In the second part of her climate crisis series, Katharine Swindells explores the practice of reducing carbon emissions in wine packaging and distribution. 

The wine bottle as we know it has been around for centuries—but as the wine world comes to terms with its carbon footprint, and sustainability becomes an ever more urgent issue, many in the industry are asking whether the ubiquitous bottle is overdue an update.

With some studies estimating that wine packaging accounts for upward of half of a bottle’s carbon footprint, and worldwide shipping carrying a hefty financial and environmental cost, innovators are looking for ways to update wine packaging and increase its carbon efficiency.

This article is the second in our ongoing data-led series exploring the intersection between the wine world and the climate crisis, and the frontiers of wine’s push for sustainability. Growers are seeing the impacts of climate change first-hand since temperature changes of a degree or two shift harvest dates by weeks, vines face risk of burning or spring frosts, and producers fight to preserve their wine’s traditional taste.

Of course, for most wine producers their main concern with wine packaging isn’t about sustainability, but cost. Wine in traditional glass bottles is far heavier—and more difficult, and more expensive—to transport. One of the main ways producers are circumventing this is through bulk shipping, where the wine is transported in huge tanks and bottled in the country of sale.

Among the world’s biggest wine exporters, the past 20 years have seen growth in bulk shipping. At the turn of the millennium, the six largest bulk exporters—Spain, Australia, South Africa, USA, Argentina, and Chile—shipped just under one third of their wine in bulk. In 2020, it made up half of their shipments, and in the USA, it made up almost two thirds of their exports.

The growth is far more drastic when looking at the world’s biggest bulk-wine exporter, Spain. Between 2005 and 2019, the amount of wine exported from Spain in bulk has more than doubled.

Spain is the world’s biggest bulk-wine exporter—over the past 20 years, more than half of its annual exports have been in bulk. Between 2010 and 2020, Spain exported an annual average of 0.3 billion gallons (1.2 billion liters) of bulk wine, worth more than US$535 million (€450 million) a year.

Cristina Villar Miranda, Marketing and Communications director at World Bulk Wine, says that shipping in bulk, without the space and weight taken up by glass, can allow for more than twice the capacity shipped, cutting carbon emissions in half.

“The bulk wine sector is sustainable, green, and profitable—it is the future,” she says.

And, Villar Miranda believes, bulk wine is well on its way to shaking its reputation as being only for bottom-shelf supermarket wines, with more high-quality wines and independent producers seeing the value in bulk shipping.

“The bulk wine market is growing both in terms of quantity and quality,” she says. “With the boom of private labels and new packaging, this growth is only starting.”

Flat-bottled growth

But bulk shipping still requires the glass bottles to be produced for sale, so some in the industry believe there is room for innovation even within the bottles themselves. A study by Grupo Arce estimates that a wine bottle’s packaging is responsible for almost half its carbon emissions, compared to just a third from the production of the wine liquid itself. The life cycle of a single bottle of wine creates 2.6lb (1.2kg) of CO2, and the glass bottle itself contributes 1.1lb (0.5kg) of that.

Many producers looking to reduce their carbon footprint have found success in reducing the weight of their wine bottles. Making the material thinner and lighter can have a significant impact on the carbon footprint of the wine shipping, as well as the bottle’s production.

But some say we can go further. Santiago Navarro is CEO and co-founder of Garçon Wines, which has designed an unusually shaped, flat wine bottle. Weighing 0.1lb (63g), the company says it’s 40 percent smaller and 87 percent lighter than the average glass bottle, so has the potential drastically to cut carbon emissions in the transportation process. Made of recycled (and recyclable) plastic, they aim to make the bottle production more eco-friendly than current glass production, which according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is recycled at a rate of only 20 percent in the US.

Navarro believes that the round wine bottle represents a “hot spot” in wine sustainability, as its technology hasn’t changed recognizably since the 19th century. Although boxed, carton, and canned wines are gaining popularity, particularly among younger drinkers, Navarro believes there is a key space in the market for a sustainable wine container that retains the sense of occasion of a traditional bottle.

“I guess for us it was about creating a pack that was beautiful in the eyes of the consumer,” he says. “But also beautiful in the eyes of the Chief Financial Officer, and most important, beautiful for the planet.”

As the Garçon bottles’ material is permeable to oxygen, they’re better suited for wines at a lower price point, rather than fine wines that will be stored for years. But Navarro believes flat bottles could be a solution for fine-wine producers sending many samples of young wines to hotels, restaurants, and reviewers globally, to save on shipping costs and carbon footprint.

Locabibing: Think global, drink local

But, some argue, the solution isn’t in packaging or shipping advancements, but simply in drinking a little closer to home. There is a strong message from environmentalists that we should aim to reduce “air miles” and eat produce and meat farmed locally—and that same spotlight is being turned on wine. In cities worldwide, you can find wine lists sourced entirely locally.

Data from ComTrade on the world’s leading wine exporters calculates the internationalization of exporting, with annual exports as a proportion of production. After a period of rapid internationalization in the first decade of the 21st century, by 2010 two thirds of Australia’s wine was exported. But since then, internationalization has leveled off, and in 2020, global exports made up around 40 percent of production.

Julia Trustram Eve of WineGB says that they are seeing growing interest within the UK for wines produced locally.

“Many vineyards sell direct from the cellar door or via local outlets, and others have national distribution, but it is still within the UK and not reliant therefore on air/sea freight,” Trustram Eve says.

WineGB is seeing growing interest in sustainable wines, and is keen to promote producers who are accredited under the Sustainable Wines of Great Britain scheme, as well as people’s growing interest in British production and culture.

“With the staycation as a real push at the moment, more and more Brits have been encouraged to seek out new experiences on their doorstep,” Trustram Eve says. “Many of our vineyards are in key tourism hubs and now offer a range of attractions beyond tours and tastings, and of course there’s the added thrill of buying direct from the cellar door.”

Perhaps most important, Navarro says, is putting sustainability front and center for the consumer, which could encourage the industry as a whole to think bigger and more creatively about its role in tackling the climate crisis.

“The world of wine is a great place from which to enact change, because wine is arguably the most emotive grocery product,” he says. “And I will look forward even more to opening a special glass bottle of fine wine on a special occasion.”

The post Flattening tradition: Climate change and wine packaging appeared first on World Of Fine Wine.

In the first of an important series of data-led reports, WFW tracks the effects of the climate crisis on global wine production

When Kai Schätzel looks out of the window of his home, he can see his vineyards, just 270 yards (250 meters) away. Weingut Schätzel, a winery in the Rheinhessen region of Germany that produces mostly Riesling, has been in his family over 600 years, and it’s important for him to be able to keep a close eye on his wine harvest—not least over the past few decades, as increasingly temperamental climate change conditions require close monitoring.

Schätzel, like so many other of his fellow wine producers across the world, is experiencing first-hand the effects of global climate change. The impact differs across the world. Some vineyards, such as those in the UK, are even feeling benefits from rising temperatures; other regions are seeing drought, fires, and frost.

“Fifty years ago, wet summers were normal; the biggest problem of German farming was moldiness,” says Schätzel. “That's not what's happening any more. It's getting drier and drier and hotter and hotter at the same time, so the vines consume more water but they get less.”

The climate crisis has huge consequences for the wine industry globally. This piece is the first in a data-led series at The World of Fine Wine aiming to track and quantify the impact.

Our warming world

One key aspect of rising temperatures for many wine producers is its acceleration of the ripening process. A study of 600 years of harvest data in Beaune (Burgundy, France) shows that higher temperatures in spring and summer clearly correspond with earlier autumn harvest dates.

Along the Rhein in Germany, the change is even more stark. Data measured by Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt in Eltville, a town just 25 miles from Schätzel’s vineyards, shows that the harvest over the past ten years has on average begun on September 26, some 25 days earlier than in the 1960s.

“When I was younger I didn't believe in climate change,” says Schätzel. “We said ‘Okay, it's one degree over 100 years.’ Today we see how much change there is behind it, and it's really happening. We say today that we feel 500 kilometres [300 miles] farther south.”

Schätzel says wine producers have had to totally change their growing techniques from those he learned growing up.

“The vine growing system in the vineyards when I was a kid was based on the idea of speeding up the ripening process, because most of the vintages 50 years ago did not go ripe by themselves,” he says. “Today, most of the grapes are getting overripe by themselves. And on the way they consume more water, or they want to consume more water than we have.”

Sometimes, explains Dr Claudia Kammann, who researches climate change and agriculture at Hochschule Geisenheim University, vines may even start to grow leaves so early that they get caught in a late frost, which can cause significant damage to the plants. An early harvest might also mean a warm picking season, which increases the risk of mold and infections if there is high humidity.

Even if wine producers can adapt their harvesting process and manage resources, climate change could still have a lasting effect on the flavour and characteristics of the wine.

“You used to have grape harvest dates up to mid-October, and by then you would normally have a cool temperature,” says Kamman. “These are crucial in forming aroma components that are typical for Riesling; they develop under cool climate conditions.”

Schätzel found rising temperatures were influencing the acidity and stability of his wines, which pride themselves on being lightweight and stable. They also increased alcohol levels from the typical 10-11% ABV to as much as 13.5%

Techniques such as cutting the vines shorter and not trimming the leaves to keep the natural shadows can slow the ripening process and stop grape skins from burning. Schätzel says sometimes it can feel like a generational battle, between preserving the old growing methods, and preserving the taste of the wine.

“The challenge is that the generation before tries to keep their tradition, but their tradition was the cool climate,” he says. “If you just go to the supermarket [and] look for German wines, 20 years ago it was a sour wine style. Today, German wines feel like international wines.”

Growing at the extremes

Of course, there are more extreme examples of the impact of climate change on wine growers. Last year saw multiple wildfires ravage the wine regions of northern California, destroying hundreds of thousands of acres and numerous wineries. Some Napa growers said their entire 2020 vintage would be contaminated by smoke damage.

In previous years, fire season in wine country would usually fall in October and November, when most grapes had already been harvested; now the timing is less predictable. Even if the vineyards escape the fires themselves, the flavor of smoke that taints the grapes can be ruinous to the wine.

In the western Cape of South Africa, drought between 2015 and 2018 had a severe impact on the wine industry. The summer of 2017 and 2018 saw the water in Cape Town’s main reservoirs approach only 13.5% of their usual capacity. Had it reached this point—known as “Day Zero”—the government would have cut off water supply to the city, and residents would have had to queue for supplies." Cape Town would have been the first major city in the world to essentially run out of drinking water.

“Day Zero” was avoided—just—but its knock-on effect on the region’s vineyards has been stark. The Stellenbosch grape harvest in 2019 was only 65.6% of its 2014 level, and only began to recover last year.

“All of those vineyards really took a lot of pain, to the point that many of those vineyards no longer exist,” says Mike Ratcliffe, wine producer and chair of Wine Routes Stellenbosch. “The reality is that the climate imposes itself on an industry.”

What the drought brought to light, says Ratcliffe, was the unsustainable growing practises taking place among many wine producers in South Africa.

“If you live in a climate that has got a potential for drought, and you haven't bothered to make the investment in irrigation, then your business model is not right,” he says.

Looking for solutions

What will determine which wineries survive, Ratcliffe says, is the ability to invest, particularly in tools and technology that enable sustainable wine production. But, of course, that means producers must have the capital available; it can also mean more expensive wines for the consumer.

