Freak blast or taste of the future? French wine-makers count heatwave cost

"It's a warning," Catherine Bernard said gravely as she surveyed rows of withered vines at her wine estate in southern France, where a blazing Sun scorched part of the harvest.

Bernard's vineyard near the city of Montpellier lies in a region that meteorologists this week likened to California's "death valley" as temperatures rose to 45.9 degrees Celsius, a record for France.

On June 28, the hottest day of the heatwave that engulfed parts of France, Spain, Italy and Germany, vines in the Herault and neighbouring Gard regions -- home to the Pic Saint Loup and Coteaux de Languedoc appellations -- were badly burnt.

Bernard, who watched a part of her grenache (a red wine grape variety) crop in Restinclieres wither on the vine, saw it as a "warning" of worse to come as the planet warms due to climate change.

Noting that grapevines are native to the Mediterranean, and therefore more heat-resistant than many other plants, she noted: "If we cannot grow them in the south of France, we must accept that we cannot grow anything else here either and that humans are no longer in their rightful place here." -
"It's a red card telling us to reassess the way we have been living these past 50 years."