Wine's climate-change crunch point is already here
This spring's extreme weather across many wine regions is a warning - and points to the scale of the sustainability challenge ahead. Plus: what I've been drinking this week
AS much of England shivers through a wet June and July, spare a thought for the winemakers dealing with more unseasonal and extreme weather elsewhere.
Greece has been battling its earliest-ever heatwave, with 40-degree temperatures causing a spate of deaths, including British TV presenter Dr Michael Mosley last month. Southern Italy and the Canary Islands are suffering similar heat.
Most of Mediterranean Spain has escaped the heatwave, though only after prolonged drought conditions following last summer’s record temperatures. After its warmest January on record, Catalonia declared its first-ever drought emergency in February this year, when its reservoirs were less than 16 per cent full. Mercifully, it rained through much of April, though water reserves remain low.
Meanwhile it was a cruel spring in many French vineyards. Savage hailstorms hit Chablis and some other French wine regions at the start of May: some Chablis vignerons report that they lost their whole crop, buds snapped off by the huge hailstones.
The week before, in late April, freak late frosts struck the Alpine Jura region, destroying up to 70 per cent of the harvest. And Cahors, in the South West, got both hail and frost, wiping out 90 per cent or more of the crop. Such episodes are becoming the norm: Cahors was ravaged by late frosts in 2021, drought in 2022, and then mildew last summer.
Weather extremes continue to batter other wine regions round the world. Canada’s Okanagan Valley, for example, is in a prolonged drought, after suffering catastrophic forest fires in the summers of 2021 and 2023 that damaged some vineyards. That’s without even talking about weather disasters in non-wine regions this year, such as May’s worst floods in Brazil’s history.
Wine has been called the canary in the coal mine for climate change: vines are sensitive plants grown mainly in climatically marginal parts of the world. Recent weather events add up to a worrying pattern for the global wine industry. Some observers have predicted that climate change could call its very viability into question in places such as Catalonia and parts of Australia.
And while rising average temperatures are helping transform the fortunes of the English wine industry (as in Essex, which I wrote about recently) climate change is far from a simple win for our wine producers. Last winter was mild, causing vines to bud up two weeks early in places such as Essex – but then parts of the county suffered an April frost.
Janine Bunker of Danbury Ridge explained to me last month: “the frost dates aren’t changing but the growing season is extending, so if there’s a frost it hits buds.” This is the same challenge as in Chablis.
The bigger issue in the great wine regions of Europe is how long their wines taste the way they are supposed to: how typically Burgundian will many Burgundies still be in 2040? As wine critic Oz Clarke has said, “Chablis is making very good wines now – it just doesn’t taste a bit like it did 30 years ago.” At this year’s Burgundy en primeur tastings, there were plenty of wines weighing in at 14 per cent alcohol or more, unthinkable 20 years ago.
Meanwhile wines over 15 per cent alcohol in Bordeaux are now commonplace – a clear sign of rising temperatures. One senior industry figure recently mused about how many Bordeaux producers would still be relying on the traditional grape varieties in 20 years’ time. As long ago as 2019, the Bordeaux authorities approved the planting of Portugal’s more heat-resistant Touriga Nacional, and there have been experiments with Tempranillo too – even if these grapes aren’t yet permitted in any of the region’s appellations controlées.
For the moment, winemakers can try to counteract the effects of higher temperatures, at least, with techniques in the vineyard such as canopy management (keeping more leaves to shade the grapes) and harvesting earlier.
But it’s a sobering practical example of just how long the climate emergency will last. The central target of international efforts to limit climate change, re-affirmed at last year’s COP28 summit, is to limit the rise in the world's average surface temperature to a maximum of 1.5C on pre-industrial levels by the end of this century. In other words, even if we succeed – and there are plenty of experts who think the 1.5 target is now over-optimistic – then in 75 years’ time, the children and grandchildren of today’s winemakers will still be dealing with the kinds of climate-driven challenges we see today. But the problem will at least have stopped getting worse.
The more daunting long-term challenge for the industry is not just to adapt to climate change, but to become more sustainable and thereby do its bit to turn the crisis around.