“I would specifically point to the producers who have been able to premiumize,” he says. “People that have been able to entrench their quality, build brands, and sell wine at prices that are not on the bottom shelf of Tesco. They're able to generate the profits that allow them to reinvest back in the infrastructure.”

Schätzel agrees that innovation is crucial—not just for the survival or vineyards, but also so the producers can do their part in fighting the climate crisis overall. It doesn’t make sense, he says, to counter climate change with heavy irrigation, when we should be conserving water and the coming years may even see legislative restriction on water uses in agriculture.

“We need to adapt with everything we do,” he says. “Climate change is here and it's not a story anymore.”

The way Schätzel sees it, wine producers are uniquely placed to help the public understand the realities of climate change. There are very few products that go directly from the farmer to the table in the way wine does, so the wine bottle and its brand can be used to communicate directly to people.

“Wine growers, I think, are ambassadors for agriculture, we are kind of activists for climate change,” he says. “If we start bringing it to the tables and make people talk about it, we can change a lot. That's why I think we can perhaps be first movers; at this point, we have a responsibility for it.”

Katharine Swindells is a data journalist at the New Statesman Media Group

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David Schildknecht considers the various methods open to winegrowers confronted by the enormous changes and challenges created by climate change, and finds that many of the lessons learned apply far beyond the vineyard.

Addressing climate disruption is oft conceived by wine growers as rolling back on, or holding the line against, rising must weights, diminishing acidity, and increasingly early harvests. The lesson from recent successes in those endeavors seems to be, The more things change, the more they can stay the same. Altered approaches to vineyard management, harvest strategy, and vinification have proven remarkably efficacious, grape varieties themselves surprisingly resilient, and recent achievements will be significantly augmented by attending to vineyard ecosystems and vine genetics. But the converse holds, too: The less practices in the nursery, vineyard, or cellar change, the more climate change will usher growers into uncharted territory. Change methods to preserve continuity or else brace oneself for inevitable change in wine profile. Prudent growers might do both. The potential of methodological modifications is far from fully explored; the potential for major stylistic disruption correspondingly underappreciated. Exacerbating climatic challenges is enhanced demand for lower alcohol, higher acidity, and savory flavors. Ironically, a warming globe may well be part of what’s driving the appeal of sensory characteristics that it renders harder to achieve; whereas traits that consumers are deemphasizing—fruit ripeness, textural richness, body—could, if desired, be realized more easily than ever. To speak of “staying the same” might thus seem misleading—were not turn-of-the-century stylistic tendencies being increasingly perceived as aberrant excess.  

Consider the case of German growers. Even a decade ago, few seemed to grasp that rising alcohol levels threatened the expressiveness, not to mention sheer drinkability, of ostensibly top Riesling bottlings. Today, alcohol consciousness has been raised, top-heavy or overpowering wines are on the wane, and there is a consensus that Germany’s dry Rieslings have reached new levels of distinction. With Riesling Kabinett also experiencing a revival in its homeland, Mosel growers like Julian Haart, Constantin Richter, the Weiser-Künstler duo, and the Webers at Hofgut Falkenstein, or Klaus Peter Keller and Kai Schätzel in Rheinhessen, are scoring aesthetic and commercial triumphs from grapes picked at efficacious acid levels and 1970s or ’80s must weights.

Climate and reestablishing stylistic pedigree

Austria’s Wachau dramatically illustrates excess and adjustment. Thanks to growers at the forefront of late 1980s innovation, this region experienced its first international acclaim. Within a decade, “Grüner Veltliner Smaragd” became associated with wines of richness but then, increasingly, with alcohol levels well over 14%, which too few could integrate. Today, alcohol is increasingly back to pre-1998 levels. For a corresponding phenomenon outside German-speaking lands, consider California Cabernet, which arguably basked in international attention for only two decades before succumbing to jamminess and alcoholic excess. Today, a cadre of producers such as Broc Cellars and Maître de Chai are rightly touting wines as exemplars of pre-1990s Cabernet virtues, while the iconic status of Ridge Vineyards Montebello—which reached as high as 13.7% ABV only twice in 60 years—has never been more secure.

The roster of techniques implicated in such roll-backs and reestablishments of stylistic pedigree is long and diverse. Expunging botrytis was critical in the Wachau. More widely applicable measures are seldom as straightforward. Tight spacing enhances shading and invites lightening fruit loads—a stress-reducer in theory. But competition for water and nutrients is stress-inducing; stress to the point of shutdown brakes sugar accumulation, while many growers conscientiously advocate loosening-up on yields. High canopies and highly selective leaf-pulling conduce to shading; but foliage also drives photosynthesis. Consensus regarding what works and why is only gradually emerging.  

Widening the scope of concern to encompass vine genetics, as well as entire vineyard ecosystems, will reveal further means for addressing warming and drought. But for all of the promise offered by adaptive vine genetics, viticultural innovation, and rethinking harvest and vinificatory strategies, there likely comes a time when any given grape variety in a given location is fated to render wines whose style is profoundly and irrevocably marked by climate change. Diana Snowden Seysses of Domaine Dujac believes that, for Pinot Noir in Burgundy, that time has long since come. “I grieve,” she relates, “when I drink Seysses wines like [those of] 1978, my birth vintage. That planet is gone, and no amount of irrigation, canopy management, or whole-bunch vinification will give us another 1978. Change of taste is inevitable.” 

That having been said, Snowden is anything but resigned to change without what she refers to as “a fight”—and not merely one in defense of vinous virtues. “Any conversation about adaptation,” she admonishes, “is a missed opportunity to speak about mitigation and meeting Paris Agreement goals.” Her notion of mitigation centers on arresting global temperature increases, toward which goal she has, inter alia, sketched a plan by which vintners in an intensively farmed region like Burgundy’s Côte d’Or could capture and sequester the voluminous CO2 generated by fermentation. Forget wine; maintaining such global perspective is essential for humanity. But global options are arguably those facing wine growers, just writ ominously large: Rely on entrenched practices and court fundamental—in this case, catastrophic—change; or radically modify one’s practices so as to preserve cherished values, realizing “that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Apropos of which, global political options, too, reflect the plus ça change principle. 

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The central question when it comes to climate change and wine is whether we are looking at a “predictable march toward a warmer world”or “a radical rise in uncertainty arising from more extreme weather—hot and cold, wet and dry,” says Professor Emeritus of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Michael Summerfield.

Uncertainty has always been the leitmotif of the viticulturist’s life. This is expressed in an annual cycle of decisions related in one way or another to the weather: when to thin shoots; when, or if, to spray; when to harvest. These vintage-to-vintage vicissitudes of weather have been familiar terrain for centuries, but over recent decades a new challenge has emerged, initially dismissed or ignored but now acknowledged almost universally.

This fresh challenge is the longer view required by the uncertainties of rapid global warming, which presents new considerations: whether to move vineyard location, whether to plant different grape varieties, whether to invest in irrigation. The pace of change has been accelerating and is far exceeding the previous, relatively comfortable natural fluctuations in climate encountered in previous centuries—in Europe, the warmer, early medieval period followed by a cooler episode known, overdramatically, as the Little Ice Age, which lasted into the 19th century. Only a few generations ago, the advance of glaciers in the Alps was a threat to rural communities, and in the 19th century, glacial ice was being carved off and dispatched to Parisian hotels to chill their Champagne. Now the concern is how many Alpine glaciers will be left by the end of century.

Today, wine producers have two sets of challenges: the day-to-day decisions in response to the weather, and the longer-term climatic uncertainties of a warming world. Grape yields and quality, and the quantity and characteristics of the resulting wine, are significantly influenced by the sequence of weather in a particular growing cycle. But what grape varieties are viable or are capable of producing high-quality wine in a particular locality is determined by climate in the sense of the average state and variability of the weather in a place over a period of a few decades. Changes in the average state and variability of this weather results in a shift in the climate of a region—as recorded by climatic data such as temperature and precipitation. But it is changes in the climate system—the atmospheric–terrestrial–oceanic interactions creating the weather from day to day—that modify the nature and frequency of the types of weather experienced. Often these two meanings of “climate”—the average characteristics of day-to-day weather over the long term, as distinct from the processes involved in the climate system—are conflated, but it is essential to distinguish between them if we are to understand how “climate change” is likely to affect the world of wine over the coming decades.

Wine and the climate crisis: Where are we now and what happens next?

This distinction is especially relevant when it comes to weather extremes, because one of the predictions arising from a warming world is that the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events—heatwaves, freezes, droughts, and flooding—will increase, and this is a consequence of changes in the Earth’s climate system. Not all regions of the world will be equally affected by these changes, and from the perspective of wine, Europe is the critical continent, as it accounts for more than 70 percent of the world’s total production, including a very high proportion of the world’s premium wine. And Europe has the potential for an erratic climate future, since it sits in the battleground between cold and warm air masses stirred together over the North Atlantic and guided by violent funnels of air high in the atmosphere. Here I want to look at the impacts of a warming climate on viticulture and wine, but especially to focus on the potentially uncertain climate future facing Europe and its wines as a consequence of significant changes in weather patterns affecting the continent.

The shifting climate 

Widespread industrialization during the 19th century greatly increased emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, through the consumption of fossil fuels, and the accumulation of these gases in the atmosphere has affected the Earth’s energy budget. To put it simply, more of the sun’s heat is being trapped in the atmosphere and warming the Earth’s surface. This, in turn, has had other consequences, such as the acceleration of the hydrological cycle, with water being evaporated more rapidly, especially from warmer oceans, producing more rainfall globally. In addition, other human activities such as deforestation, urbanization, and the extension of agriculture have affected both regional and global climate by changing properties of the Earth’s surface that interact with the atmosphere, with the reduction in global biomass making a further contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide.

As I write, the latest climate information has just been released by the European Union’s Copernicus environmental monitoring organization, and it is no surprise that 2022 was another hot year.¹ Globally, it was the fifth-warmest since reliable instrumental records began in the 19th century—and the past eight years have been the eight warmest. The mean annual temperature was about 2.2°F (1.2°C) higher than the average for the period 1850–1900. The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide continued its remorseless annual increase, rising 2.1 parts per million (ppm) over the year and reaching 416.7ppm. For context, in the late 1970s, when I first started teaching students about climate change, it was below 335ppm—an almost 25 percent increase in little more than 40 years. In fact, we would have expected 2022 to be a little cooler than some recent years, because the world was in a La Niña state for much of the time. La Niña refers to the cooler temperatures across the surface of the eastern and central tropical Pacific Ocean and their associated global climatic effects, and this alternates with the warmer El Niño state. Climatologists often refer to this switching as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which effectively conveys the idea of this alternation of global weather patterns over periods of a few years. As we move into another El Niño phase in the next few years, this natural heating effect will be added to the human-driven warming trend, so more temperature records are all but inevitable.

Turning to Europe, 2022 was an even more extreme year. For the continent as a whole, it was the second-warmest recorded, exceeded only by 2020, but it experienced its hottest-ever summer, with intense heatwaves in the west and the north. Major wine-producing countries—including France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy—actually experienced their hottest-ever year, and the combination of persistent low rainfall with these extreme temperatures created widespread droughts. Over the past 30 years, temperatures in Europe have increased at twice the global average, a reflection of the much greater overall rate of temperature increase at higher latitudes. In 2022, both polar regions experienced record-high temperatures, with the center of Greenland being 14°F (8°C) above average in September. The warming of the polar regions at a greater rate than the global average is especially evident in the northern hemisphere, where the phenomenon is known as Arctic amplification. A significant factor here is the reduction in the area of Arctic Sea ice and snow cover on land, since both snow and ice are highly efficient at reflecting solar radiation back into space.

