Now, please don’t say you haven’t noticed it. I’m talking about the weather. Wherever you live, whatever you do, you must have noticed the weather is changing. And if you’re a wine producer, you must be scratching your head and thinking: how can I plan ahead, how can I calculate risks and benefits, how can I invest, and what must I invest in? – what grape varieties, which areas of the planet, what styles of wine will I be able to make? – does it all have to change, will it change for good?
What do you do if you’re a Californian wine producer? The weather is getting warmer, but there’s less and less water available to irrigate your crops. The snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains is crucial in supplying the river flow that feeds your irrigation pumps. Yet you’re down to 20% of the historic snow pack. The last three years have been the driest on record. If you water your garden, you can be fined $500. And if Los Angeles is running out of water – they’ve just banned restaurants from offering the usual free glass of water with meals unless you request it – how long are they going to let you irrigate your vines before the sheriff knocks on your door with a summons? Some vineyards don’t need to be told. Their irrigation dams are already dry – and that’s Napa and Sonoma I’m talking about. Not the blistering Central Valley.
It’s not just California. Some of Chile’s most exciting wines have come from northern vineyards planted in the arid but wind-cooled river valleys up toward the Atacama Desert. Limarí has established itself as one of Chile’s leading regions. But it’s bone dry. If the river flow fails, the vineyards fail, and the snowmelt in the Andes is dwindling. And that means there is less and less of the water that makes vineyards possible in places like Elqui, Huasco and Limarí. And if Argentina thinks it will be any luckier – it won’t be. Australia is regularly struggling with 40°C days during the ripening season. A few days of that heat, and the grapes on the vine can never fully recover their poise and balance. The great mining centre of Broken Hill, New South Wales, is literally running out of water as its expertly managed system of water conservation has quite simply failed. Reservoirs emptying in Broken Hill might not seem to be relevant to Australian wine. Tell that to worried growers in the Riverina and the Riverland, where most of Australia’s commercial grapes are grown.
Wine producers in many parts of the world are worried by the lack of rainfall in their vineyards, none more so than those in northern Chile. This is a dry lake, high in the Elqui Valley, which would normally be full of meltwater from the Andes.
And the New Zealanders can’t snigger behind their hands at the Aussie’s misfortune either. New Zealand got hit by drought in 2015. New Zealand! Cool, green, showery New Zealand! They had to turn the irrigation systems off in Marlborough because the usually powerful Wairau River aquifer was running out of puff and they, literally, had no idea what to do – they’d never had a drought before. At least there it just means that everybody had a bit of a panic but then produced a much reduced crop, bringing supply shortages rather than devastation – but what if it happens next year? And next?
So has Europe been any luckier? Depends where you live. South-east Spain was roasted by drought and heatwaves in 2014. Don’t expect too much joy from their wines. France had its warmest year ever. It was on the front pages of all its newspapers – except that the heat came in great swathes, but not always when it was wanted, like in the summer – August was pretty dismal. Then a record-dry September and most of October saved an awful lot of growers, but that’s if their grapes weren’t attacked by a new pest – a Japanese fruit fly called Drosophila suzukii – you couldn’t make it up! – and they produced some pretty decent wine. But the further north you went, the better it got. Britain had its driest September for 100 years. It needed it. August had been Britain’s eighth wettest on record. It’s encouraging to note that seven of Britain’s warmest ever years have been since 2000. But so have four of the five wettest ever years. 2014 had what the Met Office called the most ‘exceptional’ rainfall in 248 years. A warmer atmosphere holds more water. A warmer world, they said, will lead to ‘more intense daily and hourly events’. They rate weather events as severe, extreme and exceptional. The UK had ‘exceptional’ in 2014 and, on the bright side, when southern England basks in what would be regarded as good high summer temperatures of over 26°C during mid-April 2015, what’s not to like? Wait till July and August. Or maybe ask the growers in Burgundy’s Côte de Beaune villages who revelled in their earliest ever rising of the sap in their vines, then saw hail destroy as much as 100% of some of their vineyards for the third year in a row. Growers in the Languedoc watched helplessly as 10,000 hectares of vines were savaged by hail. Global warming isn’t all fun. No one, except growers in Yorkshire and Scotland, ever said it was.
