Over the past few days, night frosts have damaged a large part of the vineyards. According to the Winemakers’ Association, damage in the Czech Republic reaches 95 percent, while in Moravia it is at least 23 percent. “Due to the spring frosts that affected the entire Czech Republic from April 18 to 26, there was total damage to the 2024 year in the amount of about 2.1 billion crowns,” said the president of the Association, Martin Chlad, on Friday.
The stated amount includes the frozen vines in the vineyard as well as the shortfall in this year’s wine production. “The effects of the frost on the sector will be fatal, it will certainly affect the price of grapes of the 2024 vintage and there will also be a reduction in the volume of domestic raw material,” said Chlad. According to him, two billion crowns worth of grapes are grown in the Czech Republic every year.
“We basically lost one hundred percent of the harvest. We estimate the damage at 10 million crowns,” Kateřina Kreisinger from the Czech winery Chramce Kreisinger described the situation already on Thursday. “We’ll see if anything survives, but we reckon we won’t make any wine this year,” she added.
According to Chlad, this year’s frosts have once again shown how fragile winemaking is. “An excise tax on still wine would make our situation even worse. We will unequivocally demand an end to the consideration of the introduction of this tax,” says the president of the Winemakers’ Union resolutely.
The winegrowers tried to protect their vineyards, for example, by lighting anti-freeze candles, but the temperatures were strong and, moreover, lasted for many nights in a row.