So, what does the future hold, and how uncertain is our climate future? Will we face a progressively warming world, or are there surprises in store as this very warming dramatically perturbs the global climate system? Of particular concern to climate modelers trying to predict the future is the existence of “tipping points” or thresholds in the climate system. These are interactions that produce a gradual change up to a certain point, then a rapid or, in some cases, self-sustaining change that shifts the climate into a different state. Such tipping points are linked to phenomena such as the reduction in Arctic summer ice, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and changes in ocean currents. More global warming means more tipping points will be crossed. Some could come into play even with the 2.7°F (1.5°C) post-industrial mean global warming adopted in 2015 as an upper limit in the Paris Agreement. Many believe that this will be exceeded over coming decades, and this would add to the likelihood of climate tipping points being triggered.

Climate change: Impacts in the vineyard and the glass

All of the world’s high-quality wine-producing regions have become warmer since the middle of the 20th century, and until recently this has generally been beneficial rather than problematic. Overall vintage ratings have improved and variations in quality between vintages have become less marked. Improved viticultural and winemaking techniques have played a role here, but a warming climate has clearly also been important. The question now is, have these high-quality wine regions reached, or even passed, their optimum in terms of temperatures during the growing season for the grape varieties being cultivated? And given the crucial association in the wine world of place with particular grape varieties and wine styles, will further warming mean much more challenging growing conditions that threaten the very notion of “typicity”—an existential challenge given the importance of the place-based wine-classification systems that dominate the fine-wine market? Indeed, will the whole geography of wine production change over the coming decades? Warming trends, especially the greater increases in temperature experienced at higher latitudes, have already led to a poleward shift of wine-grape growing and a migration to higher-altitude vineyard sites, along with the adoption of warmer-climate grape varieties in existing locations.

In the vineyard, the primary impact of a warming climate is to accelerate the phenological stages of vine growth and to shorten the growing season.² Budbreak is occurring earlier in the year, and flowering and véraison are following more rapidly. It has been concluded that on the basis of data collated from a wide range of wine regions around the world for the past 30 to 50 years, particular phenological events are occurring five to ten days earlier for every 1.8°F (1°C) increase in mean annual temperature. With this evidence, it is not difficult to envisage the consequences of further warming over coming decades, including earlier harvesting, which is now taking place during a warmer time of year, and earlier budbreak rendering vines more vulnerable to the late-spring frosts. As temperatures move above the optimum for a particular grape variety, there are impacts on ripening in terms of acidity, sugar content, and phenolic maturity, and this can produce unbalanced wines with high alcohol, low acidity, and other characteristics that compromise the desired typicity. In many wine regions, increased temperatures have been accompanied by drought, which can limit vine growth and sugar development and result in lower yields through reduced berry size. Although the grapevine is a drought-resistant plant, severe drought impairs photosynthesis and may increase tannin and anthocyanin content, and also malic-acid concentration. Of course, vineyard management and winemaking techniques can mitigate or even eliminate some of these adverse environmental effects, but this approach becomes progressively more difficult as climate change becomes more pronounced.

The climate crisis: Floods, lakes, and subsidies

In the globally significant wine-producing regions of Europe, the trends are already clear and the long-term climate forecasts concerning.³ The prediction from climate models is for mean annual global temperature to increase by between 4.5° and 10°F (2.5–5.5°C) by the end of the present century, because there is pessimism about achieving the Paris Agreement limit of +2.7°F (+1.5°C). Based on the trends of recent decades, temperature increases in Europe will be higher than the global average. The consequences for viticulture differ between southern and northern Europe, with the south being subject to very high summer temperatures that will lead to severe water stress in parts of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. This could be ameliorated by irrigation, but that depends on regulatory adjustments and the availability of affordable water supplies. In northern Europe, the warming trend so far has been largely beneficial, but further warming in the future poses significant challenges for some classic wine regions. For example, in Alsace, budburst is predicted to advance by between 8 and 11 days over coming decades, with véraison being up to between 16 and 24 days earlier, while a 5.4–9°F (3–5°C) warming is projected to advance the ripening of Pinot Noir in Burgundy by between three and five weeks. In the long term, it is projected that viticulture in southern Europe will be adversely affected due to an increase in cumulative thermal stress and lack of water in the growing season, which will be exacerbated by the increased water demands under a warmer climate. In western and central Europe, the potential limit for high-quality wine-grape production will migrate significantly northward.

Uncertainty or predictable change?

These various effects of a warming climate on viticulture and wine production are not necessarily the most challenging impacts of climate change. Of more concern is extreme weather, as it seems that searing heatwaves, along with severe freezes, are becoming part of our present-day climate mix. This raises an important question: Is the change in global climate over the coming decades going to be a predictable march toward a warmer world, or will the uncertainty arising from more extreme weather—hot and cold, wet and dry—add radically to the uncertainties that our viticulturists and winemakers have to face? For Europe, and especially many of the premium wine-producing regions of France and Germany, the answer may lie in the behavior of high-velocity funnels of air in the upper atmosphere known as the jet stream, and the way this may change with global warming. Indeed, this idea, proposed by a number of climatologists and atmospheric physicists, has now permeated through to the mass media, as I have begun to notice through news reports over the past year.⁴ So, what is the jet stream, how does it affect our weather, and how might its influence change in the future as climate change gathers pace? To understand these questions, we need to delve into a little meteorology.

Although speculations about high-altitude wind systems date back to the 18th century, the phenomenon was first systematically studied in the 1920s by the Japanese meteorologist Wasaburo Ooshi. He released large numbers of meteorological balloons close to Mount Fuji and noticed that on reaching high elevations in the atmosphere—above about 33,000ft (10,000m)—they started to move rapidly eastward, out across the Pacific Ocean carried by a high-velocity stream of air. Perhaps because he published in Esperanto, these observations did not become more widely known, though the information was used to launch hydrogen balloons carrying explosives across to the USA during World War II, to the bemusement of the American military. The persistence and significance of these ribbons of very strong winds became fully appreciated during World War II, because aircraft being flown at high altitude from the United States to Europe frequently experienced tailwinds in excess of 95mph (150km/h). From the 1930s to the 1950s, the Swedish-born American meteorologist Carl-Gustav Rossby coordinated the collection of data from weather balloons that established the global nature of what became known as jet streams. Eventually two systems were identified in each hemisphere, the subtropical jet stream, and the sub-polar jet stream in the mid-latitudes, though it became appreciated that their latitude can change significantly over time and with longitude, and that they can frequently combine into a single zone of strong westerly winds.

If the surface of the Earth were uniform, then it would be expected that jet streams would be more or less straight, running along a line of latitude. This is actually the case to some extent over the large expanse of the North Pacific, where the ocean provides a fairly uniform surface. But overall, the Earth is not uniform, because there are continents, mountain ranges, and variations in temperature across the otherwise relatively uniform surface of the ocean. These regional variations in topography, and contrasts between ocean and continent, create north–south undulations in atmospheric circulation known as Rossby waves (following Rossby’s research in understanding these flow patterns). Anyone who lives in the mid-latitudes is familiar with these atmospheric waves because we see them as the succession of areas of low pressure (cyclones) and high pressure (anticyclones) that typically move from west to east. This produces a meandering pattern, with the waves running around the equatorward side of cyclones and the poleward flank of anticyclones. Rossby waves are considered to play a key role in the formation of jet streams, and they are evident in their meandering form as they twist around areas of high and low pressure. Another important factor is the significant temperature gradient across the mid-latitudes—the cold, dense air of Arctic regions compared with the much warmer and buoyant air of the subtropics—which promotes instabilities in the atmosphere creating eddies. These tend to grow and merge, eventually giving rise to the large-scale undulating pattern of the Rossby waves.

The predominant westerly winds of the mid-latitudes means that Rossby waves and the jet-stream meanders associated with them tend to migrate slowly from west to east, but they can stall and become more or less stationary for days or even weeks at a time. When the meandering pattern of the jet stream stagnates, it can lead to cutoffs, just as a meandering river with an ox-bow form can be breached across the neck of the bow, producing a double-jet-stream state.⁵ What is called a “blocking” situation develops when the undulations in the jet-stream waves become very large and form an anticyclonic eddy in the air flow. This blocks the eastward propagation of Rossby waves and can persist for one to two weeks. Such blocking anticyclones have profound consequences for the weather patterns of the mid-latitudes, since they are associated with persistent and extreme weather events, in which there is much more transfer of air masses from south to north and vice versa. The result is heatwaves or pulses of very cold weather, as well as floods or droughts affecting areas such as northwest Europe. This contrasts with the alternative, much less undulating jet-stream pattern, producing changeable weather with more moderate temperatures.

Under our present climate, there is great variation in the behavior of the jet stream in the mid-latitudes with periods of changeable weather with only a gently meandering jet stream alternating with interludes of persistent weather types, when the jet stream meanders wildly and creates blocking situations. Despite its unpredictability in the short term, however, it is possible to talk of the average frequency of these weather types over a period of years. As it is the steep temperature gradient between the poles and the mid-latitudes that promotes the atmospheric disturbances that give rise to Rossby waves and the jet stream, a key question is what will be the consequences for the climate of mid-latitude regions, such as central and northern Europe, of a lessening of this gradient. One view, which has attracted significant support among climate scientists, is that a reduction in this temperature gradient as a result of the polar regions warming more rapidly than the mid-latitudes will result, on average, in a weaker jet stream that will be more likely to assume an extreme meandering form.⁴ If this is the case, it will have serious implications for the weather that will be encountered by viticulturists in areas such as northwestern Europe. For Germany and much of France, it suggests a deeply uncertain future in the vineyard rather than a gradual progression to a warmer climate, with the kinds of extreme events experienced over recent years—scorching heatwaves and late-spring frosts—becoming more common.

As with any statements about future climate, there is always a health warning, since all such predictions are limited by the degree to which the operation of the atmosphere—with its extraordinarily complex interactions between air, land, and water—is understood, and by the capability of modeling the future at a fine enough scale to provide robust projections for particular regions. A major problem is the natural variability of the climatic system, and the behavior of the jet stream is a rather extreme example of this. The more natural variability there is, the more difficult it is to detect a change in the underlying operation of that component of the climatic system from observational data. Hence there are some climatologists who are not convinced that there is any clear sign yet of a change in the average behavior of the jet stream of the kind that has been predicted.⁶ Moreover, there is still much to be understood about the factors that drive the behavior of the jet stream, and in particular just how important polar warming might be in this. For example, while the atmosphere at low levels above the Arctic is warming rapidly as the Earth overall heats up, the upper atmosphere in more tropical latitudes is also expected to warm significantly, thus maintaining the poleward temperature gradient and stimulating a strong, less meandering jet stream. This effect could possibly counter the tendency for a reduced temperature gradient near the surface to promote a much wavier jet stream. Nonetheless, there is sufficient information from our current understanding of the climate system to seriously consider the implications of an uncertain climatic future with a substantial increase in extreme weather events.

The challenge of more extreme weather?