The Elqui River as it traditionally appears – fast-flowing and copious. Snowmelt in the Andes is dwindling and if the river flows fail, the vineyards in both Chile and Argentina will struggle to survive.
All wine producers fear summer hail, which can decimate a crop in only a few minutes. There won’t be any wine from these grapes here in Bordeaux.
And in Europe beyond the Alps, in Austria, Hungary, Croatia and the rest, unprecedented September rains swamped their crops and made quality wine a rarity. Croatia hadn’t seen autumn rains like that for 50 years. Climate change brings torrential rain along with the heat. And it brings cold. North-east America suffered some of its coldest ever winter weather, and in Michigan, the town of Hell froze over (I couldn’t resist that).
‘Global warming isn’t all fun. No one, except growers in Yorkshire and Scotland, ever said it was.’
So are we all doomed? Will we have a wine world to enjoy in a generation’s time? And if so, how? Well, despite the threat of climate Armageddon that seems to hang in the air nowadays like the threat of thunder on a sultry summer’s afternoon, the wine world is reacting. Indeed, it is embarking on one of its great leaps forward, when change comes tumbling in … idols fall and reputations shake, new blood will be given its head, new flavours will appear, even as older ones will reappear. At certain times you feel that it is the worst in wine that waxes and the finest that wanes. But not now. The wine world has been through a tough period. Global financial confusion and, in particular, cliff-hanging survival tactics in the Eurozone seem to have had the effect of concentrating the mind wonderfully. And as the world struggles out of a deeply worrying phase, one that has certainly tested the nerve of many wine producers and, indeed, seen some of them go to the wall, we seem to have sliced off much of the slack flesh that we tolerate in easy times and have emerged with a leaner, more honest and much more challenging and exciting world of wine.
‘So are we all doomed?’
So when did this realization hit me? It’s been hitting me all year. I went to a Californian tasting and was faced, not with a wall of Cabernet and Merlot, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, but with offerings of Counoise, Grenache, Carignan, Nero d’Avola, Cinsault, Roussanne and Fiano. Warm-climate grapes from a warm country. And mostly old vines too. Glory Be! At last, California’s past is beginning to be reflected and recognized. Later that week in New York, surveying the bar scene (why do we always say ‘surveying’? we’re not fooling anybody), the demand for ‘new’ grapes, wine styles and flavours was so strong it was almost religious. Be careful. You can overdo demand for the new. There’s usually a reason people liked the old. Perhaps it was really nice to drink.
But that was what was encouraging about California – a lot of the wines were from vines planted long ago, the right vines, vines suited to the climate, not dictated by marketing men. I found the same in South Africa. The most exciting part of the country right now is Swartland – a swathe of hills and farmland running up the west coast. Its produce had been swallowed for blending or brandy by co-operatives for generations as places like Stellenbosch and then the cooler coastal strips forged their reputations. Yet crucially, nobody bothered to rip out the grapes. Led by visionaries like Eben Sadie and Rosa Kruger there’s now a missionary zeal to preserve what’s left – old bush vines of varieties like Cinsault, Carignan, Clairette and Chenin Blanc, once discarded as junk, but perfectly suited to the conditions, and at last being accorded respect. Chile is undergoing a similar revolution in its appreciation of its past. Maule is the country’s largest vineyard region, and has been a supplier of bulk wine for a hundred years. But it’s packed with old, precious vines that now, instead of being bundled into the blending vat, are prized and pampered for their own gloriously gritty selves. That hasn’t stopped Chile becoming thrillingly ambitious in developing new areas for vines: far north into the Atacama Desert, and way south – eventually further south than any other vineyards in the world. But the new is respecting the old. Argentina is adopting the same attitude. And in places like Australia, where they pride themselves on being gamechangers, but have also nurtured a healthy respect for some of their past – old-vine Barossa Shiraz being the obvious example – the desire to seek out and protect their heritage vines, regardless of what grape varieties they are, is enthusing a new generation.
