Climate change or taste change? Wineries look for a recipe

Have you ever wondered why a vintage is so rarely shown on the label of champagne? Experts blame the weather. The capricious years in Champagne and other regions supplying fruit for sparkling wines force producers to blend different vintages in order to achieve the desired taste. For traditional wines, this process was until recently considered a faux pas and a sign of low quality. Climate change, however, may revolutionize winemaking.

Too hot, too dry, too unpredictable

We have already written in Water Matters about the changing conditions for growing grapes and the resulting challenges for winemakers. Warmer summers are stabilizing production in northern Europe, but making it nearly impossible in the south. Getting a good vintage is becoming almost a miracle, so winemakers are starting to blend distillates from two, three, or even five years. This strategy makes it possible to maintain quality regardless of the whims of the weather.

Chris Howell from the famous Napa Valley region in the United States admitted in an interview with the BBC that heat waves did occur in the past quite often, but they were never this intense. Now, local temperatures reach, in his view, nearly 50°C, which causes enormous stress for grapevines and affects their fruiting. Ricardo Pasqua, a winemaker from Italy’s Veneto region, adds that in April and May unexpected frosts and hail are becoming more frequent, and they just as effectively reduce yields.

The current challenge is to improve the image of blended wines so that they can be sold at prices comparable to vintage bottles. Ongoing climate change should help with this, as connoisseurs in search of the finest bouquets will have no choice.

Wine with a smoky note?

High temperatures and little rainfall are a recipe for wildfires. In 2017, they broke out in Napa Valley right during harvest. The smoke altered the flavor of the fruit so much that producers had to abandon the bunches left on the vines, and the wine from grapes already picked was blended with the next vintage in what became known as Cain Cuvée.

In 2020, fire consumed 27,000 hectares of California vineyards and destroyed more than 1,500 buildings. What wasn’t charred turned out to be useless– winemaker Chris Jambois told NBC reporters that the rescued fruit tasted like licking an ashtray. Everything had to be thrown away.

Just a few days ago, fires once again threatened California’s wine country. The so-called Pickett Fire spread rapidly, destroying 26 km² of vineyards in Napa Valley. Fortunately, this time the wind direction was favorable enough that the fruit left on the vines did not become “smoked.” A month before harvest, such a disaster would have been particularly severe.

Decanted, adapted. Is climate change an oenological evolution?

A long-standing tradition means winemakers are not giving up without a fight. In addition to blending vintages, they are beginning to look for other ways to outsmart climate change. In the famous Italian region of Valpolicella, vines are already being grown on pergolas under leafy canopies to protect them from the heat. In the Euganean Hills, meanwhile, there are plans to install rainwater reservoirs to enable irrigation of vineyards located on steep slopes.

Diego Tomasi, director of the Consorzio di Tutela del Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco DOCG, told the Italian newspaper Corriere Veneto about grape varieties that are proving able to adapt effectively to climate change. In his view, this is thanks to epigenetics – the changes in DNA under the influence of external factors. In 2005, in today’s temperatures, growth would have been halted, but now it continues, Tomasi adds.

Everything indicates that in a few decades we will still be able to enjoy wine, though probably under a different label and with a different taste. Time will tell what poetic comparisons connoisseurs will find for the new bouquets developed under the influence of climate change.

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main photo credit: matthiasboeckel/Pixabay