For Europe, there are two main implications of a change in the behavior of the jet stream to a weaker, more meandering form. One is more frequent prolonged periods of excessive summer heat as pools of hot air are drawn northward across Europe from North Africa, and the other is bursts of very cold air from the Arctic moving southward over Europe in late winter and early spring. Episodes of excessive heat have consequences in the vineyard that go well beyond the effects of generally warmer temperatures. Temperatures above 95–104°F (35–40°C) can severely affect the grapevine’s photosynthetic system and can cause skin damage to berries through sunburn. Biochemical and physiological processes are affected, including berry sugar-acid and flavonoid levels, as well as grape-skin color and aroma, especially for early-ripening varieties.

But even more than heatwaves in Europe in recent summers, it has been the occurrence of highly damaging late frosts that have attracted attention.⁷ They occurred in France in 2017, 2020, and 2021, but even in 2020 the Rhône Valley was affected. The April 2021 frost was particularly extensive, affecting at least 80 percent of French vineyards, and was especially damaging because it followed record-high temperatures in the previous month. Late frosts coinciding with budbreak are a problem because the new growing shoots have a high water content and are thus especially vulnerable to freezing. The actual impact depends on the kind of freezing event and the stage of bud growth—but during budburst, a temperature of 28°F (–2.2°C) is lethal for about 50 percent of buds.

Excessive summer heat and drought, but especially damaging late-spring frosts, can severely limit yields and thereby the quantities of wine available in the marketplace. This is especially important for certain premium wines from very restricted geographical areas—such as in Burgundy—where quantities are very limited even in good years. After the devastating early April frosts in Burgundy in 2021, yields were down by nearly 50 percent compared with the previous year, with Chardonnay and Aligoté in the Côte de Beaune suffering an 80 percent loss. Despite the relatively abundant vintages of 2017 and 2018, average yields in Burgundy have declined by 30 percent over the past decade.

The key question is whether the advance of higher average temperatures to earlier in the year is occurring more or less rapidly than the advance in the date of the last damaging frost. The research on this is equivocal, since it depends on the budburst model used and, to a lesser extent, the climate model applied, but a study of the situation in France has indicated that early-maturing grape varieties in more continental climates (such as Burgundy) are most vulnerable to late frosts, at least for the next few decades. This conclusion depends, however, on the future behavior of the jet stream, which remains a major uncertainty.

Another tipping point?

If European wine producers are concerned about the challenge of torrid heatwaves and severe late frosts over the coming decades, then there is a further switch of climate that has been identified by oceanographers and climatologists that could pose an even greater threat to Europe and its potential to produce wine at all. It is known by the acronym AMOC—the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.⁸ A look at a world map charting isotherms—lines of equal mean temperature—shows a major poleward deviation in northwest Europe that keeps its climate mild and creates year-round ice-free ports in northern Norway and even in northwest Russia. This is a result of the especially warm ocean to the west created by the Gulf Stream. This warms, or maintains the warmth of, the westerly airflow across the Atlantic, which dominates the atmospheric circulation in northwest Europe. The poleward movement of warm ocean water at the surface, and the equatorward movement at depth, is driven by density contrasts related to temperature and salinity. This involves a delicate balance such that it has flipped on and off in the past as recorded by ice-core records and other proxy climatic data. The concern today is the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which is dumping prodigious quantities of lower density freshwater into the northern Atlantic Ocean. This is regarded by climate modelers as a tipping-point system, whereby at some stage, possibly over coming decades, further very small changes in the density contrasts in the waters of the North Atlantic could shut off this conveyer belt of warm ocean water and its associated flow of mild westerly winds. This would plunge much of Europe into a substantially colder climate, and that would be not so much uncertainty as disaster. 

Notes

1. European Commission Copernicus Programme Climate Change Service: climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2022-was-year-climate-extremes-record-high-temperatures-and-rising-concentrations

2. GV Jones, R Reid, A Vilks, “Climate, Grapes, and Wine: Structure and Suitability in a Variable and Changing Climate,” in PH Dougherty (ed.) The Geography of Wine: Regions, Terroir and Techniques (Springer; Dordrecht, 2012), pp.109–33; GV Jones, “Climate Change, Viticulture, and Wine,” in AG Reynolds (ed.) Managing Wine Quality Vol.1 (Elsevier Woodhead Publishing Series in Food Science, Technology and Nutrition, 2022), pp.727–40.

3. MF Cardel et al, “Future Effects of Climate Change on the Suitability of Wine Grape Production across Europe,” Regional Environmental Change 19 (2019), pp.2299–2310; F Droulia, I Charalampopoulos, “Future Climate Change Impacts on European Viticulture: A Review on Recent Scientific Advances,” Atmosphere 12 (2021), 495; doi.org/10.3390/atmos12040495

4. JA Francis, SJ Vavrus, “Evidence Linking Arctic Amplification to Extreme Weather in Mid-Latitudes,” Geophysical Research Letters 39 (2012), L06801 doi:10.1029/2012GL051000; D Coumou et al, “The Influence of Arctic Amplification on Mid-Latitude Summer Circulation,” Nature Communications (2018) doi:10.1038/s41467-018-05256-8; M Stendel et al, “The Jet Stream and Climate Change,” Chap.15 Climate Change (Third Edition), Observed Impacts on Planet Earth (2021), pp.327–57.

5. E Rousi et al, “Accelerated Western European Heatwave Trends Linked to More-Persistent Double Jets Over Eurasia,” Nature Communications (2022); doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-31432-y

6. EA Barnes, JA Screen, “The Impact of Arctic Warming on the Midlatitude Jet-Stream: Can It? Has It? Will It?”, WIREs Climate Change 6 (2015), pp.277–86.

7. G Sgubin et al, “The Risk of Tardive Frost Damage in French Vineyards in a Changing Climate,” Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 250–251 (2018), pp.226–42; R Blackport, JA Screen, “Weakened Evidence for Mid-Latitude Impacts of Arctic Warming,” Nature Climate Change 10 (2020), pp.1064-1066.

8. LC Jackson et al, “Global and European Climate Impacts of a Slowdown of the AMOC in a High Resolution GCM,” Climate Dynamics 45 (2015), pp.3299–3316; F Sévellec et al, “Arctic Sea-Ice Decline Weakens the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation,” Nature Climate Change 7 (2017), pp.604-610; N Boers, “Observation-Based Early-Warning Signals for a Collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation,” Nature Climate Change 11 (2021), pp.680–88.

The post Future climate and the impact on wine: Predictable or uncertain? appeared first on World Of Fine Wine.

Anthony Rose hears all about the ongoing refinements at the great Montalcino estate at the launch of its latest, much-anticipated vintage.

Dinner in the swanky Wimborne Room at The Ritz in London would have been a fitting occasion for the launch of the 2016 Biondi-Santi Riserva alone, but it was not the only wine on the table. Over dinner, hosted by CEO Giampiero Bertolini, the much-anticipated 2016 was accompanied by a 44-year span of selected vintages beginning with a youthful but already approachable 2019 Rosso di Montalcino and ending with the 1975 Riserva, the oldest of five riservas, all of which had been stored in the quiet and dark of the La Storica bottle library at Tenuta Greppo in Montalcino. The booklet accompanying the dinner provided an apposite introductory quote from Franco Biondi Santi: “Nature is capable of creating great things; you just have to know how to wait.”

Giampiero Bertolini, previously with Frescobaldi and with Biondi-Santi since 2018, explained that since the French businessman Christopher Descours took a majority stake in the 150ha (370-acre) estate in December 2016, they had been keen to evolve the wines primarily through a change in the way the vineyards were managed by achieving a better understanding of the potential of the soils and maintaining vine health. With 27ha (67 acres) planted to vineyards over four sites within Montalcino’s undulating hills before the acquisition of new vineyards at an altitude of 1,640ft (500m), they had taken on the renowned Chilean viticulturist Pedro Parra in 2018 to create a parcelization study aimed at examining the different soil types to see which rootstocks and trellises would be best suited to each site.

Starting in 2019, the excavation of 32 pits in the vineyards (the beloved Chilean calicata) resulted in the identification of 12 parcels of distinct soil types from which the wines were vinified and aged separately. Parra returned in 2021 for another study in which three vintages would be analyzed and compared in an ongoing process. (For a detailed account of Pedro Parra’s project, see WFW 72, p.84). Meanwhile, the clonal selection that was carried out in the 1970s by Franco Biondi Santi (who died in 2013) and that culminated in the identification of the BBS11 clone, which was registered by the estate and replanted throughout Montalcino, is today continued by Biondi-Santi’s technical director, Federico Radi. Radi has begun a new massal selection of the vines in the oldest vineyard of the estate. In this vineyard, which is from the 1930s, about 16 mother-plants have been identified, and they will form the basis for the new vineyard plantings in the future. This selection will flank the already existing BBS11 vineyards. 

Given the increase in temperatures since 2023, Bertolini confesses to being “very worried” about climate change and the effect it will have on Biondi-Santi’s trademark freshness, balance, and longevity. To that end, having acquired new vineyards near Tenuta Greppo at 1,640ft (500m) in altitude, taking the full complement to 32.6ha (80 acres), they have adopted a new trellising system with movable horizontal bars, allowing for improved aeration and a more protected environment for the grapes. At the same time, they are trialing nets to protect the vines from excessive sunlight and hail, along with the use of site-specific cover crops to enhance the soil’s microbiological life, the avoidance of herbicides and anti-botrytis sprays, the summer pruning of bunches, the meticulous hand-sorting of bunches after picking, and the use of natural yeasts. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, or, as the Italians would have it, cambiare tutto per non cambiare niente. 

2016 Brunello di Montalcino: So beguiling

Tasting

The Ritz, London; November 8, 2022

2019 Biondi-Santi Rosso di Montalcino DOC (13% ABV)

From a vintage that was wet and cold to start with but that culminated in a hot, dry summer refreshed by rain at the end of August, this youthfully bright, deep Sangiovese from the Tenuta Greppo, Ribusuoli, and Pievecchia vineyards is bright and fragrant, with an invitingly opulent cherry-fruit and herb quality, showing vigor and bite at this early stage of its development. And while still primary, the wine, rounded by 12 months in Slavonian oak, is approachable now, even if it will benefit from seven years plus further aging in bottle. 2023–32. | 92

2016 Biondi-Santi Riserva La Storica Brunello di Montalcino DOCG (14% ABV)

After a rainy winter and spring, the favorable weather that set in over a warm, sunny summer was interrupted toward harvest by intermittent rains leading to a slow, later-than-usual harvest from September 19. Still remarkably fresh yet at the same time savory in aroma, this Riserva, the 42nd produced since 1888, shows the youthful energy of a wine of intense red-berry fruit and herbal aromatics, its youthful vigor displaying a richness of concentrated, sweetly ripe cherry and black fruit underpinned by savory black-olive notes and a backbone of sinewy yet elegant tannins and delightfully refreshing acidity. 2025–55. | 95

2008 Biondi-Santi Riserva La Storica Brunello di Montalcino DOCG (13.5% ABV)

After a long, hot summer and a relatively cold, wet harvest, starting on September 10, this Riserva—produced on Franco Biondi Santi’s watch and aged in Slavonian oak for three years—is still quite youthful in color, showing subtle aromas of cherry, dried herbs, pepper and sun-dried tomato, leading initially to subtle, sweetly ripe cherries and soon turning to a mouthwatering sour-savory quality as a firm spine of acidity kicks in, aided and abetted by a light grip of tannin. 2023–40. | 93

