Ray of light, even in a hailstorm

BEAUNE, Sunday June 29, 2014: I was sitting in the living room of the serviced apartment we had rented in Beaune yesterday, Saturday June 28 morning, looking anxiously at the grey sky, the forecast was showers. They were beginning to come down when suddenly amid the patter of rain, we heard the clatter of small stones on the patio.

I looked outside and saw little grey-white pellets bouncing off the cement floor. It was hail, the third year in succession that Burgundy was affected by hail - mostly in the Cote de Beaune, Pommard, Volnay and Meursault, which appeared to have been the most badly hit. My thoughts immediately went out to my friends who would be particularly affected. It is not funny when your harvest is reduced to 25 per cent of its usual size, and when this happens three years in succession, it can spell financial ruin for smaller growers. There does not seem to be anything one can do to guard against hail, except to pray.

We, my wife Melina and I, were in Burgundy for our annual visits to our friends, and this was the first time we have actually experienced hail ourselves. The hailstones we saw were approximately the size of small pebbles. Big enough to knock off the tiny fruit that was just beginning to appear following the flowering. I wondered what it would be like to be hit by such hail stones but decided against trying it out! The sharp clatter of those ice stones on the cement floor was enough to indicate that they would hurt like shotgun pellets. It was worst in Volnay, Pommard and Meursault where the stones reached golf-ball sizes and the crop lost was up to 70 per cent.