Nordic Development Fund publishes Private Markets for Climate Resilience study

“Private Markets for Climate Resilience (PMCR) is the first initiative by a development institution to better understand climate resilience solutions provided by the private sector. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Nordic Development Fund (NDF) have funded this assessment that focuses on transport and agriculture, and examines current best practices and opportunities related to climate resilience, by identifying leaders that are shaping the national markets, highlighting products, services, tools, and processes.” (from Global Report)

Linda Johnson-Bell of TWACCI participated as a Global Team Expert in Viticultural Resilience.

READ the Report here: https://ndf.fi/sites/default/files/news_attach/pmcr_global_report.pdf

My France Favourites: Linda Johnson-Bell

Here is a throw-back from my time at FRANCE TODAY !

My France Favourites: Linda Johnson-Bell

By France Today Editors -

January 16, 2014

Here France Today’s wine columnist, Linda Johnson-Bell, opens her little black book with some favourite picks for travel in France. An award-winning wine critic and writer, Johnson-Bell was born in the U.S. and studied in Paris (Sorbonne, SciencesPo) when at Scripps College in California. After completing graduate studies at the l’Université de Nice, she served as the Editor and Publishing Director of the French wine magazine, Vintage. She now divides her time between London, Oxford, and Venice. Her books include Pairing Wine and Food, Good Food Fine Wine, The Wine Collector’s Handbook, The Home Cellar Guide, and the forthcoming Wine and Climate Change (April 2014). She travels regularly as a European competition judge, authors the wine site www.TheWineLady.com and lectures/consults on climate-based future viticultural policy issues.

What’s your perfect day in Paris?

It would have to be a very long day so to fit in everything! First, I would get up and jog along the Seine, then meet my best girlfriends for coffee and make our way to the women-only Le Hammam Pacha in St Denis for a transporting session of eucalyptus steam-baths, savon noir et gommage, massages, swimming and a lunch of lamb chops, taboulé and mint tea. The afternoon would have a visit to La Balajo for a tango lesson followed by a bit of browsing in the nearby bookshops. I’d go home for a quick change, have cocktails at Harry’s Bar, dinner at my friend Patricia’s as she always lets me do the cooking. Then we’d hit the town – all of our old haunts that have sadly changed a lot since we were young. So, in my perfect day, we’d all still be 25 years old! Chez Castel for a bottle of Champagne (since Jean Castel died, the faded glamour has, too) and then after midnight, to Les Bains Douches to dance until we drop. Then, we’d walk home barefoot in the rain and stop at the boulangerie around the corner for the very first brioche out of the oven.

Your favourite restaurant in Paris?

It would be a restaurant that I did not go to for work (wine), but for pleasure: Le Gamin de Paris near the Marais (51 rue vieille du Temple). It rarely has tourists. The late owner was a stern, but warm woman who knew us all by name. It was here that I learned to love snails. They prepare and serve them on a bed of garlicky, buttery potatoes, gooey on the inside and crispy on the outside, in a poêle.  So I started by having a mouthful– one snail and lots of potatoes– until eventually, I weaned myself off the potato and preferred the snail on its own.

The most sublime meal you’ve ever had in France?

It would have to be when I was Editor of the wine magazine, Vintage Magazine. I was not yet a “foodie” and was being dragged to every Michelin-star restaurant opening, focusing on the wine list, and stupidly, not appreciating what I was being taught. Looking back, I realise how much eventually seeped into my consciousness (and onto my thighs). I remember one event particularly well. One morning my publisher and I flew down to Monte Carlo where we were taken by helicopter to the Louis XV for an article we were writing on Alain Ducasse. When we arrived and were sitting down in his tasting kitchen (a room set off behind glass doors where they bring you little samples of each dish as they prepare them before the main event upstairs) when he burst in the room and told us that he had just learned that he’d won 3 Michelin stars in Paris – making him the first chef to have two 3-star restaurants (he went on to have 3). The food that day was filled with his passion, excitement and pride. Unforgettable.

Best travel memory in France?

