SION - Winegrowers on the lower Rhone slopes lit frost candles and ran wind machines in the small hours of Thursday after forecasts put temperatures below the safety line for early buds. The stretch between Sion and Martigny was the anxious one. Higher, later sites were calmer.
By midday the damage reports were mixed: scorch in a few hollows, little in the breeze. Growers will know more in a week. They always say that, and it is true.
A small canton with a long memory
Valais has lost springs before. Insurance and neighbourly labour matter more than adjectives. Harvest stories in October will remember this night or forget it.