May 14, 2009, 10:14 GMT
Paris - Already suffering from declining sales and plunging prices, wine makers in the French region of Bordeaux this week suffered staggering losses because of violent storms that struck the area, French media reported Thursday.
Two waves of storms, on Monday and early Wednesday, accompanied by high winds and hailstones up to 4 centimeters in diameter, destroyed thousands of hectares of grapevines belonging to some of the most prestigious vineyards in France.
Jean-Louis Viviere, head of the wine makers association of Graves, told the online edition of the daily Le Figaro that some wine growers lost 30 to 40 per cent of their grapes.
In the areas of Libournais, the eastern sector of St Emilion and the Cotes de Castillon, between 50 and 80 per cent of the grapevines were stripped of their fruit by the storms.
'This is a disaster that fell from the sky and that is part of the life of a wine maker,' said Laurent Dassault, owner of the prestigious Chateau Dassault vineyard. 'The 2009 vintage will be extremely sparse.'
The scale of the damage will not be known until the end of the year, wine experts says.
According to an official from the regional Farms and Forests Office, Philippe Roger, the hardest-hit victims will be wine growers who are not adequately insured or those who are deeply in debt.
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