It’s always better to wait a day or two for ‘quantification’ – for more sombre reflection, if needed, taking emotion out of the equation – but the hail didn’t look (or sound!) good in Beaune today.

I left Switzerland at 7am, and all the way to the French border, on the other side of the Jura, it was stormy with significant rain and occasion (tiny) hailstones. So it was a surprise to arrive in Beaune to 28°C and blue skies in the middle of the morning – the forecast isn’t great for the Côte d’Or this week, but all looked fine. Over lunch the sky darkened and we had some heavy rain. At 2pm it turned to hail – about 1cm sized projectiles – at least in the centre of Beaune – and that lasted for close to 5 minutes. It’s hard to believe that there won’t be damage, it’s only a question of the ‘spread.’ The storm rumbles away for 3 hours before the sun returns, but only with modest rain as accompaniment. Judging by the weather forecast the next days will also not be easy.

Today, at best, all the hail cannons managed, was to soften the blows to my roof!

Hedging this morning in Beaune 1er Les Toussaints – very tidy!

There’s been lots of rain but plenty of warm days too, so the work in the vines is unrelenting as everything grows so fast – mainly spraying and currently ‘hedging’ i.e. giving the vines a tidying haircut.

The spraying is currently a priority because of the relative warmth and humidity – i.e. the rain. There is mildew in the vines but, so-far, it’s under control but everyone would like the rain to stop and a dry wind to blow. After a couple of weeks with virtually daily storms of thunder and lightning, it looks like next week will be warm and sunny – just what the doctor ordered.

Regarding the storms, there has been a very small amount of localised hail, but given the frequency of the storms it’s remarkable that there is practically no damage – is that down to luck or down to the anti-hail network? Nobody can say for sure, but there are 3 networks:

• Chablis and Grand Auxerrois
• Côtes de Beaune, de Nuits and Chalonnaise
• Mâconnais and Beaujolais

In total there are 145 ‘generators’ (hail cannons) in Burgundy, and they have been use about 10 times up to the 11 of June. So, as long as there is no damage, the producers can pat themselves on the back as it was such a good investment!

Thunder, lightening, heavy rain and even the occasional rainbow in Morey St.Denis this afternoon.

Well, it’s already April, and we have passed the the poisson d’avril so maybe it’s safe to ask about 2018…

I was with Charles Lachaux in the torrential rain this morning, so I put the question to him; ‘Given the cold, ice and snow of February and March, is 2018 a little behind the average growth-cycle today?’

“Well, we have definitely seen plenty of rain so far this year, but I would rather say that we are neither early or late, I see a traditional, normal, vintage so far. With a normal summer we would be harvesting somewhere between mid and late-September. Of-course, with all this rain we are only going to need a few days of 20°C-plus and the vines will explode with growth…”

Yep, the start of the year has, indeed, been been very wet: