German vineyards in several regions suffered frost damage in late April and insurance group Allianz Agrar has said it expects payouts on customer claims to be in the ‘double-digit million’ range.

It’s still assessing damage, but it described the late spring frosts as the worst in at least 40 years.

‘I have experienced many late-frost years, but I have never seen anything like this,’ said Martin Heiß, head of claims for crop insurance at Allianz Agrar. ‘The frost came at the worst possible moment for the vines.’

Warm temperatures up to mid-April meant that vineyards were already at a relatively advanced stage in the early growing season, leaving them more exposed when temperatures plunged as low as minus seven degrees Celsius at night, according to the company.

A German Wine Institute spokesperson told Decanter, ‘The frost damage has been severe for several wine producers, especially in the north of the wine growing regions of Baden, Württemberg and parts of Franconia.’

Around 80% of vines were also damaged in the eastern regions of Sachsen and Saale-Unstrut.

He said the situation is very hard for affected producers, although the impact on Germany’s overall 2024 wine harvest is likely to be relatively low.

Sachsen and Saale-Unstrut, for example, constitute around 1.3% of the country’s total vineyard area of 103,687 hectares.

Allianz Agrar said its experts would visit more than 30,000 vineyards in the coming weeks to provide final damage assessments. It said some wineries were facing the loss of their 2024 grape harvest.

While frost impact may vary between specific sites in one area, vines may also partially compensate for any losses via a second budding – although the success of this is hard to predict.

Germany’s Wine Institute said in mid-June that the crucial flowering period had gone well for vineyards unaffected by frost, although second budding was delayed at frost-damaged sites.

Müller-Thurgau and ‘Burgundy’ grape varieties are known to still produce some flowers after second budding, but this is not so much the case for Riesling, it added.

Allianz Agrar highlighted the importance of multi-risk insurance to protect against extreme weather events.

Researchers have said climate change heightens the potential impact of frosts in vineyards, because warmer winters have brought forward the growing season – leaving more young buds vulnerable to a sudden cold snap.

Late spring frosts across Europe in 2017 caused an estimated €3.3bn of damage to fruit and wine growers, of which around €600m was insured, according to a 2018 report by insurance group Munich Re – cited by a study published in the Climate Risk Management journal in 2023.

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