This yr’s wine harvest is in full swing on the perennially common Greek island of Santorini, however for native winemaker Yiannis Paraskevopoulos, the prospects don’t look good.
Excessive temperatures are threatening manufacturing of the indigenous Assyrtiko grape, essential to the island’s internationally acknowledged high quality white wines. Final yr’s output at Paraskevopoulos’s Gaia Wines was round one-third of 2022 manufacturing. This yr’s harvest is estimated to fall to one-sixth of 2022 ranges.
“We thought we had seen the worst. However no, we hadn’t: 2024 has gone past all expectations,” Paraskevopoulos instructed CNBC over the cellphone.
In accordance with Gaia Wine’s 2023 estimates, Assyrtiko might face extinction by 2040. Now, that timeline appears optimistic.
“It brings the development line even nearer to the current,” Paraskevopoulos stated.
Falling wine manufacturing
The Assyrtiko grape shouldn’t be alone. World wine manufacturing fell 10% in 2023 to 237.3 million hectolitres, the bottom stage in over 60 years, as “excessive climactic circumstances” weighed on harvests, in accordance to the Worldwide Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV).
The problems dealing with wineries prompted the European Union to final month launch a excessive stage group on wine coverage to debate the “challenges and alternatives for the sector.”
Manufacturing in Greece plunged greater than one-third in 2023, whereas output from Italy and Spain dropped by greater than one-fifth, in keeping with OIV, as wineries in southern Europe more and more skilled opposed climate results together with heavy rainfall, drought and early frost.
Such climate occasions can influence not solely a given yr’s harvest but additionally manufacturing in following years.
“We’re completely affected by local weather change,” a information at Castello di Volpaia instructed CNBC throughout a latest tour of the twelfth century vineyard in Tuscany, Italy.
Giant barrels retailer Chianti Classico wine at Castello di Volpaia in Tuscany, Italy.
CNBC
“Local weather change is considerably influencing wine manufacturing and its high quality,” Marco Fizialetti, industrial director at close by Castello di Querceto, stated by way of e mail. “This case has created difficulties for all producers who already needed to handle excessive temperatures up to now.”
Weaker output and more difficult manufacturing circumstances are pushing up prices in an already largely value delicate client market. Wine consumption was down 2.6% yearly in 2023, hitting its lowest stage since 1996, resulting from larger manufacturing and distribution prices which led to larger costs for customers, OIV estimates confirmed.
That is champagne costs. When a bottle is dearer than a Burgundy, what’s going to a purchaser do?
Yiannis Paraskevopoulos
co-founder of Gaia Wines
As of August 2024, one kilogram of Assyrtiko grapes value eight ($8.9) to 10 euros, round double 2022 costs.
“That is champagne costs,” Paraskevopoulos stated, noting that Gaia Wines has not but mirrored the heightened prices in its ultimate bottle value. Nonetheless, he stated it can have to take action ultimately, and that can harm enterprise.
“When a bottle is dearer than a Burgundy, what’s going to a purchaser do? We are going to lose market that we have now struggled to be in,” he stated.
Altering manufacturing strategies
Some winemakers at the moment are altering their manufacturing strategies to adapt to the shifting environmental panorama.
At Antinori nel Chianti Classico, the most recent in a group of estates belonging to Marchesi Antinori, one among Italy’s oldest and largest winemakers, vines at the moment are being planted in new instructions to benefit from the elevated solar publicity.
“Till a couple of years in the past, you’ll plant the vineyards southwest dealing with. Now you’ll be able to plant them northeast dealing with due to the acute warmth you get publicity” from each instructions, President Albiera Antinori instructed CNBC over the cellphone.
Shut up of kouloura type vines in Santorini, Greece.
Erica Ruth Neubauer | Istock | Getty Pictures
Different strategies the property is using embody elevating trellises to extend air circulation and planting grass in between vines. Antinori stated that has helped the property enhance manufacturing high quality over latest years whilst amount has fallen.
Nonetheless, she described the increase as “la vittoria di pirro,” or Pyrrhic victory, a feat which incurs such a price it’s barely value profitable.
Sergio Fuster, CEO of Spanish wine group Raventós Codorniu, famous that most of the areas by which it owns vineyards are in a state of emergency and, as such, they’ve wanted to grow to be “more and more environment friendly” with water utilization, for example by utilizing buried irrigation programs.
Different winemakers are working the fields within the top of summer time to reply to earlier harvests. At Domaine Skouras in Greece’s Nemea, this yr’s harvest began a file 20 days early. Winemaker Dimitris Skouras stated a discount in fungal illness had improved grape high quality, nevertheless he nonetheless expects decrease yields general.
We can’t predict the modifications to come back or the acute climate we’d face.
Dimitris Skouras
winemaker at Domaine Skouras
“This yr has been exceptionally scorching. The winter was unusually quick, and temperatures rose quickly afterward, with July being the most well liked on file. In our vineyards, we’re seeing decrease manufacturing ranges than final yr, which was already fairly low, particularly for Agiorgitiko,” he instructed CNBC by way of e mail, referring to the grape selection used within the area’s crimson wines.
Skouras is now planting vineyards at larger altitudes, the place temperatures are typically decrease, and he’s figuring out areas with higher water provide to assist the vines stand up to the warmth.
“There are not any definitive options but, as we can’t predict the modifications to come back or the acute climate we’d face. Our technique is to adapt to this new actuality in viticulture as greatest we are able to,” Skouras stated, referring to the research of cultivating grapes.
Elsewhere, nevertheless, the hopes of adaptation are much less clear. On Santorini, the place grapes are grown in conventional “koulouras,” or baskets, to guard them from the island’s robust winds and intense daylight, the vines danger turning into much more uncovered to harsh climate circumstances.
“These vines have root programs that return three, 4, 5 centuries, and so they’re dying,” Gaia Wine’s Paraskevopoulos stated.
Tourism responsible?
Excessive climate shouldn’t be the one difficulty afflicting Europe’s vineyards. Elevated tourism has additionally seen funding and manpower shift conventional agricultural work to the hospitality sector.
For therefore-called agritourism locations, equivalent to Tuscany’s Castello di Volpaia, which homes a small lodging complicated on the property, visitor stays can offset the prices related to weaker manufacturing output. At Marchesi Antinori, cellar excursions and cookery lessons are all a part of the providing.
“We’re lucky to be in a area and a rustic the place we do not see a discount in tourism – fairly the other,” Antinori stated.
A vineyard in Tuscany, Italy.
CNBC
However Paraskevopoulos stated he fears that locations like Santorini, which have ridden the wave of rising tourism, might in the end grow to be victims of their very own success.
“Climatic change is unquestionably very alarming, however tourism can also be responsible,” he stated. “Younger Santorinians do not put money into wineries anymore as a result of they produce other methods of making a living.”
The shifting panorama will now see EU representatives and business stakeholders collect for wine coverage discussions, with their first assembly due subsequent month. The group is because of meet no less than thrice this yr, earlier than presenting their suggestions at first of 2025.
It’s hoped that such measures might cut back among the largest dangers dealing with the business, which throughout the bloc alone employs round 3 million individuals and contributes an estimated 130 billion euros to EU gross home product.
“That is the development line if you don’t intervene,” Paraskevopoulos stated of the Assyrtiko extinction forecast. “And that is the query: will we intervene in time and can we achieve success?”