1999 Biondi-Santi Riserva La Storica Brunello di Montalcino DOCG (13.5% ABV)

Following a contrasting season of cold and wet weather in winter and spring, then a hot, dry summer and finally a dry, but cold harvest, the result is a wine, aged for three years in Slavonian oak, that is still holding its color well after 23 years. A lightly smoky, savory bouquet, with an enticing veneer of vanilla to it, then, tasting it, deceptively concentrated, sumptuously elegant cherry fruit and balsamic complexity, with a seamless texture of fine-boned tannins and beautifully balanced freshness. 2023–35. | 96

1985 Biondi-Santi Riserva La Storica Brunello di Montalcino DOCG (13% ABV)

After a favorable season that was mostly dry and warm with a few showers, this Riserva, released in 1991, celebrates the centenary year of the production of the historic 1891 Riserva (given 100 points by the late Nick Belfrage MW in 1994). Recorked in 2000, it is still youthful, with a complex bouquet of cherry, dried herb, and raisin. The leathery undertones are conveyed on tasting by evolved balsamic flavors combining characteristic sour cherry with mushroom and truffle, all underpinned by a surprising vigor that helps maintain freshness. 2023–30. | 93

1975 Biondi-Santi Riserva La Storica Brunello di Montalcino DOCG (12.5% ABV)

After a fine season of warm dry weather in the summer and during the harvest, this wine actually predates the formal recognition of the BBS11 Sangiovese Grosso clone in 1978. Nothing, however, detracts from the fact that the results are extraordinary in a Riserva aged, typically, for three years in Slavonian oak and recorked in 2000, with a gloriously smoky-sweet fragrance, mingling notes of citrus zest and nutmeg spice with game. This is followed by flavors whose cherry fruit and balsamic and gamey undertones add exceptional depth and complexity to a wine of seamless elegance and distinction. 2023–30. | 98

The post Biondi-Santi Riserva 2016: The more things change … appeared first on World Of Fine Wine.

There has been a subtle but significant shift in the winemaking approach at the venerable Rioja estate, Marqués de Murrieta, but the underlying quality remains, says Simon Field MW after a fascinating tasting featuring wines both young and old.

As symbolism goes, one cannot do much better than the 34th floor of The Shard, London’s (and the UK’s) tallest building—beneath us, the bright lights of the big city, and around us, the trappings of 170 years of vinous excellence. Add to this the fact that we are in the Shangri-La hotel, and the symbolism starts to dance playfully around the ancient bottles of Rioja… An earthly paradise to look up to, albeit through autumnal, Dickensian smog rather than Tibetan mist. Either way, a definitive statement is being made. The 70 guests are impressed.

Presiding imperiously is the charismatic Vicente Dalmau Cebrián-Sagarriga, Count of Creixell, the man with the largest business card I have ever seen. Read into that what you will. Vicente inherited the familial property suddenly in 1996 on the early death of his father, also Vicente, who had purchased the winery in 1983. Before that, it had been in the hands of the heirs of Luciano Murrieta, the original marquis, who had founded it in 1852 with an aspiration to import savoir faire from Bordeaux and then to export fine wines from Rioja, itself unusual at the time. A huge influence, therefore, with Rioja itself benefiting ever since from his technical and commercial acumen. The Creixell dynasty, for its part, is Galician and can trace ownership of its Rías Baixas property, Pazo Barrantes, to the 16th century. Vicente now presides over both, aided by his sister Cristina and, since 2000, by the highly valued winemaker Maria Vargas.

Vicente is dapper, with a confident Castilian swagger and a healthy self-belief. Titian’s Holy Roman Emperor—minus, on this occasion, the horse. He speaks of “revolution in Rioja” and a seminal year for Marqués de Murrieta; of the personal cathartic project that is Dalmau; and of the “demise” of Garnacha—grandiose statements all, and all needing a degree of unpicking.

The seminal year in question is 2018, the vintage of the latest release of the Murrieta Reserva. The significance can be found in the fact that it was the start of the complete renovation of the winery—now 270,000 sq ft (25,000 sq m) of splendor, oak, and steel winking at each other behind the thick stone of the Castillo de Ygay—and in a concomitant paradigm shift in winemaking, which centers on a modification (and generally reduction) in the oak aging, most especially in Dalmau and in the white, Capellanía. The changes are subtle yet significant: Long gone are the days when the top wines were aged for ten years in American oak; purity and structural definition are now key. The mood music is respectful of tradition, and adagio of temperament, since the wines are released at different times. There is, nonetheless, a nostalgic temptation to mourn the passing of a distinctive imprimatur—all the more so when one tastes the three wines that are served at the end of this fabulous meal: Castillo Ygay 1980 and 1968 in magnum and Castillo Ygay Blanco 1986. Oh well… the changes are nuanced and gradual, mutatis mutandis, and the underlying quality remains unchallenged.

Burgundy the closest cousin

What of Rioja as a whole? Here the debate, as ever, focuses on the pros and cons of its strong brand identity and the issue of classification. Vicente does not wish for Ygay to enter the Viñedo Singular category (Ygay would surely be the template and potential ambassador thereof), but at the same time, he is scornful of a designation, however long-standing, based on time rather than quality. “We may remove the words ‘Gran Reserva’ to the back label,” he says of Ygay. “It is of marginal significance to us.” Hardly an endorsement of either categorization. The alternative is cited as a pyramid of qualitative definition, with premiers and grands crus in the manner of Burgundy. “We are, after all, very Burgundian in style here… There is more limestone in the soils at Logroño than in Haro. They used to say that Ygay was closer to Bordeaux in style, but I think that Burgundy is in fact our closest cousin.” It’s hard to disagree with such a statement, especially when tasting the older trio.

Whither Murrieta? If the macro-environment is uncertain (politically, above all, with the Basque Alavesa enclave threatening to withdraw from the denominación altogether), things are clearer, at least, for the familial domaine. “We do not make crianza,” says Vicente, “and we do not buy in fruit, so we are relatively small in size.” Production, at around 1.4 million bottles, is dwarfed by competitors at the top end: Riscal makes some 20 million bottles, CVNE 25 million, and even La Rioja Alta more than six million. Growth does not interest Vicente: “I am a part of Rioja, and I am responsible for Rioja”—quite a claim, but few are as qualified to make it with such confidence. Especially when speaking from Shangri-La.

Tasting Marqués de Murrieta

Shangri-La The Shard, London; November 28, 2022.

2019 Pazo Barrantes Rías Baixas
(100% Albarino)

The original familial estate of the forebears of the Counts of Creixell, Pazo Barrantes has been upgraded of late, both in terms of aesthetic and taste. The upshot is very impressive, the 15% of acacia aging (for seven months) subtly adding texture and depth without forsaking the forward, slightly salty citric charm of this most attractive of Atlantic varietals. | 91

2018 Marqués de Murrieta Reserva
(86% Tempranillo, 8% Graciano, 4% Mazuelo, 2% Garnacha)

2018 marks the beginning of the “new era,” pace Vicente; well… newish, at least, given that none of the traditional quality has been abandoned. Fermentation is now in stainless steel, however, and oak aging reduced in time (21 months, where it may have been 30 or more) and intensity (none is new). A stormy, unpredictable vintage for all that. Deep in color, with finely balanced red fruit and spice; warm, generous, and roundly satisfying. | 91

2015 Marqués de Murrieta Gran Reserva (80% Tempranillo, 9% Graciano, 9% Mazuelo, 2% Garnacha)

Aged for 27 months in American oak (225-liter barrels, six months in new wood) and then in large (15,000-liter) concrete tanks. A warm vintage, 2015 was less turbulent than 2018, with diurnal gaps late in the season to underwrite the fine shard of acidity in this wine. Richly textured, with mocha, molasses, and chocolate behind the attractive black fruit, this is a highly successful Gran Reserva, a wine not to be overlooked as one reaches for the Ygay. | 93

2018 Capellanía (100% Viura)

Named for a 6ha (15-acre) plot planted at 1,600ft (485m) of altitude in 1945, Capellanía is the most changed member of the Murrieta family. The new face of Ygay Blanco. Fermentation is now in stainless steel, and the aging is in French oak from Allier; so, adieu to the spicy vanillin blockbusters of old. Welcome to a more restrained and subtle wine, not lacking in personality (a creamy texture and spicy backdrop are evidenced), but more measured, its fruit ripe and yet elegant, its finish refreshing and powerful. A superb match for the short rib raviolo and beurre noisette, as it turned out. | 91

2005 Marqués de Murrieta Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial (89% Tempranillo, 11% Mazuelo)

The calcareous soil of the 30ha (75-acre) La Plana plot distinguishes Ygay in both senses of the verb; planted on a plateau at an altitude of nearly 1,650ft (500m), this terroir has proved ideal in harnessing the quality latent in the 2005 vintage. QED here; Mazuelo acidity underscores Tempranillo generosity. The ensemble boasts red and black fruit, a hint of game and bitter chocolate, then a robust finish that brims with self-belief. | 92

2010 Marqués de Murrieta Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial (85% Tempranillo, 15% Mazuelo)

A late vintage cycle, with cooler conditions prevailing. The time in oak has been reduced from 30 to 24 months, only partly in acknowledgment of the conditions. The new-era Ygay is tantalizingly similar to the old-era Ygay (thank goodness), albeit with a little less emphasis on the tenor and length of the élevage. The Mazuelo has also been creeping up over the years—a perfect antidote to broader excesses engendered by climate change. One has to change, so they say, to stay the same. But not too much, please. A glorious example, just starting to contemplate its truffley, whimsical ascent to seniority. | 94

2011 Marqués de Murrieta Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial (84% Tempranillo, 16% Mazuelo)

The current Ygay (the 2012 will be released in the spring of 2024, and there will be no 2013, 2014, or, interestingly, 2015). A dry hinterland, cool weather ceding to a fine autumn. The élevage is back up to 28 months here; the wine strident in (relative) youth; generous, red-fruit power, firm but unobtrusive tannins, a hint of balming balsam, and a generous finish. This seems more than a mere year younger than the 2010. Both are excellent. | 93

1980 Marqués de Murrieta Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial (Magnum)  (72% Tempranillo, 13% Mazuelo, 11% Garnacha Tinta, 4% Graciano)

Two venerable old-style Ygays to go with a platter of Iberian cheese. Garnacha and Graciano, subsequently banished, are included in both. The 1980 was aged for 72 months in American oak; it is delicate, elegant, and balletic of temperament, the silky tannins cradling the still-impressive red-fruit character, the acidity coursing through its heady veins with a Burgundian flourish. | 95

1968 Marqués de Murrieta Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial (Magnum) (70% Tempranillo, 13% Mazuelo, 12% Garnacha Tinta, 5% Graciano)

A real treat this, a sine qua non of traditional Ygay, and therefore a benchmark for all of Rioja, its vintage a famous one. This magnum was bottled in 1983, and it had enjoyed 162 months in American oak, although one would struggle to guess this, given its lively color and fresh forest-floor aromas, evolution suggested only by the touch of volatility and the gentle, slightly sandy tannins. Game and fig inform the mid-palate, an ethereal elegance billowing whimsically though the ensemble, which seems petrified in a preternatural state of ageless grace. | 96

2019 Dalmau (86% Tempranillo, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% Graciano)

A cathartic, “personal” wine, Dalmau was and is Vicente’s stamp on the identity of the estate, now, by his own admission, “refined” and less overly oaky. It turns out that Vicente is also called Dalmau, which underlines the personal nature of the project. Quite a sea change after the ancient magnum, the 2019 has been aged in new French oak for 20 months, its color near onyx, its aromatic oaky and assertive. On the palate, the dark fruit is pure and expressive (loganberry, myrtle, and blackberry; cassis, too, from the Cabernet), powerful and strident. An impressive antidote, surely, but one that needs time. | 91–92

1986 Castillo Ygay Blanco (97% Viura, 3% Malvasia)

An old-school white now, and perhaps the most appreciably different from its recent manifestation (now known as Capellanía after its vineyard); there is Malvasia for a start (albeit only 3%), and crucially, there has been an élevage in American oak, a glorious 225 months of it. This beauty was finally bottled in 2014. Waxy, oily, unctuous, yet with firm beeswax acidity and adamantine definition on the finish; smoke, mushroom, quince, white chocolate… the list is endless. Only 13 vintages of the Ygay Blanco have been released (since 1852), which is not many for one of the great white wines of the world. | 97

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Chris Losh speaks to winemakers around the world to get the latest on how climate change is affecting wine production, and to find out how the fast-evolving crisis is likely to shape wine style and quality in the next few decades.

