France faces worst wine grape harvest since 1945

Wine production to fall by 18% on 2016 after spring frosts ravage vines, but hot summer could deliver top vintages

France is expecting its poorest wine grape harvest since 1945 after an unusually mild March and a frosty April, experts have said, although the hot summer promises to deliver excellent quality.

"At harvests everywhere, in places where we thought there would be a little less, there's a lot less," Ji(C)rime Despey, head of a governmental wine advisory board, said on Friday. This year's harvest will be the smallest since 1945, he told a news conference.