Sunday in the Haut-Rhin, north of a "cold diagonal" which extends from the northeast to the southwest of France, the situation was "personally complicated to live" for Thomas Muré, a winegrower who cultivates "very early" grape varieties of Gewürztraminer and pinot.
"These shoots are going to die this evening", says the winegrower who has neither heaters to warm up his rows of grape varieties by a few degrees, nor sprinkler systems used in other regions to enclose the buds in a matrix of protective ice. newborns, and thus protect them from the bites of the wind and the cold.
At the other end of the diagonal, in Bergerac (Dordogne), where the thermometer fell to -5.1 degrees, a record for the month of April, Eric Chadourne, winegrower and president of the interprofession of Bergerac wines and Duras was struck by the duration of the frost: "three or four hours" between -3 and -5 degrees overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
A vineyard covered with snow in Saint-Etienne de Baïgorry (south-west of France), April 1, 2022 GAIZKA IROZ AFP
"There will be breakage", predicts this winegrower who started his wind turbine at 10.30 p.m. on Saturday to stir the air around his vines, and thus try to prevent the frost from destroying the young shoots that have just appeared.
"The Garonne valley was particularly affected overnight from Saturday to Sunday and we recorded many falling temperature records," confirms Tristan Amm, forecaster at Météo-France.
"Severe frosts" expected
On average, in France, the temperatures on Sunday were six degrees below the average for the season, according to Météo-France.
A wave of polar air from Scandinavia streaks the country from northeast to southwest and will promote night frosts, especially when the sky is clear on Monday and Tuesday, indicates Météo-France.
The organization predicts again "severe frosts" in the night from Sunday to Monday, on the same axis, from Alsace to the Pyrenees via the Center-East and the Massif Central.
"In the Nevers region, temperatures can drop to -7 degrees," said Mr. Amm.
It also warns of the risk of ice on the roads in the same regions.
The manager of the RTE electricity network, for its part, predicted a tense situation on Monday morning, for the same reason, by calling on companies and individuals to curb their electricity consumption, in particular between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. for household appliances.
On the agricultural side, in Tarn-et-Garonne, Pierre Bonnet, arborist, spent a sleepless night on Saturday with temperatures dropping to -4 degrees on his land.
"The difference with last year is that this temperature is the same in the lowlands of the fields as on the hillsides," he told AFP, fearing for the early varieties of plums.
In the same department, Béatrice Lamanerie, arborist in Lizac, launched the sprinkling on her trees at midnight.
- "Watch all night"
Still in the South-West, the Sauternes very affected by the frost last year was "still very affected" on Saturday, according to Patrick Lamothe, who runs Château Haut-Bergeron and chairs the Maison du Sauternes.
“At -5 degrees, there is not much that has an effect in terms of protection,” he says.
The Saint-Emilion felt the frost pass, "but there will not be the same damage" as a year earlier, the vine being less advanced than last year, hopes Jean-François Galhaud, president of the council of Saint-Emilion wines.
The late pruning adopted by many winegrowers this year as a "passive means of fighting" against frost could also have served as protection for some.
Same hope in Chablis in Burgundy, where Stéphane Aufrère, based in Fleys, hopes that the buds, a little later than last year, will resist.
He spent last night "heating up" what he can and "preparing for the coming night".
“We heat two hectares out of twenty” using large candles distributed between the rows of vines to prevent the cold from seizing the plants.
"We have neither the means nor the staff to protect all our vines," he told AFP.
In the Rhône Valley "there has not been too much damage for the moment but they announce more cold for the nights to come, it looks complicated until Wednesday", notes Elodie Merlin, who operates three hectares of apricot trees in Bourg-les-Valence (Drôme).
The frost has already caused him to lose the harvest of three varieties in recent weeks.
Her husband sleeps there to watch over the orchards: "You have to watch all night, the alarms ring all the time...".
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© 2022 AFP