'Climate Change' Clobbers French Wine Crop

I am taking a chance but have just planted my tomatos out here in Southern England hoping we don’t get an unseasonable frost. We have an old weather saw “Ne’er cast a clout till May be out” meaning don’t take your winter clothes off until June. A frost in May is rare but not unknown.

From the Chateau Margaux website.
FROSTS
Among all the risks that are the farmers’ lot in life, frost and hail are the two most terrible and unfair. In just a few minutes they can reduce to nothing a whole year, or even several years’ efforts. But by some sort of miracle, the great terroirs more often than not, escape these misfortunes. Hail is almost unknown at Château Margaux.
Why ? We really don’t know. On the one hand, if frost misses the greater part of our vineyard, it’s thanks to its particular situation, close to the river where the thermal inertia protects its surroundings from the cold and is sufficiently elevated to escape the accumulation of masses of icy air. Every rule has its exceptions… our white plot presents such a sensitivity to spring frosts that we decided, as of 1983, to install an anti-frost system. The principle is simple: we spray the vines with water for as long as the frost lasts, generally until dawn. The heat produced by the formation of ice enables the maintenance of the temperature above the limit below which the vegetation is destroyed. Before starting the sprinklers, we have to take into account the temperature, the wind and the air humidity, and all this at three o’clock in the morning! When the decision has been taken, in spite of fatigue, it’s a huge consolation to save the harvest and to be present at the fairy-like show given by the ice as it forms around the buds.
This was originally published in the “Cheers! A Celebration of Pub Life” issue of Birth.Movies.Death.
The summer of 1953 was long and hot, dry and with plenty of sunshine. The grapes ripened slowly and steadily, and the season’s only real hiccup was a sudden storm in September that forced Château Margaux to postpone the harvest (though this did have the added benefit of allowing the grapes a little bit more time to ripen, a particular fear in Bordeaux as wine made from overripe grape tends to taste unpleasantly of stewed fruit, but one that was happily not founded here). The resultant bottling by Château Margaux is considered not just among the finest wines of that particularly good year, but as Withnail himself says, “’53 Margaux. Best of the century.”
And here we have the tragic beauty of that wine’s ultimate fate, and of the entirety of Withnail & I. The film ends with Withnail standing alone in the rain, drinking this wonderful Margaux (less of a drink and more of a piece of art and history) straight from the bottle, reciting the melancholy words of Shakespeare with only the wolves for company.
” I have of late–but wherefore I know not–lost all my mirth …”

If the French and British wine growers had subscribed to Joe Bastardi’s weather service, they would have known this before planting, because he’s been forecasting this since mid–, possibly early, March.