Hard though it is to believe, it’s not that long ago that the topic of climate change and wine was some way down the priority list of most vignerons. Industry conferences held in the early years of the millennium tended to feature a worried scientist or viticultural expert talking to rooms full of growers, importers, and winemakers whose reactions varied from vague concern through disinterest to outright skepticism. 

Well, no more. The figures surrounding global heating are incontrovertible. Statistics from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show a world that is already more than 1°C (1.8°F) warmer than before the industrial revolution. 

More worryingly, the pace of warming is increasing. Eight of the ten warmest years on record have occurred in the last decade. In the last two years, there have been record temperatures from Canada to Sicily, wildfires in Australia, Portugal, Greece, and California, floods in Australia and Germany. But even leaving these extreme events aside, the impact of climate change on wine production is becoming ever-more obvious. 

The effects of climate change on wine quality

Across the board, the standard of wine is generally accepted to be higher now than it was 50 years ago. But that doesn’t mean that climate change is having no impact. 

Those improvements are due to technological advances in the winery, and better scientific understanding of how grapes are grown and wine is made. In other words, they have—at least until now—smoothed over or lessened the effects of climate change.

So, while wines might be better now than they were 50 years ago, there’s some debate about whether they are better than they were 20 years ago. 

Vines are one of the most weather-sensitive of all agricultural crops. Their ability to reflect vintage variation is, of course, a huge part of wine’s appeal. But that same expressiveness that makes a cool-vintage Bordeaux different from a warm-vintage one also makes wine particularly vulnerable to climate change. 

Eminent Australian viticulturalist, Dr Richard Smart, says that even relatively small changes in temperature could “effectively rewrite regional reputations and varietal preferences.” 

Since the National Research Council of the National Academies in the US is predicting temperature rises of up to 3°C (5.4°C) by 2050 and 5°C (9°F) by 2100, it’s clear that the wine world could look very different in one or two generations’ time.

In other words, in just 20 years, for wine, climate change has moved from being a theoretical problem to an actual one.

The effects of climate change on wine production

So, how does climate change affect wine production? The most obvious effect is warmer temperatures. And that means that the entire growing cycle is happening earlier. Budding, flowering, fruit-set, veraison, and, of course, harvest are all taking place, on average ten days to two weeks sooner than they used to. 

In general, this means that alcohol levels are higher, acidity levels lower and tannins (which ripen later) frequently scratchier and less refined. Hotter growing-season temperatures are making it harder for growers to achieve balance in the fruit—and, therefore, in the finished wine.

But if record summer temperatures are the most obvious example of how climate change has affected viticulture, what happens in winter is perhaps even more serious. 

Because winters are significantly milder, vines are often coming out of dormancy far earlier than they used to, making them more vulnerable to frost. France, in particular, has had a pattern of mild winters, followed by sudden cold snaps in early spring, which kill off vulnerable young growth.

“Frost in April isn’t exceptional,” says Thiébault Huber of Domaine Huber Verderau in Meursault. “The problem is summertime in February and March.”

The most severe example was 2021. After an exceptionally mild winter, more than 90 percent of France was hit with sub-zero temperatures for several days in early April. The country’s total wine harvest was the lowest since the Second World War, 30 percent smaller than usual—ruinous for hundreds of growers. The Loire has been particularly badly affected over the last two decades.

But the story of climate change and wine is not just one of elevated temperatures; it is creating more extreme weather generally. 

Wildfires, for instance, are obviously devastating to vineyards, people, and property. But the rolling clouds of smoke can cover vineyards and ruin wines produced from vines that were never in physical danger from the flames. Australia, South Africa, and the US have all seen wines affected by smoke taint over the last ten years.

Shortage of water is another obvious issue, particularly in the New World where irrigation is essential. South Africa and Australia have both suffered from prolonged periods of well below-average rainfall over the last 15 years. Climatologists in the US, meanwhile, estimate that nearly 80 percent of the country is in some level of drought.

Wine is a thirsty industry. To irrigate a 10ha (24-acre) vineyard for three hours takes tens of thousands of liters of water. If the water isn’t there—which it might not be in 30 years’ time if the current situation continues or worsens— that creates an existential problem. 

One of the vagaries of climate change is that when there is rain, it is often the wrong sort of rain. Rather than being a steady accumulation of moisture over the winter that replenishes soils and aquifers, it is increasingly falling in intense, short bursts in the summer. 

Somewhat ironically, these flash floods do nothing to alleviate drought, since the water simply runs off.

“Years ago, there was a season for things,” sighs Derek Mossman Knapp, who dry farms old vines in Chile’s Maule Valley. “Now it seems more arbitrary.”

The final problem is hail. In Europe, especially, it seems to be becoming far more common, and it can be immensely destructive.

“If you are the victim of a hailstorm,” says Sheila Ulldemolins of Herencia Altés in Terra Alta in Catalonia, “you can say goodbye to your harvest.”

Which wine regions have been most affected by climate change?

Wine regions have not all been impacted equally by climate change. Some, such as Margaret River in Australia and Central Otago in New Zealand report few issues. Others are beset by problems on an almost annual basis.

Even within the same country, the effects can vary. 

South African viticultural guru, Rosa Kruger, paints a picture where the Western Cape seems to be getting hotter and drier, the east is getting more rain and the south has less rain overall, but more in summer.

In general terms, however, Europe—particularly the cooler areas of Europe—seem to be seeing the biggest changes.

Some of these, it must be said, can, in strictly viticultural terms, be construed as positive. The obvious example is the UK, which used to be exceptionally marginal, but which has seen the quality and reliability of its wines increase hugely. Some are predicting that Sweden might one day have thousands of acres under vine.

German viticulture, meanwhile, now stretches as far north as Kiel. 

In the Mosel, Ernie Loosen recalls that his father used to expect four bad vintages in ten. By contrast, Ernie reckons his last poor year was in 1984. “If anyone has gained from global warming,” he says mischievously, “it’s us.”

That said, Germany’s winemakers now have the opposite problem. Where the country’s viticulture used to be centered on maximising ripeness with minimum sunshine, now it is the opposite—about retaining acidity and lowering sugar levels. 

Many of Germany’s A-list vineyards are on places designed to maximize sun-exposure - steep south-facing slopes next to sunshine-reflecting rivers. If temperatures continue to climb, the nature of Riesling could change beyond recognition.

Riesling, of course, is an unusually faithful reflector of climate and terroir. Its red equivalent is Pinot Noir, and in the variety’s spiritual home, Burgundy, growers are, to put it bluntly, being battered by climate change. 

One winemaker told me he has experienced “frosts in April (2012, 2016, 2021), more severe hail storms (2012, 2013, 2014), and heat waves and droughts resulting in concentration (2019, 2020). Volumes are way down, and the famed ‘typicité’ difficult to attain, with terroir’s finer nuances often smothered in atypically ripe fruit.“

How is the wine industry reacting to climate change?

Climate change might be having a noticeable impact on the wine industry already—but there are tools at its disposal. 

In short, it can change what it grows, where it grows it, and how it manages the crop.

At its most extreme, “what it grows” can mean a complete change of grape variety. Bordeaux sanctioned the use of six new varieties in its vineyards two years ago. Among them was Touriga Nacional, star of Port production in the Douro. 

Currently, these new additions are limited to no more than 10 percent of the total blend, but if they prove to be better-suited to the new climatic reality this could change.

In the New World, particularly Australia, a growing number of producers are looking at Mediterranean varieties such as Nero d’Avola, Tempranillo, and Fiano. This could form a blueprint for elsewhere. Varieties that better withstand heat and drought and are naturally higher in acid could lead to a shift away from the French varieties that have dominated places like Australia, South Africa, and The Americas and towards Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Portuguese alternatives. 

Maybe (whisper it) even in France.  For while it might sound sacrilegious, all wine regions will be having these conversations in the near future. “The fact that in Bordeaux they recently legalised Touriga Nacional due to its drought resistance but that in the Douro we’re being forced to look beyond Touriga Nacional as it is even drier is telling,” says Anthony Symington of Port shippers Symington Family Estates.

Adopting new varieties will be easier in regions that are already making multi-varietal blends. Currently, any suggestion of switching from Pinot Noir in Burgundy makes its own contribution to global warming in the form of the red-hot fury of growers enraged at the prospect.

Beyond grape varieties, growers can sometimes “create coolness” by planting on differently oriented slopes that get less or “cooler” sun/more wind, or at higher altitudes. 

This could have a big impact on centuries-old vineyard classifications, as once-unfancied (or unplanted) areas become sought-after, and once great sites are deemed too warm. 

Some growers believe they can mitigate the effects of climate change by using different clones of their existing varieties—versions that ripen later or more reluctantly. In the short term, at least, there is something this may yield some positive results. Whether it will be enough should temperatures increase by 3°C is another matter entirely.

Twenty years ago, growers left bunches in the sun to help them attain ripeness. Increasingly, they are shading them with leaves to keep them cool. If all else fails, and crops come in super-ripe, there is always (for some regions at least) the nuclear option of de-alcoholizing the wine by a few degrees.

At the moment, wine producers all round the world are having important and sometimes-difficult conversations about how best to prepare themselves for a future that looks like being radically different to their past. Centuries of experience are no advantage when the rules of the game have changed. Indeed, the ability to take tough decisions and move fast could be more beneficial than the pressure created by a glorious past.

Spanish wine grandee, Miguel Torres, describes wine as the “canary in the coal mine.” And while that canary might not—yet—be reduced to silence, it is not singing as sweetly as it once did.

There are ways that wine is adapting and can adapt to climate change. But none of them are easy, and many of them will take time. And if the scientists are right, that is one thing that the wine industry does not have.

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In the third installment of her ongoing series on wine and the climate crisis, Katharine Swindells examines the response to the historically small 2021 vintage, and asks how the wine world should best address the instability caused by the increasing frequency of extreme weather events.

