited Chablis and its surrounding villages, led by visitors from the Netherlands and the UK.
