Flowering starts across the vineyards of France

he first photos of vineyards in bloom have started to emerge and Arnaud Ferraro got the ball rolling on May 8 on Facebook with this picture of a Grenache vine. “I pruned this block around December 15 and 5% of the vines are starting to flower”, explained the vice-chairman of the Golfe young farmers’ association who is a co-operative winegrower in Grimaud, southern France.

“It’s not a good sign when vines start to flower when the canes have not grown a lot yet”, commented fellow winegrower Fabien Garcia in Aude, where most of the canes are only 20 to 30 cm long. Ferraro responded by saying that vine growth was fast in his vineyards: “We will soon be able to close the trellis wires”.

Located between the two regions, Vincent Darmilli grows vines in Capestang, Hérault, and his Chardonnays have also started to flower. “I couldn’t say if flowering is early but I do know that budburst was two weeks late”, he told Vitisphere.

At Domaine Gardiès in Espira-de-l’Agly, in the Pyrénées-Orientales region near the Spanish border, flowering started with the Carignans. In the same village, Domaine de Lampyres also saw some of its Grenache vines reach the flowering stage.

The 2023 vintage is therefore akin to 2022. Last year, the first signs of flowering started on May 10 and were fairly widespread across early-ripening vineyards in the Loire, Champagne, Bordeaux and Languedoc. Last year, some consultants were also afraid that drought issues in the soils would make the process more challenging.  

Commenting on Ferraro’s publication of his photos, Mickaël Gente responded that the vineyards of Muscadet are still a long way off the flowering stage, especially because cool temperatures and rain were forecast for the following week. A winegrower in Ventoux made a similar comment.