Last year saw Europe fall back on its old, much-criticized subsidy systems, to support wine producers through the low demand of the pandemic. Now the EU has extended those same subsidies to be used for the opposite: to support producers experiencing low yields due to extreme weather events.

But, in a world made increasingly unstable by the climate crisis, when every year feels like emergency circumstances, are these systems too short-sighted?

Europe’s wine lakes

“After World War Two, food security was a priority of the European Commission, so they started subsidizing farmers,” explains Giulia Meloni, an agriculture policy and economics professor at KU Leuven and ECARES (ULB) in Belgium. “And it worked very, very well—sometimes too well. That’s how we ended up with wine lakes and butter mountains.”

Between 1995 and 2000, the average annual global wine surplus was 17.5 percent of production. And in 2004 it reached over 60 million hectoliters: a fifth of wine produced was surplus.

As Meloni says, much of this was driven by EU policies themselves—their subsidies to wine producers and commitment to distilling excess wine, encouraged overproduction. And at the same time, European wine consumption was falling. These lakes were a huge dampener on the industry, says Kym Anderson, Director of the Wine Economics Research Centre at the University of Adelaide. The oversupply and lack of market pressure on low-grade wines brought down the overall quality of European wine and, crucially, the price.

So from the mid-2000s, the EU resolved to close the gap, re-purposing the subsidy system to incentivize farmers to cut back grapes, or even to pull up their vines entirely, a process known as “grubbing up.”

And in the immediate aftermath, it worked. Between 2004 and 2012, the combined wine production of Europe’s five largest producers fell by a fifth, causing a significant dent in global supply. Spain and France in particular took advantage of these schemes, and between 2004 and 2012 both cut their annual wine production by over a quarter.

But after a few years the “grubbing up” scheme was phased out, the money was put into wine promotion and investment, and production ticked back up again.

In fact the closing of the wine lake in the past five years can be more attributed to shifting consumption than to EU policies. While France in 1995 was the world’s biggest wine consumer, since then the country’s wine consumption has fallen by over a third. But this fall has been counterbalanced by hugely growing consumption in other countries: between 1997 and 2017 the US, China and the UK’s combined wine consumption grew by almost 70 percent.

2020, the year of “unprecedented circumstances,” saw good spring and summer weather and a resultant bumper crop in the EU, with production up by 8 percent compared to 2019. At the same time, consumption dropped 3 percent globally as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Particularly affected were countries like Spain, who are heavily reliant on restaurant and hospitality sales and so saw a 7 percent decline in annual consumption, as well as countries who rely heavily on migrant grape pickers, who were unable to cross the borders.

Amidst fears of a return to wine lakes, the EU fell back on its old policies. Although the extra funding the organization called for by bodies such as European Confederation of Independent Winegrowers (CEVI) was not granted, explains CEVI Presiden Matilde Poggi, many governments opted to increase the support themselves, and the EU wine sector support was given much more flexibility. The funding was quickly repurposed for crisis distillation: in France, over 2 million hectoliters were bought to be turned into ethanol or alcoholic hand gel, with wine producers paid €58 - €78 per hectoliter by Brussels.

Growing instability

But early data of the 2021 harvest shows the reverse problem. Wine production has always been volatile, but for some parts of Europe this year’s weather was unexpectedly brutal—with floods, frosts and mildew causing huge, unforeseen damage to harvests.

Read More: Early Pickings? Climate change and harvest dates

Germany’s July flash floods destroyed many wineries and vineyards in the Ahr Valley region, and local producers are auctioning off their ruined “flood wine” to raise funds for their survival.

In France, the 2021 harvest is estimated to be the lowest on record, the result of a destructive spring frost similar to those seen in 2017 and 1991.

Across France, wine production is a third below its average level this year, and in Bourgogne-Beaujolais, Champagne, and France’s Southwest, it’s estimated that almost half their average harvest was lost. In Languedoc-Roussillon, France’s largest wine-producing region, 2021’s harvest was almost 3.5 million hectoliters lower than average.

This autumn, the EU announced an extension of the flexibility and support measures granted during the pandemic, to cover the effects of 2021’s extreme weather.

National governments have also been providing support to their growers: in April, the French Prime Minister announced almost €1 billion in financial support to wine growers affected by the devastating frost.

But is this system sustainable in the long term? Analysis in the recent IPCC report found that extreme heat, which used to happen only once a decade, is now happening three times a decade, and by 2100 could be happening once a year. Heavy rain, which is currently seen just over once a decade, could also triple in frequency.

When every year could see harvests boomerang by millions of hectoliters, and a few days of extreme weather could mean a year’s work is destroyed, how can governments help their wine producers find stability?

Many point to insurance as an option, but analysis by the French Ministry of Agriculture found that even though insurance is subsidized, less than a fifth of French wine producers are insured, amounting to only an eighth of the country’s total vineyard.

The cost is the problem, says CEVI president Poggi, and if the EU makes insuring vines against bad weather mandatory, the expensive premiums won’t be viable for many independent winegrowers.

Americans seem to be more open to insuring their crops: When wildfires hit the West Coast in 2020, 77 percent of California winegrape growers had coverage. But further up the coast in Oregon, where many vineyards were damaged by smoke exposure, just 32 percent of grape growers had crop insurance. And those with insurance are now finding their premiums rising year on year, sometimes even doubling according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Some insurers now refuse to cover fire damage at all.

There are arguments too for storing surplus wine to be used in blends in later years, which would even out the inconsistent yields and quality of grapes. While this is already standard practice in Champagne in order to maintain their characteristic blend from year to year, in still wines, blending across multiple vintages is still very unusual.

As year-to-year harvests become more variable, we may see wine producers explore storage options and the multi-vintage trend. But with regions seeing yields vary by millions of hectoliters, storage remains an unlikely option to meet the capacity of the global wine demand.

Some, such as Anderson from the Wine Economics Research Centre, argue that wine has always been an unstable industry, and those who can’t withstand the pressure would be better to cut their losses and leave.

“Going forward this will be the new normal, climate change is going to cause these sorts of disruptions somewhere in the world every year,” says Anderson. “Agricultural producers can't expect to be bailed out by the taxpayer every time. You're in a risky industry, and it's going to become more risky over time. Growers are just going to have to learn to be more resilient,or get out of the industry.”

But this, says Poggi, overlooks the significant role that wine plays in local economies, and its cultural significance.

“Independent winegrowers play a key role in many rural areas, and have a positive impact on the local dynamism and economy, maintaining activity and employment opportunities in rural areas,” says Poggi. “Moreover, wine is a cultural heritage in many European regions, and it is crucial to preserve our know-how and our tradition.”

Poggi argues that, alongside short-term support, investment in research and technological solutions is crucial, to discover and share best practices for resilience in wine production.

Meloni of KU Leuven agrees—that investment in modification of seeds, and experimentation in moving grape varieties to different regions, could be crucial to providing more stability to the industry.

“Long term, investing in research and innovation at EU level is one of the most important things,” Meloni says. “Some regulations can limit innovation, which the EU Commission and policymakers need to encourage.”

Ultimately, Meloni says, Europe’s wine world may need to soften their dedication to tradition and regimen, if they’re going to survive.

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As the third edition of his landmark book goes on sale, Jamie Goode asks what's changed in wine science in the years since the first edition was published in 2005.

On June 2, 2021, the third edition of my Wine Science book was published, following the original (2005) and the second edition (2014). 

So what has changed in the 16 years since I first set out to chronicle the world of science as it applies to wine?

Here, we need to make a distinction between technology and science. As the scientific understanding changes, practice often follows, and this is expressed in the different technology used in the winery and vineyard. So strictly speaking a technological innovation isn’t ‘science’, but it is based on science, and so it’s hard to tease the two fully apart. 

Under the vineyard surface

I’d say the biggest change has been the way that we view what goes on under the surface in the vineyard. Here we have an increasing understanding of the role of soils in wine quality, but also a realization that soil microlife is much more complex than previously thought, and affects the way that vines perform. The science of soil life is an area of intense study, and it has led to a new third way of approaching viticulture called regenerative farming. This brings in approaches from organics as well as scientific insights to help create a more fully sustainable way of growing vines that protects the life of the soil. It’s one reason that herbicides as a tool for weed control are on borrowed time: they are really bad for soil microlife.

One huge change in the wine world over the last 16 years is how "natural" wine has escaped the tiny niche it used to exist in, and become more mainstream. This raises questions around the science of making wines without sulfites. Organic and biodynamic viticulture has also grown enormously over this time, so efforts to find new solutions to pests and diseases are underway, because devoid of the full chemical toolkit, winegrowers need to find new ways of farming. One option is breeding vines for resistance, and work is well underway here to establish these new PIWI and ResDur varieties in commercial vineyards. The first wines are already on the market.

Wine science and the climate crisis

Climate chaos is a big issue for viticulture. When I wrote the first edition in 2005 I was hesitant about putting a chapter on global warming into the book, because for some of my readers this would have been seen as controversial. I even hedged some of the language so as not to upset readers who were climate change sceptics. Now, denial of the chaos that the climate is in as a result of human activity is seen as pretty fringe, fortunately. It impacts hugely on viticulture, because grape vines are extremely sensitive to small changes in temperature. If what we were dealing with were a gradual warming, then it would be possible to adapt, but while there are significant warming trends, there is also much more unpredictability. Floods, droughts, increased incidence of hail and frost, and unseasonal cold or hot weather make viticulture difficult and more expensive. This is now a major focus for the wine industry.

Microbiology has also moved on. After all, wine is made by microbes, but yeasts and bacteria don’t seem to get the attention they deserve. Since 2004 a lot of work has gone into microbes for winemaking. One notable area is the progress made with cultured lactic acid bacteria. We now know that these can have quite an effect on the sensory properties of wine, and this is another winemaking tool. Co-inoculation with both yeasts and specific partner strains of lactic acid bacteria is now a winemaking tool that is especially useful for making fruit-forward red wines: the results are impressive, and this removes a major risk period in winemaking, the gap between the completion of alcoholic fermentation and the start of malolactic, where it is difficult to protect wines by using sulfur dioxide, which would inhibit the lactic acid bacteria. Another major change has been the availability of cultured "wild" yeast species: this allows winemakers some of the sensory benefits of wild ferments, with fewer of the risks. 

Closing down the debate

The science of closures has progressed to the point that a noisy squabble has now died down. The search for alternatives to cork has become less frantic now that there are effective solutions for removing taint from technological corks (those made from cork, but manufactured from small granules, with or without other components), and there are also more effective ways to remove taint from natural cork, or to catch any tainted corks and remove them from the marketplace. Cork taint hasn’t completely gone away, but it is less of an issue. And alternatives such as screwcaps and synthetics have established their place in the market, without taking it over completely as many had predicted. The science of post-bottling wine development still remains imperfectly understood, but the closure wars are less dramatic than they used to be.

One chapter from the earlier editions that has not made it to the third is on wine and health. Wine contains alcohol, which is toxic. There is however an established body of medical literature showing a consistent "J-shaped curve" relationship between wine consumption and mortality, where moderate drinkers live longer than teetotallers and heavy drinkers. There are mechanisms that can explain this: while alcohol is carcinogenic, it is also protective against cardiovascular disease. Modest consumption raises the risk of cancers slightly, but the cardiovascular benefit wins, until consumption rises to the point that cancer risk edges it. The finding is widely reproduced even when socioeconomic and other confounders are controlled for. However, this area has now become highly politicised by public health bodies who are turning on drinking as a social evil, so I decided that even though there’s some very interesting science—and it is relevant to the wine industry—it’s a fraught area where scientists may not be able to speak as freely as they’d like. 