Workers pruning hillside bush vines in winter at Darling, in South Africa’s trendy Swartland district. Great efforts are now being made to preserve South Africa’s remaining old bush vines.
But then, ‘back to the future’ is one of the defining traits of today’s wine world. It’s the young guns – urged on by a few game old blunderbusses – who now lead the charge. And this charge is not merely among wine producers. It’s among us, the wine drinkers. And it’s among the wine writers – or communicators, as they increasingly call themselves – too. Just come with me on a tangential stroll for a moment. Have you noticed how, all of a sudden, the supermarkets, the shops, the pubs and bars are awash with craft beers? Beers of every strength and colour and style – frequently boasting flavours and flavourings beer has never used before? Have you picked up on the revival in so-called ‘hard cider’ – the real thing, made by horny-handed country men and women from real apples grown on real trees in real places on the map? Have you been in any one of the thousands of trendy bars across Europe and America and been gobsmacked by the originality, the sheer exuberant inventiveness of the cocktails, blending ingredients I’d never have dreamt of seeing in the same glass – probably not in the same refrigerator? Flavours, novelty, excitement, supreme self-confidence. The drinks world is a thrilling place to be right now – never been better. Note I said ‘drinks’ not ‘wine’. But bear with me. Because it feeds right back to what I was saying about the young guns. This drinks revolution is being led by the millennials – those 20 to 30-something drinkers who lead this ‘instant gratification’ generation, easily bored but easily inspired, where opinion can be formulated and spread in minutes around the globe on the fevered wings of social media. Where you may not even know someone has tried and raved about your beer or cider, hand-crafted gin or cocktail, till a fresh-faced crowd are banging on your door waving their smartphones.
Some of the oldest wine vines in the world are in South Australia. This 140-year-old Shiraz vine in Henschke’s Hill of Grace vineyard in the Eden Valley is still producing a tiny crop of supremely tasty grapes.
And it’s happening in the world of wine. It’s the younger growers who fear for the land their children may inherit. They’re the ones seeking out every ancient vine, so many of which are well suited to this warming world and, in any case, they’ve survived famine and flood before, in a way that modern, expertly-bred clones – usually based on cool-climate classics like Cabernet and Merlot, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay – will find it increasingly difficult to do. They’re also the ones at last looking for vine varieties whose names the markets don’t yet know, but whose ability to keep their acidity, not overripen in the heat, and not demand much water, will make them staples of the future. Australians, Africans and Americans planting Assyrtiko, Fiano, Picpoul, Agiorgitiko, Nero d’Avola, Graciano and Touriga Nacional are wresting what good they can from the challenging conditions to come. Vine breeders who have spent generations creating clones that ripen fast and build sugar quickly in cool conditions are now turning their talents to developing clones that ripen slower and keep their acid longer in the heat. Scientists who have spent their lives breeding ever more efficient yeasts to maximize the creation of alcohol are now being superseded by a generation bent on producing lazier yeasts that are less efficient and produce less alcohol.
And there is a whole movement that disregards clones and cultured yeasts, indeed manipulation of any sort. The ‘natural’ wine movement tries to grow grapes without chemicals and make wines without chemicals – not even the age-old antioxidant sulphur. Derided as swivel-eyed and deluded producers of turbid, sour liquids only a few years ago, so many talented, committed, young – and not so young – producers are now coming up with wines that are unquestionably different, unquestionably less massaged and smoothed, challenging, unnerving, yet unquestionably delicious, that a whole new level of experience has been added to wine. At the most extreme limit is the growing band of ‘orange’ wines – ‘natural’ white wines fermented like reds, skins and all – acrid, rasping, unforgettable. Do I like them all? No. Do I like all the craft beers and wacky cocktails? No. Am I delighted they all exist and do they inspire hope and pride in my breast for the future? Absolutely yes.
