Global warming and its effect are a concern worldwide. Whether you choose to believe it is caused by greenhouse gasses, or is simply a part of some 10,000 year weather cycle, or choose to ignore it altogether, the effects are the same and the proof is there. Yeah, polar ice caps melting and oceans rising is bad stuff. But the problem isn’t right now, it is moving forward. If the warming continues, the effects are serious. But we aren’t scientists and can’t speak to the array of problems that will from temperatures continuing to edge up unabated. We can relate it to wine, though.
If you go back in time, the greatest wine sites established themselves by virtue of quality. But quality, while accepting terroir is a significant aspect of the process, doesn’t happen if the grapes don’t get ripe. Incumbent in a site’s success is the ability to ripen grapes properly on a consistent basis. The Piemontese, a generally practical people, figured out that the best sites for growing top grapes would be where the snow melted first. We suspect the monks used similar wisdom way-back-when to figure out the whole Burgundy scheme. The problem with global warming is that the successful sites, the ones with the greatest exposure, will get too much exposure. They will be too warm.
But thus far that hasn’t been a serious issue. How many times has a vintage like 2003 in Europe, with the extreme blazing temperatures, come along? The rest of the time, the weather has been pretty friendly and we have experienced consistent strings of quality vintages in many important regions. Sure there are inopportune rain storms and occasions where the grapes had a little difficulty getting fully ripe. But the batting average has gone way up over the last 20 years.
Red Bordeaux perhaps provides the handiest example. Let’s go back to the 20 year span from 1961 to 1981. During the period 1960, 1963, 1965, 1968, 1969, 1972, 1974, and 1977 were complete stinkers. Beyond that 1964 was a half vintage (Right Bank, yes, Left Bank not so much), 1967 was nothing to write home about, and 1980 yielded a few forgettable early drinkers that were saved by emerging technology to an extent. In other words, the sweeping generality was that more than half the vintages ranged from ‘not-very-good’ to ‘downright crummy’.
It got a little better over the next two decades, but there were still some serious misses (1984, 1987, 1991, 1992 and 1997) and a couple more (1993, 1994) in the ‘meh’ column. Since 2000, how many truly bad vintages have there been? Maybe two (2013 and 2007 though the Bordelais might argue 2013 is ‘useful’ and we’d add that the problem with 2007 was the prices more than the wines themselves)? During that same period there have been 5-7 ‘vintages of the century’ (depending on how tough you want to be) and 4-5 others that would have caused dancing in the streets back in the ‘dark times’ of the 60s-70s.
Technology has had a hand in all of it, for sure. But the point is that there hasn’t been as much need for the ‘magic’. It has been a pretty good run thanks in part to global warming. The batting average has been quite good in a number of prestige regions for a period of time. So, tongue-in-cheek, we say ‘yeah’ to global warming. It has been “berry, berry good” to the wine world thus far. Ice has been a much more significant issue. Frost and hail have had much more significant impact than heat in some key places.
There has been a lot of talk about frost this year in particular as one of the occurrences devastated vineyards in Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Northern Italy, and Spain. The Loire has been a particular ‘whipping boy’ of the inclement weather turns. There have been ice issues (frost, hail) seemingly on a regular basis. The Loire claimed 70% crop losses in 2016, and took a pretty good beating this again year. To make a point, here’s a quote from Wine Spectator attributed to said Guillaume Lapaque, director of the Indre-et-Loire and Sarthe wine federation, which represents 600 vintners, “Montlouis has lost three of its last five crops”.
The effect of frost and hail are devastating not only for the short-term but possibly beyond. When a frost comes, it freezes whatever has grown on the vines, be that new buds in early April or established flower/fruit growth in June or July. It disrupts the ripening cycle, sets back the plant, and, if it is severe enough, will even kill the vine. The afflicted areas certainly will not recover for this harvest and possibly not the next.
The effect of hail is different, but no less devastating. Essentially hail hitting a vine can knock off all the growth and even shred the leaves and canes in severe cases. It’s like getting pummeled by thousands of little rocks, which isn’t a positive at any time during the growing cycle. It damagges by virtue of knocking off the flowers or nascent fruit in the early stages of the plant cycle or damaging the fruit later on which, if it doesn’t destroy it outright, will open the path to all kinds of diseases.
A hailstorm, in August mind you, decimated 50,000 hectares in Burgundy and Bordeaux in 2013. Guys in the Languedoc were cruising along just fine until a freak hailstorm wiped out 2500 acres in about a half hour. Chablis got hit hard last year. There are countless more stories, but the point is heat so far has not been the enemy. Overall it seems vintages have improved some or at least become more consistent. It’s the cold snaps that cause the serious problems and it seems we hear more reports of such things over the last few years. This year in Europe has been something of a freak show for all kinds of ‘cold’ blights.
It is possible there is a connection to global warming and altered weather patterns, but we certainly don’t know enough to make that point if we wanted to. The thing is that, unless you read the wine magazines pretty religiously, you wouldn’t necessarily know any of this was going on. The vintage charts don’t tell you this. In fact, an area that was hit hard early on in the harvest cycle can still produce a high quality crop and the vintage chart may look rosy because what little wine was made was quite good because of the Nature induced reduction of yields. But there can be a lot less wine. Significant crop loss can leave the grower with devastating financial shortfalls. Also, it is more likely to hit the smaller, artisan type producers we like to work with than some large corporate wine concern with economies of scale.
Global warming hasn’t destroyed grape-growers livelihoods that we know of as yet. In fact the consistency of vintages over the last couple of decades might suggest that, thus far, it has been a plus for growers. But there are some vintners in serious financial straits thanks to these little icy ‘surprises’ that seem to be happening with a bit more regularity. It is hard not to feel for people whose anticipated income was ripped away without warning, and losing big chunks of quality juice does cause a ripple in the industry supply chain and can affect prices in an unwelcome way.
Yeah, global warming is a problem for a lot of reasons, particularly moving forward (though we did read about a company claiming to have the technology to mitigate greenhouse gasses the other day). But as far as wine goes, we are presently much more concerned about the viticultural and economic effects of the ‘ice’ than the ‘fire’.