I asked a couple of producers this morning if it was bad, or really bad, both said the latter.

Without doubt it is a very important event, though I’m sure it’s better to wait until after the fruit-set to see if 30% or 75% of the potential harvest is lost. But however we look at it, it’s a massive loss, which (so far anecdotally) is a loss shared equally between the Côte de Beaune and the Côte de Nuits – for once!

Whilst it’s still a tiny snapshot, I walked in a lot of the Côte de Beaune vineyards today:

• Santenay hillside – looks 90%+ okay
• Chassagne 1ers Morgeot and Maltrioe – some vines totally blitzed, other maybe lost only 25% of buds
• Chevalier-Montrachet (lower) and Montrachet – the same as in Chassagne
• The bottom of Meursault wasn’t good, the bottom of Perrières, including the Clos des Perrières, looked okay.
• The top of Volnay and Beaune looked not bad, the bottom of both was not good – Grèves included in that.
• Bottom of Corton on Pernand side, not good
• Mid-Charlemagne (below the cross) looked fine, likewise mid-Bressandes too.

From what I looked at, the top vines did better than the bottom vines, but a couple of vignerons told me it was the reverse in some places. The leaves ‘burned’ by the frost are obvious – already silver grey and crispy dry versus the green of healthy leaves. Pinot often looks okay, probably because it is a little behind chardonnay in the growth cycle, but there were also pinots with tiny but clearly frosted buds…

I will be charging around the Côte de Nuits tomorrow…