Shifting Vines

Shifting Vines As temperatures rise across the globe, winemakers are finding a variety of ways to ensure the most elegant of elixirs retains its subtle charms

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Illustrations by

JEFFREY T IVERSON

LEANDRO CASTELAO

s a globetrotting tropical viticulture consultant, Bernard Hudelot has made a living growing grapes in places it was said to be impossible. Yet Hudelot forged his pioneering reputation at home in Burgundy’s Hautes-Côtes de Nuits, as founder of Château de Villars Fontaine (chateaudevillarsfontaine. com). Almost 200 metres above Romanée-Conti and other mythic crus, this ancient vineyard site was long considered too elevated for winemaking, ever since Chanoine monks abandoned it during Europe’s “Little Ice Age” (circa 1300– 1850 AD). In the 1970s, Hudelot recognised the untapped riches of these soils – including 200-million-year-old marls, identical to those of Corton-Charlemagne – and boldly replanted them. His gamble proved prescient, for within a few decades warming temperatures resurrected the estate. And while the climbing temperatures have at times yielded worrisome surges in alcohol levels and plunging acidity for crus at lower latitudes, in the Hautes-Côtes they’ve recreated the propitious climatic conditions which

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originally drew vintner monks during the balmy medieval warm period a millennium ago.

Hudelot not only proved fine winemaking was possible in Hautes-Côtes de Nuits: for France’s leading wine guide, La Revue du Vin de France, Château de Villars Fontaine’s single-vineyard chardonnay Le Rouard, boasting vibrant aromas of flowers, mint, lemon and passion fruit, “rivals in finesse and complexity the greatest premiers crus of the Côte d’Or”. It’s a fabulous reversal for an erstwhile forsaken estate, and proof, says Hudelot, that “the viticultural map is changing”.

Today, the planet is undergoing another climatic shift, with scientists calling 2016 the hottest year on record.

And for winemakers the world over, every degree of rising temperatures has created new challenges, but also opportunities. For what is a bottle of wine but the encapsulation of a climatic year – the myriad nuances of a growing season, from bud break to harvest, spring to autumn?

As their ancestors did centuries ago, men and women of talent and innovation are finding new techniques,

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‘‘There are solutions out there, but we need to have the intelligence to allow them, not write off entire regions’’ Michel Chapoutier

grapes and vineyard locations, to be able to continue making wines with harmonious bouquets and depth of character on a warmer planet.

Take Spanish wine titan Bodegas Torres (torres.es), which in 2014 bought 230 hectares in Chile‘s Itata Valley – previously considered unsuitable for viticulture, but made viable today for producing quality cabernet and carménère by global warming.

Back in Spain, Torres is building a new winery in Lleida, perched 500m up in the Pyrenees foothills, where it now grows ancestral varieties like garnacha and cariñena for its elegant yet intensely flavoured Purgatori blend. In the Sierra de la Contraviesa mountains, Manuel Valenzuela of Bodega Barranco Oscuro (barrancooscuro.com) transformed an almond farm 1,368 metres above sea level into an acclaimed winery. Critics liken his Tres Uves, a white blend of vermentino, viognier and the forgotten vigiriega grape, to a luscious bite of slightly green tropical fruit, “succulent, tart and unapologetically juicy”.

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While some winemakers enjoy respite from the heat at high altitudes, others are finding northern latitudes – from Canada’s British Columbia to New York’s Finger Lakes region – more and more hospitable. In Europe, some of the most exciting riesling produced today isn’t from Alsace or Germany, but Luxembourg.

There, winemakers like Abi Duhr of Château Pauqué (+352 6211 96037) are attaining levels of grape maturity and quality undreamt of a generation ago, his ambrosial auxerrois, riesling and chardonnay now served by three-star chefs like Germany’s Christian Bau and Belgian Peter Goossens.

But perhaps no emerging region has stunned the wine world like England, where once, sun-starved growers could rarely bring a chardonnay grape to maturity. Yet with its chalky limestone terroir and climate developing akin to that of Champagne a century ago, since the 1990s England has built a reputation for exquisite sparkling wines. In 2010, Sussex wine estate Ridgeview (ridgeview.co.uk) astounded the assembly at the Decanter World Wine Awards when its Blanc de Blancs was named the best fizz on the planet – over five champagnes.

Five years later, one of the producers, Champagne Taittinger, purchased 69 hectares of Kent farmland to produce its own English sparkling wine. “Our aim is to make something of real excellence in the UK’s increasingly temperate climate,’ announced its president, Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger. “That won’t be the last of [the] Champagne houses coming over,” predicts Stephen Skelton, author of the UK Vineyards Guide.

Yet most winemakers can’t just migrate north or climb a mountain, and some climate studies predict the collapse of southern wine regions if warming continues. But Rhône Valley powerhouse Michel Chapoutier (chapoutier.com) won’t be discouraged. “We are already looking at adapting yeasts, adapting vineyard practices to ensure the health of our vineyards,” he told Decanter. “There are solutions out there, but we need to have the intelligence to allow them, not write off entire regions.” Chapoutier boosts his vineyards’ drought resistance with ancient gobelet vine training, creating a foliage umbrella for his grapes, avoids irrigation and practices biodynamic viticulture to encourage deep vine roots.

Ultimately, the grape itself may ensure southerly viticulture’s prosperity. In southwest France, Domaine de Plageoles (vinsplageoles.com) advocates ancient varieties such as verdanel and ondenc, which became uniquely adapted to harsh climates traversing the medieval warm period. In those centuries, pinot noir’s sun-loving cousin, gamay, covered Burgundy’s Côte d’Or. Perhaps it should again, Hudelot often says, when he pours visitors a taste of his experimental cuvée – a gamay with a nose of dried flowers, clove, leather and cherry. The wine’s name, though certainly camp, strikes a hopeful tone for an industry grappling with a changing climate: Gamay du Futur – gamay of the future.