I’d spent a week skiing at Avoriaz with a group of friends. Our chalet rental finished on a Friday and we didn’t want to leave the fresh air. So we booked a chambres d’hôte which ended up being the most amazing surprise. It was an old farmhouse and the couple had had 10 children, so they had turned an entire wing of the house into chambres. We were her only guests, and she served us the most stunning raclette in her dining room. But first, she spent the day taking us around to where her neighbour made her cheese, and where another baked her bread, and she took hours showing us her smoke houses where she taught us how to do it and she let us work with her. She was so full of fabulous stories, we couldn’t leave, and we were all late for work on Monday morning.

Favourite French region to travel?

Burgundy. One bottle at a time.

Top museum in France?

The new rooms for Monet’s Les Nymphéas at l’Orangerie. I go at off-peak times so I can be alone and sit on the floor in the middle and lose myself in the hazy violet watery magic of it.

Favourite French film?

Claude Lelouch’s Un homme et une femme (1966)

Souvenir for friends back home?

I always drive back from Paris with a boot full of wine, cheeses, truffles, fresh pastries for my sons and that morning’s shopping from the market for dinner that night. And, Eiffel Tower mugs and key chains – the essential kitsch.

Boutiques where you shop during the semi-annual soldes?

I like the kitchen shops where I pick up kitchen tools for uses that I did not even knew existed. And I am a puce fan … because there are bargains all through the year… I collect antique wine paraphernalia.

A destination in France that you’re dying to visit?

The only bit I have never been to: the island of Corsica.

Tip for first-time visitors to France?

Tell yourself that it is only your first-time and that you will return – that way you do not panic and try to do too much and end up not doing anything properly. Treat it like a “first bite”.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Crop Suitability

This morning I was interviewed by a journalist for The Times’ Raconteur supplement. They’re doing a mid-December piece on the current state of the wine industry and she was specifically targeting sustainability and climate change. Every time I talk about this – and I talk about it to anyone who will listen – I try to find new ways to abbreviate and organise my thoughts. Honing concise and pithy sound bites is not something at which I excel. But this morning, I got a bit closer. It became blindingly obvious to me that the crux of the issue is Crop Suitability.

I attended a tasting of New Mexican, Arizonan and Texan wines in a little French bistro in Manhattan last week. The producers all told me that they had to irrigate in order to survive that climate. Shame, because otherwise, they were doing everything else right. The majority were organic or biodynamic. But before there can be organic, natural, zero-carbon, green or biodynamic wines with any authenticity, there has to be “dry farmed” wines, first. This has to be the starting point, or all other sustainable efforts become pointless. “Sustainable freshwater irrigation” is an oxymoron in the context of wine, a luxury crop. True viticultural sustainability can only be achieved through dry farming, as has been practiced in Europe’s finest vineyards for centuries. If we have taken the vitis vinifera away from its native soils only to then contrive and manipulate foreign environments in order to grow it, then we have to ask ourselves if this is legitimate pursuit in the context of today’s climate-change driven water wars. If a producer cannot transition to dry farming (wrong soil/insufficient winter rainfall), then they have to look at crop diversification or migrate – that what other luxury crops such as chocolate, coffee and tea are already doing. As Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon says: “If we can’t farm a particular crop in a truly sustainable way we have no business farming that crop”.

Chemical Winefare: Pesticides in Wine (as published Nov 2019 by IMBIBE MAGAZINE)

Chemical winefare: Pesticides in wine

LINDA JOHNSON BELL

18 NOVEMBER 2019

  

WINE

As the number of alleged pesticide-related illnesses and deaths mount, Linda Johnson-Bell argues the case for the organic, biodynamic and safer future of winemaking

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In March of this year, the Bordeaux High Court acknowledged that Sylvie Berger’s Parkinson’s disease was work-related and held Medoc’s Château Vernous, her employer since 2003, responsible.

James-Bernard Murat died of lung cancer in 2012 after spraying his Bordeaux vineyards for 40 years with a substance that is now banned, according to reports. His cancer was confirmed to be 'linked to his profession’. Denis Bibeyran, after 24 years of applying pesticides to his employer’s grape vines, died of bile duct cancer in 2009 at the age of 47. His sister is still fighting his corner.

These are just a few high-profile court cases surrounding wine and pesticide use, and all are related to industry workers. Now there are cases being brought by local communities and schools. In May 2019, two wine producers in Villeneuve, in the Libournais, were acquitted over the spraying of chemicals next to a school. Château Escalette, owned by Catherine Verges, the mayor of Villeneuve, and Château Castel la Rose in the Côtes de Bourg, were accused of spraying fungicides on their vineyards during high winds, though the court ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.

