Current wine-producing regions could face a substantial risk of losing their suitability for viticulture.

Luis Alberto Martínez-Verdugo

Traditionally, there are two planetary zones indicated for the cultivation of vines: the one located between the 30º and 50º parallels of the northern hemisphere and the one located between 30º and 40º in the south. The problem is that, as predicted by the National Institute for Agronomic Research in France, by 2100 these areas will be completely blurred with twice as many « very warm » days as the historical average.

According to a study published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment in March 2024, up to 70% of current wine-producing regions could face a substantial risk of losing their suitability for viticulture.

« I have gone from harvesting with a coat to doing it in short sleeves and always looking at the sky. My father does not remember a hailstorm in all his youth and now they come to us in September destroying our harvest and even in spring, destroying that year’s and the next’s, because it takes all the buds, » explained Berta Valgañón, farmer and producer of the Rioja Qualified Designation of Origin, in Rioja2.

At the end of 2022, the University of Reading published a report concluding that « a fifth of the United Kingdom could have suitable climatic conditions to grow chardonnay grapes by 2050 ». But on the other hand, « according to a study carried out over 15 years in vineyards in different areas of the world, 90% of the current cultivation areas will not be suitable in a few years ».

To this must be added the problem of water. Not only is there a lack of water at very important specific times, but as Jordi Pastor argued, most winegrowers already grow with less than the optimal amount of water.

As with the olive tree, the agricultural strategy is to migrate production towards irrigated land and, in fact, while 20 years ago the percentages of irrigated vineyards were negligible, today it is close to 50%. XatakaAfficher l’original

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