France's wine industry is staring down a historic low harvest after a summer of heatwaves did to vineyards what you'd expect a series of heatwaves to do to vineyards.

At about 35m hectolitres, the total harvest would be down 2% on a mediocre 2025 yield and 14% below the 2021-2025 average, according to estimates published on Wednesday by the ministry of agriculture. The International Organisation of Vine and Wine, which tracks global statistics on wine production and consumption, noted that France last year recorded its lowest production since 1957 - a year when, presumably, nobody was blaming anything on climate change because the term hadn't been invented yet.

This latest decline is the result of hot weather, slightly mitigated by recent rainfall, and a reduction in cultivated areas, which were pared back by 1.9% in the past year. Because nothing says "vintage year" like shrinking your vineyards and hoping for the best.

Some southern areas, already battered by the heat in 2025, have nonetheless seen production rise this year. In Bordeaux, despite a 5% decrease in cultivated areas, production is expected to increase by 10% on 2025, though this is still 11% below the 2021-2025 average. For the south-west the rise is about 12%, essentially a return to the previous four-year average. So the south is fine, which is great news if you enjoy wine from the south and absolutely irrelevant if you don't.

The Champagne region fared less well as growers had to harvest exceptionally early after the extreme heat sped up sugar build-up and hence natural alcohol production. The harvest there wrapped up in September for the first time, with production down by half on last year and the five-year average.

Claude Mandois, a producer in Champagne, reported harvesting three-quarters of an average yield in terms of volume but added: "In terms of quality visually and in terms of taste we had an exceptional harvest." So the champagne is excellent, there's just half as much of it. Cheers.

In Burgundy and the Beaujolais region, production is projected to be 30% lower than the five-year average.

"It's a level of heterogeneity I've never experienced before," said Jérôme Despey, the chair of the wine advisory board at the public agency FranceAgriMer and a winegrower in the southern Hérault department. He said vines in the south had become more resilient to the climate, with previous intense heat spells causing growers to adapt vineyard management practices such as largely leaving leaves to protect the grapes. Southern regions also benefited from May rainfall.

The ministry and the industry emphasised overall the "excellent health" of the harvest, which was free of fungi and other moisture-related diseases. So the grapes are healthy, there are just fewer of them, and the ones that exist are mostly in the south now. French wine: still delicious, increasingly scarce, and now with a side of existential dread.