CNN reports on the battle against spring frost on the estate

In the first week of April we suffered an episode of severe frost, that required the mobilization of around 30 people in the vineyards. These went into action across the whole of the estate, in the most precious appellations of the Côte de Beaune , Meursault , Puligny and Criots-Bâtard-Montrachet .

In their battle against the frost which, let it be remembered, was particularly intense with temperatures that plummeted to -7° in some places, our teams lit 300 candles per hectare, over 3 hectares, for 3 nights in a row. These were spaced out in the vine rows and lit just before dawn to heat up the layer of air closest to the soil in a bid to save the buds and tender leaves that had already come out, encouraged by the exceptionally warm temperatures at the end of March. However, in spite of this rapid intervention and huge resources allocated to it, the damage was enormous, and disastrous for the Chardonnay , Burgundy’s emblematic grape variety, which will not produce any fruit this year. 

To immortalize the extent of the efforts made by our teams to protect our vineyards in these extreme conditions, we took drone footage of our estate twinkling with the lights of thousands of anti-frost candles. We had the good fortune to see these images taken up by the media and shown all around the world. The video was seen by more than 5 million people on local and regional media such as Le Bien Public, on the French national news, and on international TV such as CNN, the famous American news channel, but also in Germany, Spain, the UK, Ireland, and Japan.   

See the original article : https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/14/business/france-wine-production-losses/