French vineyards suffer losses in Aude wildfire

By Henry Gale

Aug 13 - (The Insurer) - While France's largest wildfire in 80 years caused limited damage to property, early indications suggest a significant portion of its economic losses will be suffered by vineyards.

A "record event in terms of the severity of the fire (and) the speed of propagation", the success of firefighters in containing it was encouraging, Antoine Halff, co-founder and chief analyst at risk modelling firm Kayrros, told The Insurer on Tuesday.

"If you look at the losses of buildings in the path of the fire, they have been actually quite limited compared to what you could have expected."

In its weekly catastrophe review on Friday, Aon said economic losses from the fire would likely reach tens of millions of dollars, based on reported damage to at least 25 houses and 30 vehicles. It said that the impact on agriculture would add to the overall damage.

"The most affected crops will be vineyards and, to a lesser extent, orchards and field crops," Henri Hélias, Howden France's national director for agricultural/viticultural/climatic risks, told The Insurer on Monday.

Around 25% of the burned area as of August 6 consisted of vineyards, corresponding to 2,819 hectares of land, Aon said. Aude is a major wine producer, with grape varieties including Syrah, Grenache, Carignan, Mourvèdre, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Mauzac.

Sanjana Dude, product manager at Kayrros, said the firm had analysed what areas had been damaged within the fire's perimeter using high-resolution satellite imagery. "We see that around 285 hectares of vineyards have been damaged or burnt within the envelope," Dude said.

The average revenue for vineyards in this region is between 5,000 euros and 10,000 euros per hectare, she continued. Because vines tend to start producing yields only after five years, that would imply a loss of roughly 7 million to 14 million euros, which could vary depending on the specific vineyards.

Local growers who spoke to Reuters last week said even grapes in vineyards that had not been directly damaged by the fires could also be unusable after being covered in fire-retardant chemicals or tainted by smoke.

Vineyards can act as a natural firebreak due to their high moisture content, spacing between rows and other factors. As a result, some vines survived even as fires burned around them, even if their grapes were destroyed, Reuters reported.

Local winemakers and mayors are blaming the fire's rapid spread on a recent reduction in vineyards in the Aude region, where nearly 5,000 hectares of vines have been dug up in the last 12 months due to declining wine consumption and state subsidies.

"It's very striking that everywhere where there were vineyards, the fire was for the most part stopped," French Prime Minister François Bayrou told growers as he visited the fire zone on August 6.

However, where vineyards act as a firebreak, "that's at the expense of the vineyards themselves", Halff said.

Hélias said insurers had not yet identified, let alone quantified, the extent of losses, but said the capabilities of climate insurers will be sufficient to cover all the crops planted in the sector.

"If the 2025 harvest is lost for some winegrowers, it is still too early to know if the various plots will start again in 2026 and then the damage will be much greater," he added.