WINE’S GREAT ACCLIMATION As global temperatures rise, viticulturists from Bordeaux to Otago are meeting the challenge with creative solutions, from alternative varietals better suited to the shifting weather conditions to more sustainable agricultural techniques – all while ensuring delicious bottlings. Jeffrey T Iverson reports on an industry in flux ILLUSTRATION OLEG BORODIN 60
Some 6,000 indigenous grapes have been catalogued, yet currently only 33 varieties cover half the world’s vineyards. That leaves a lot of grapes to explore – Michelle Bouffard, founder of Tasting Climate Change It’s easy to imagine a winegrower’s life as rather predictable, progressing in rhythm with changeless, eternal cycles of nature. Yet in one generation, those cycles have been shaken by an acceleration in the rise of global temperatures, with the rate of warming more than doubling since 1981. Growers now must relearn their profession, adapting to grapevines whose stages of development are arriving weeks in advance compared to their parents’ generation. “Climate change is making viticulture much more difficult – and much riskier,” says Lorenzo Pasquini, estate manager of Château d’Yquem, the renowned Sauternes producer. “Today, we face more drought but also more extreme rainfall, hail risk, frost risk and mildew pressure. It’s not just global warming, the climate is becoming a global mess.” Yet the profession isn’t giving up. “Winemakers have proven themselves to be very resilient, finding a great deal of solutions,” enthuses the sommelier Michelle Bouffard, founder of the biannual conference Tasting Climate Change. “The wine industry can be a leader and show other types of agriculture what can be done to mitigate climate change.” Through innovation and exploration, winemakers are adapting to a climate in chaos, and in the process are revising the rules and redrawing the map of the wine world as we know it. Today, the upheaval in vineyard growth cycles has led to premature budding, harvest dates advanced into mid-summer, and grapes with soaring alcohol and plummeting acid. Vignerons have responded with new techniques, pruning later to coax their vines to bud after frost season, managing their leaf canopy to shield the grapes from the sun, and picking in the cool of the night to protect the harvest from oxidation. In Champagne, nowadays growers may harvest their pinot noir early to retain acidity for a sparkling wine or ripen it fully to create still red wine. But many are also asking if classic varieties selected in cooler centuries for their ability to ripen quickly shouldn’t be replaced today. “Some 6,000 indigenous grapes have been catalogued, yet currently only 33 varieties cover half the world’s vineyards,” says Bouffard. “That leaves a lot of grapes to explore.” In Australia’s Beechworth wine region, Italy’s lateripening nebbiolo grape is being grown by inspired producers like Traviarti. In Bordeaux, six new grape varieties were approved in 2021 to help producers adapt to climate change, including Portugal’s touriga nacional, a late-ripener used to make port. In Spain, Miguel Torres of Bodega Torres was named one of Time’s 100 climate leaders in 2023 for designing a system to capture CO2 from wine fermentation. Its latest release, Pirene 2020, is a wine of stunning elegance from a once-abandoned, drought-resistant Catalonian grape. But its freshness also comes from the place Torres planted it – at 950 metres, one of the highest vineyard sites in the Catalan Pyrenees. As you climb in altitude, temperatures decrease – up to 1°C per 100 metres – a fact which has winemakers ascending to new heights. Nestled in the Cederberg mountains at 1,036 metres above sea level, Cederberg Winery is South Africa’s highest-lying estate, a place owner David Nieuwoudt depicts as winemaking Eden, free of diseases, with diverse soils, crystal waters, balmy days and chilly nights – conditions allowing his shiraz a long hanging time for great aromatic maturity. On Sicily’s Mount Etna, a new wave of vignerons is creating 61
