Bouts of frost, heat in 2017 reduce Swiss wine harvest

GENEVA, Feb. 12 (Xinhua) -- Extreme weather over the past year in Switzerland has led to the smallest wine harvest in nearly four decades, the country's Federal Agricultural Office said Monday.

The 79 million liters of red and white wine of the 2017 vintage is a decrease of 27 percent compared with 2016, the office said in a statement.

It is due to cold nights last April and of hot and dry days in August, said the office, adding that the worst affected wine-growing region was the French-speaking part of the country, notably, canton Valais.

However, experts say the quality of the 2017 wine harvest is expected to be "very satisfactory" due to the high concentration of natural sugar in the grapes, said the statement.

Unseasonable frosty weather in April had devastated 40 percent of vineyards in canton Valais, officials said last year.

"Over three nights winegrowers and fruit farmers have lost almost all of their harvests," Gerald Dayer, head of the canton's agricultural service, had said on April 25.

Vineyards in Switzerland are small on a world scale, covering about 14,750 hectares.

The vineyards of canton Valais, extending over a hundred kilometers along the River Rhone, account for a third of the total wine-production in Switzerland. Enditem