Finally, there’s been quite a lot of shifting in the cellar, with stainless steel and small oak making way for large format oak, concrete and even terracotta. The science of elevage is fascinating, and it’s a very interesting time to be following the world of wine with a view to wine science.

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Is it possible for a wine to be truly fine if its character doesn't change from vintage to vintage?

There is a paradox at the heart of fine wine—we could perhaps call it the Australian paradox, after the country that first brought us the technical perfection that made the paradox really paradoxical—and every year it gets deeper. It is this: Great wine expresses its vintage and, thus, is different every year. As more and more countries, regions, and growers join the fine-wine club every year, so the babble of vintage variation becomes louder and louder. Vintage variation is what serious wine growers want; it is part of their badge of belonging.

Yet the efforts of winemakers and vine growers, for at least the past 2,000 years and probably before, have been directed at smoothing out vintage variation. It is a great thing, in theory, if this year’s wine is different from last year’s. It shows you’re serious; it shows your wine has soul. But in practice, you don’t want it to be all that different. That’s why you install drainage in your vineyard; it’s why you plant windbreaks or seek longer hang-times (there’s little vintage variation in raisins, whether they come expensively from Napa Valley or cheaply from the local supermarket) or green-harvest more or less, according to the year; it’s why you select ever more rigorously and why you employ reverse osmosis; it’s why, if your laws allow, you employ a vast box of tricks—seed tannins, oak tannins, skin tannins, macro-proteins, and many more—to insure you need never be a slave to the weather.

Put these points to European winemakers, and they look baffled at your idiocy. Of course we want vintage variation, they say; that’s what wine is about. We are making wine, not Coca-Cola. So why, you ask them, do you chaptalize or acidify or use reverse osmosis? That’s other people, they say, not us; we only do it, well, occasionally. But put the question to California’s Doug Shafer, and this is his reply: “I’d actually prefer none. I’d prefer no vintage variation. The challenge is to make wine in a similar style no matter what the vintage throws at me. My customers are customers because they trust Shafer. They know the style will be this way every year.”

This is not, though, an Old World/New World divide; it’s more about how and where and to whom wine is sold. Think of the way that Alsace winemakers can get away with unpredictable levels of residual sugar because they have customers who even come knocking on their door in person to chat about the wines and load up their cars. (Suggest that it would be nice to know from the label which wines are dry and which not, and the winemakers usually say, “Our regular customers know which cuvées are which.”) Once you have to rely on sales farther a field, to people whose first contact with you will be mediated by a wine merchant (who may say something like, “We didn’t buy the previous vintage; we didn’t think it was quite up to scratch, but he’s back on song with this one”), you can’t be quite so quirky. And if you rely on people taking your wine off a supermarket shelf with no comforting asides from a wine merchant, then vintage variation can be a liability. As Günter Theis, managing director of Elephant hill in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, says, “Top producers in Germany could always sell their wines because they had their regular clients. New Zealand companies, especially at the 30,000-case level, have to export, and so consistency matters more.”

Stretching the limits

Theis’s comparison with Germany is telling. In the decades immediately after World War II, most of Germany was at the extreme of where you could make wine; as many years as not, it was perhaps not so much on the margin as beyond it. That Germany has moved into a much more comfortable place owes more to climate change than to technology. The weather has not done away with vintage variation in Germany, but it’s made it a lot easier to live with. The closer you are to the climatic margin, the more difficult, to the point of impossibility, it becomes to iron out vintage variation—and the more necessary it becomes to try, just to survive. Hence all those modern German vine crossings, designed to produce something sellable despite the cold and wet.

The most comfortable place to be is where you can choose your degree of vintage variation. Steve Skinner, winemaker at Elephant hill, says, “We’re always pushing the boundaries with ripening; we have to work hard in the vineyard. It’s very similar here to the rhône [in that] we have to push the boundaries to get the best out of a variety. But we pulled out a lot of varieties because they would have been consistently inconsistent. Out of a certain range in a variety, you’re not doing it justice. Cabernet and Nebbiolo here are too inconsistent. That goes beyond vintage variation; it’s just bad planning.”

At Villa Maria, they say much the same thing: “We won’t release single-vineyard wines if there’s too much vintage variation. Single-vineyard wines probably don’t need acidification and so on, because we do lots of work in the vineyard, and we might only do 200 cases—we need sites suited to it. We might acidify if we need to, but single- vineyard sites are chosen for their ability to produce good quality consistently. We’ve walked away from some Sauvignon Blanc because the sites were too inconsistent.”

Vintage variation, then, is a sliding scale, with industrial regularity at one end and potential bankruptcy at the other. Choosing where you as a winemaker want to be depends on what you can afford and how daring you want to be. “To be without a wine two years in a row is a problem,” says Villa Maria. “You need to have a wine at least every second year.” And you can only say that if you have more consistent wines as your bread and butter. In Sauternes, unless there’s another source of income, “three bad years in a decade would be very serious for most people,” reckons Christian Seely of AXA Millésimes, which owns Château Suduiraut. At Elephant hill, Skinner probably wouldn’t want to risk that many off-years, but he says, “If we took away vintage variation, we would be disappointed with the result.” Further along the scale, Phil Coturri, vineyard manager of Oakville ranch in Napa, says, “Our job is to find consistent flavors out of complex situations.”

At the furthest extreme of regularity are Non-Vintage Champagne and Tawny Port, with all variation blended out of them—and both with Vintage versions available to allow their winemakers to kick up their heels in perfect safety. Benoît Gouez, winemaker at Moët & Chandon, can afford to produce more extreme Vintage wines because they’re the filling, not the bread and butter. The only Champagne producers who immerse themselves in vintage variation, to the extent of changing cuvées year by year if they feel like it, are the ambitious small family house of Jacquesson since the launch of its 2000-based Cuvée No.728 and growers who produce relatively small quantities and hand-sell it. If you’re going to be quirky, it’s best to stay small.

Varieties of variation

How often is vintage variation a matter of winemakers talking the talk but not walking the walk? What Chilean winemakers call vintage variation, French winemakers call stability, says Marco Pablo Silva of Casa Silva. “We have 90 percent less vintage variation than Bordeaux or Burgundy. Coastal sites here have more vintage variation, inland sites less. Acidity can vary, and color and sweetness can vary a bit.” But Michael Cox, UK director of Wines of Chile, adds that “the boundaries of viticulture in Chile are being pushed farther and farther to all four points of the compass, and viticulture is becoming more and more subject to climatic variation.” Chile, then, is coming from precisely the opposite position to Germany, cautiously jazzing up extremely consistent wines with some variety, while Germany is breathing a sigh of relief at coming out of the danger zone.

And what of Australia, where technical expertise enables winemakers to take what nature has to offer and turn it, year after year, into what many or most of its customers expect? Australian reds until the 1980s varied greatly from year to year; after that, they tended to conform to what the market wanted, which was consistency. And if that meant massive adjustment in the winery, so be it. Australia started talking about terroir before it had properly taken its full implications on board. Vintage variation—which must be an intrinsic part of terroir expression, unless you are in an extremely stable climate—is now creeping back. But nobody is more nervous of vintage variation than a winemaker brought up on consistency. Remember what a struggle it was for Chilean wine growers to decide to move up off the valley floor? When Australian winemakers talk of vintage variation, most are more likely to be talking of it in Chilean terms (stability plus or minus a bit) than in German ones (the tempering of wild extremes).

That’s fine, though, because most wine drinkers—The World of Fine Wine’s readers are, alas, not typical of wine drinkers as a whole—neither want nor understand vintage variation. “Vintage is almost an irrelevance now,” says Cox. “A minority of drinkers still believe in bottle age, in some vintages aging better than others. [...] Older people, who are more likely to have been brought up with Old World wines, are used to vintage variation, but the average consumer has changed. People buy for immediate consumption, and they want consistency.”

The right kind of difference

The great argument for the supremacy of famous terroirs is, of course, that they produce wine that is always intrinsically recognizable, whatever the year throws at it. “If you do a vertical tasting of Pichon or Suduiraut,” says Christian Seely, “you will find the Pichon or Suduiraut character running through, but with great vintage variation. Pichon in 2003 was extravagantly hot, in 2004 temperate, balanced, and classic, but both wines are Pichon. We’re not trying to eliminate vintage variation. Pichon was good in 2003 because it has very old vines in deep gravel, and the vines kept functioning as a result. Without that, we might have had too much vintage variation—the variation you don’t want.” If you can persuade winemakers to put a figure on the sort of variation that they do want, they usually agree with Napa Valley’s Delia Viader: “I want vintage variation between seven and ten. I don’t want to make wine to a formula; I want to make a chronicle of what the year brings, and I want a certain personality for that vintage. But I also want the family trait to remain.”

The ideal vintage variation is perhaps that displayed in Bordeaux between 2009 and 2010. Two great years, totally different in style—it couldn’t be better: vintage variation but consistency of quality, and brought about by a vast amount of work in both vineyard and winery, all aimed at tempering the bad points of each year and accentuating the good points. The tannins in many examples of 2010 Bordeaux would have been impossible had maceration times and pumping-over not been monitored and adjusted with great sensitivity.

But, you may argue, there is nothing remarkable in monitoring and adjusting, from vineyard to bottle. Any good winemaker aims to make the best wine possible in any given year. If greater vintage consistency is the result, then it’s because de deficiencies are being eradicated, not because winemakers are aiming for greater consistency per se. This is partly true: We have fewer off-vintages than we used to, because viticulture is more precise and more expert, and wine science is better understood—and the primary aim of all that research has been to improve wine quality, not to make it uniform.

Sometimes, one comes across a winemaker who embraces vintage difference with such passion that he throws other winemakers into sharp relief. Alexandre Thienpont is one such. A vertical tasting of Vieux Château Certan reveals wines of such restraint as to be almost self-effacing—it would be all too easy to overlook them in a big blind tasting. Yet they still have all the concentration and all the staying power one could possibly ask for, and every vintage is very different. “The year is as important as the terroir,” Alexandre says. “You have to let the wine tell its own story. It would be easy to make the same wine every year. I would divide the property into ten batches [VCC’s 14ha (35 acres) are currently divided into 23 parcels], and I would adapt the treatment of each to the aim I wanted, rather than let nature tell its own story.” In other words, the science and the technology, all the gizmos of a modern winery, are neutral, and you can either use them to achieve the aim of greater consistency, or you can do as Thienpont does: “I have the maximum technology you can expect in a cellar, and it’s there so that I can take more risks. It takes wine to a new level. The more you use technology, the more you understand the soil.” he works on a small scale, however; is it possible to be that detailed on a large scale? Certainly, he says, and he cites châteaux Latour and Margaux. “I have a six-cylinder engine, but acute; they have eight- to 12-cylinder engines— that’s real power.”

Which way is fashion turning—toward more vintage variation or less? At least at the top end, it would be nice to think that more winemakers will be imbued with the Thienpont philosophy of using ever more detailed technology to find greater detail in their terroir and take more risks. There are signs that that is happening—and it’s the most welcome paradox of all.

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