How vines at altitude can navigate climate change
At Ferrari Trento, the impacts of climate change are being assessed. Owing to this, there are lessons on how to adapt. db reports.
Speaking at a tasting in London this week, Ferrari Trento CEO Matteo Lunelli said: “It [global warming] doesn’t only interfere with acidity, it also interferes with texture and with this perception of texture and smoothness of the bubbles.”
But, he advised: “Another element to be considered in the mountains is that, in a sense, we can compensate a little bit for climate change by moving higher.”
Lunelli described how “many years ago, we started really to acquire new grape growers” and revealed that this presented “a need to plant new vineyards at a higher altitude”. But, he explained that “in the past 20 years, we have increased the average altitude of our vineyards” and admitted that “this has, in a sense, given a little bit of balance, because obviously the higher you go, the lower the temperature”.
According to Lunelli: “If you move 100 metres higher in Trentino, you get around one degree less in temperature during the year.” He said: “This looks like a small difference, but it’s quite relevant” and noted: “If you look at the statistics for global warming, to compensate by moving 100 metres higher, one degree less is already an advantage.”
Lunelli was presenting Ferrari Trento’s wines alongside its winemaker Cyril Brun and hinted how there was much to learn from his perspective.
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He said: “I’m very excited to introduce Cyril Brun who joined almost two years ago. Before he joined our winery, Cyril had been working in Champagne for many, many years. He was the chef de cave at Charles Heidsieck [and Veuve Clicquot before that] and so we are excited to have Cyril with us, because he really believes in creating the best expression of the Trentino mountain viticulture.”
Answering questions about the wines, Brun insisted: “I’m very happy with the acidity I found in the mountains, because the acidity has been less deteriorated than what we observe in Champagne, even with global warming.”
Brun added: “We feel like the impact is smaller in the mountains than in Champagne. And if you look at both the pH and the global acidity on the scale of the produce over five years, the decrease is much faster in Champagne.”
Ferrari Trento has previously noted that the warmer climate has brought harvest dates forward, shortening the growing season, and extreme weather events have started to become more common. db has looked further into how vineyards closer to the sun are evading climate change and as such how high-altitude grape farming has now moved from fringe interest hot topic.
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