On the 10th of May, a massive hailstorm ripped through the Jumilla wine region, a ‘super autonomous’ denomination of origin in Spain spanning both Castilla-La Mancha and Murcia.
In a short period of time, hail of up to 2cm in width pelted the region, stripping leaves as well the new spring shoots on the vines. While new shoots may emerge, given the timing, most believe that of all of the harvest in the affected plants has been lost.
Initial estimates placed the damaged vineyard area at 4,700ha which is just under 25% of the total vineyard area of 21,000ha. Additionally, it was initially stated that 20,000ha of general farmland had been affected but this has since been doubled to nearly 40,000ha showing that there’s a great deal more assessing yet to come.
The councils of Jumilla and Hellín have both requested that their areas be declared ‘disaster zones’ so as to open up the ability to receive aid money both from the state as well a the EU. The current projections are for 59€ million in monetary losses and 4-5,000 jobs.
The storms weren’t consistent across the region however and various municipalities were essentially unaffected.
Spain in general suffers from the irony of a having a lack of precipitation, but also vicious hail storms such as this one in Jumilla. Only last year, a huge portion of the Penedès region in Catalunya suffered a similar fate on the 1st of June and massively reduced their crop for 2024 which was already historically low for all of Spain. Otherwise, to date, 2025 has been a year to celebrate given the massive increase in rains that have replenished the water reserves of a country which has been suffered extreme drought for four years.
The only potential saving grace for Jumilla is that 90% of the vines are planted to Monastrell (Mourvèdre) which is both late budding as well as late ripening. Due to the timing of this weather event, there may be some recuperation, but the current scene, as shown by the lead photo from DO Jumilla is one of utter devastation in the affected regions.
