An Inconvenient Truth About Wine Growing
ONERC, the abbreviation for Énarque French "Observatoire national sur les effets du réchauffement climatique", in short observatory on climate change, pointed out last year that even a minor increase in average temperatures should be a worry to many wine growers – not only in the US and Australia but also in Europe. They maintain that a rise of one degree Celsius by 2035 - as forecasted by one United Nations model - would see wine growing regions shift, on average, 180 km northwards.
Anyone familiar with wine growing knows that making a good wine is a not yet entirely understood interplay between soil, climatic conditions over a multi-year period as well as the current year, grape varietal and the wine making process applied. Even small changes in any of these variables can have a large impact.
Now we all have an inkling that climate change might occur in leaps and bounds rather than gradually as pointed out by the UN studies. If you believe Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth you should seriously start to be concerned. But is there any actual evidence that climate change impacts the Southern Côtes du Rhône wine growers today?
I figured beginning of the year is a good time to talk to some of my contacts about a big picture issue like climate change. Most vignerons here are happy about 2006: Harvest conditions in late August/early September were excellent, in general wines turned out to be extremely concentrated, with great colours and even greater aromas. Everybody could be happy except for the relentless price pressure. So here is what I came up with talking to some of these happy vignerons:
- The present gradual rise in temperatures and extremely dry conditions are still manageable, albeit nearly everyone is faced with more alcoholic wines with less acidity. This requires more knowledge than ever to produce a wine acceptable to current wine writers' tastes. As to a more rapid temperature increase: Nobody knows for sure what would happen. Sadly enough nobody here believes this will happen anyway.
- La Sécheresse: Lack of rain has been a constant problem here over the past years. This has forced many wine makers to ask INAO for permission to carry on watering the vines after the early August deadline. But here is the more serious issue: The vines are starting to weaken and mortality in the vineyards is rapidly increasing. Many vine stocks no longer have enough strength to resist certain fungi.
The consensus (or hope?) is that Southern Côtes du Rhône wine growers will be able to cope better than many of their peers in Australia, the US or Spain. Ours is a more temperate region and the wines have an outstanding price/quality ratio. That is if wine growers here don't f... up! Which many of the smaller growers and wine cooperatives with zero learning curve are undoubtedly bound to do. So expect the serious shake out currently under way in our region to accelerate. Only the fittest – in terms of technology, marketing and sound finances – will survive. Charles Darwin called this the law of natural selection in his 1859 book "The Origin of Species". This applies also to the species called "vigneron".