Wine production demands significant energy inputs. Earlier this year I visited Borsao, a venture comprised of three co-ops in Aragón’s Campo de Borja Denominación de Origen. It’s a huge, modern operation with substantial energy needs – and a forward-looking approach to sustainability.
Borsao’s winery includes one stainless-steel tank capable of holding one million litres of wine; a bottling line that can process up to 10,000 bottles an hour; and a warehouse capacity of two million bottles. The winery uses one million frigories (the standard unit for measuring heat extraction) of cooling capacity a year. So the plant is well insulated; half its energy needs come from its own arrays of solar panels, while the rest is renewable power bought from the grid; and there is automatic LED lighting throughout.
Wine’s biggest carbon footprint, however, derives from its packaging and distribution. The glass industry that makes wine bottles is extremely energy intensive: cutting the carbon embedded in the bottle on your table is a complex supply-chain puzzle.
Plus, wine itself is heavy: think of lifting a 12-bottle case. The shipping industry is experimenting with low-carbon alternatives to fuel oil to power its container ships, such as giant sails – though again, these sorts of changes to global supply chains will take time and demand massive investment. Shipping wine in bulk and bottling at the export destination saves a lot of energy – but will higher-end producers ever embrace their wine being shipped in 24,000-litre plastic flexitanks?
Yet winemaking’s carbon footprint isn’t even the whole of the sustainability challenge. Water management is key – at Borsao, for instance, all of the run-off from the plant’s huge roof is captured. Then there is the whole question of chemical inputs: over most of the past century, growers have relied heavily on pesticides and fungicides, even if that is changing with the rise of organic and regenerative viticulture.
For those of us whose main contribution to the wine industry is drinking its end product, we could try to do our bit by supporting producers that are taking the challenge of sustainability seriously.
Even then, that isn’t straightforward. The average consumer isn’t going to know, for example, that Waitrose’s excellent-value Ripe and Juicy Spanish Rosé is made by Borsao and is probably environmentally superior to many rosés. Then again, if a favourite Rhône producer isn’t making any special effort to cut their carbon footprint, should I choose something else? I doubt I would.
Almost any effort to combat climate change looks puny on its own beside the enormity of the task. Wine commentator Joe Fattorini recently ridiculed claims that drinking wine in cans could help save the planet – and it’s true, on its own, it won’t. Instead we need to see such changes as part of a much wider and deeper transformation of global capitalism - a shift that is only just starting to happen. It will permeate most aspects of modern life over the next decade – including the world of wine. We are just starting to get an inkling of what that could look like. We can only hope it’s enough.
What I’ve been drinking this week
Kintonis G&L Malagousia 2023, PGI Peloponnese - a fairly cheap and cheerful Greek white, this boasts Malagousia’s trademark peachy fruit, with a particularly zingy freshness: perfect on a summer’s day (The Wine Society, £8.95.)
Château Vignelaure 2016, Aix-en-Provence - an example of Provence’s relatively relaxed approach to permitted grapes, this is an unusual 50/50 blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. It has a nice edge of bottle age, with some leathery notes from the Cab, but minerality too and pleasing length - very good (The Wine Society, £20 - they’re now on to the 2017.)
Envínate “Albahra” 2022, Castilla-La Mancha - cult winemakers Envínate are group of Spanish wine consultants who work with with local growers in various offbeat Spanish territories to produce small batches of terroir-focussed wines (their wines from Tenerife, for example, are really interesting.) This red is made from Garnacha Tintorera - aka Alicante Bouschet - and the very obscure local grape Moravia Agria. Bright red, fruit, insistent minerality and dusty tannins - I love the energy of this wine (Hedonism Wines, The Sourcing Table, from £25.80.)
Transparency declaration: I visited Borsao as a guest of the company.
Good thoughtful piece Andy. I was in the Auvergne at the weekend at a fundraiser for vignerons many of whom had been hit by the April frosts.
Really thought provoking, great article. I've seen similar worrying patterns in Italy, South Africa and Germany. In Tuscany a couple of summers ago, early August the winery we were visiting was talking about harvesting in mid August. Crazy. Sangiovese vines were shutting down because of 40 plus degree temps. Chianti will be a totally different wine in 30 years time.