"There are places were they have been 100 percent destroyed," a spokeswoman for Cognac producers' group BNIC said. Some wine producers reported hailstones the size of a quail egg, or about 1.5 centimetres long. "Where the storm passed it was very violent," a spokeswoman for wine group Inter Beaujolais said. Updated Mon, May 30th 2016 at 20:52 GMT +3PARIS: Severe weather, including hailstorms, caused serious damage at the weekend in some French wine-producing regions, notably Cognac where up to 8 percent of the vineyard has been badly damaged, producers said on Monday. "These hail bursts ravaged many vineyards, making future harvests uncertain or impossible," FNSEA, France's largest farm union, said in a statement.

Source: Standard Digital May 30, 2016 15:45 UTC