Vintages and weather: a comparison between Bordeaux and burgundy

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this short paper is to examine the vintage charts from 1949 to 2014 for Bordeaux and Burgundy regions and apply Ashenfelter’s models to estimate the relationship between vintage and weather and compare the results between Bordeaux and Burgundy. The results show that the impact of temperature during the growing season and rain during the harvest season is similar in Bordeaux and Burgundy but also for red and white wines.

KEYWORDS:

• Hedonic models
• wine vintage
• wine economics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Jean-François Outreville http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5923-5651

Notes

1 www.hachette-vins.com/presentation-du-guide-hachette-des-vins.html

2 After the cool 1975, the two drought years of 1976 and 1977, the partially successful 1978 when compared to Burgundy, the cold and wet 1979, the heat-affected 1980, and the rained harvest season of 1981, 1982 was the first chance for a ‘great’ vintage since 1974. As such, there was much anticipation that the 1982s would be favored. Most journalists were starved for another ‘vintage of the century’ … but only in Bordeaux. The same story was being repeated for the vintage 2000 again with a major difference between Bordeaux and Burgundy.