In January, in response to this increasing public scrutiny, the Château Clément-Pichon announced that it was advancing its plans to convert to organic farming due to mounting tensions over the construction of a new school being built nearby. Isabella Saporta, in her book Vino Business, tells us about a boulangère who has lived 150 metres from a vineyard for 25 years. Marie-Hélène agreed to participate in a hair analysis study and was shocked when the results showed three pesticides, two endocrine disruptors and a carcinogen in her system. When she went public with the findings, many in the community boycotted her bakery.

Despite evidence, industry insiders continue to deny the dangers of glyphosate and other chemicals

This comes after a 2015 report by a group of French health agencies found that use of pesticides on vineyards 'cannot be excluded’ as a reason for high rates of child cancer in Sauternes. Isn’t anything being done? Well, yes. For one, the French government launched the Ecophyto plan in 2008 to reduce the overall use of pesticides. However, last year, the government was moved to launch a new plan after pesticide use was shown to have increased 12% between 2014 and 2016.

At the launch of Ecophyte 2+, President Emmanuel Macron urged a ban of glyphosate, only to renege on this promise in January because farmers say that there is no alternative to the herbicide that is both economically viable and environmentally friendly. But Toby Bekkers, an Australian organic viticulturist, confirms that there are six other weed-control options: mechanical weeding, mowing, mulching, grazing, steam/flame and manipulation of the weed population. Each of these may have a few downsides, such as being slower or using more fuel, but these seem minimal compared to potentially causing cancer.

AN OPEN SECRET

It would be unfair to present this as a uniquely French problem. It isn’t. It’s everywhere – if you can find it. Some feel secrecy is equally pandemic. As anti-pesticide activist Marie-Lys Bibeyran (sister of Denis Bibeyran) says: ‘Nothing filters through in Bordeaux. Everything is taboo. Everything is opaque. 'If you look for her 'blacklist’ of wine-producing châteaux in the Médoc on the French Collectif Info Médoc Pesticide site, you won’t find it – it has been deleted.

Further, Les Dossiers wrote in 2017 that a report from the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety analysing the impact of pesticides on agricultural workers was 'edited’ for its planned release before being cancelled entirely. So what do things look like across the pond? According to the California Department of Health, breast cancer rates in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino Counties are 10%-20% higher than the national average, and Napa County has the highest cancer rate for children in California. Last year, a Californian judge ruled that the cancer warning label on the weed killer Roundup, which has glyphosate as its main ingredient, doesn’t have to be included, though the state still lists the herbicide as 'probably carcinogenic’.

In 2018, consumer group Moms Across America released research revealing that 10 major California wines contained glyphosate. Recently, the US Public Research Group (US PIRG) Education Fund tested 20 products – 5 wines and 15 beers – and found traces of the herbicide in 19. Tested wines included Beringer, Barefoot and Sutter Home. However, industry insiders deny the dangers of glyphosate and other chemicals.

Splashed across the Wine Institute’s website is a quote by Dr Carl Winter from University of California, Davis: ‘Wine as a source of glyphosate should not be of concern. An adult would have to drink more than 140 glasses of wine a day over 70 years containing the highest glyphosate level measured to reach the level that California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has identified as "no significant risk level’’.’ He isn’t arguing that there may not be a cancer risk – just that there isn’t a risk at the levels found in the amount of wine we drink. What is not factored in, however, is the cumulative dose of glyphosate through every foodstuff that is farmed with it.

The Wine Institute’s opinion clashes with a February 2019 report by the US PIRG, which states: 'While these levels of glyphosate are below EPA risk tolerances for beverages, it is possible that even low levels of glyphosate can be problematic. For example, in one study, scientists found that one part per trillion of glyphosate has the potential to stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells and disrupt the endocrine system.

PLANET ORGANIC

With so much controversy on the issue, it does, happily, seem that the wine industry is starting to play it safe. The 2019 Global Sustainable, Organic and Lower Alcohol Report from Wine Intelligence states that 'the tide is rising for all alternative wines’. The total organic area under vine has increased by 234% since 2007, and surpassed 400,000ha in 2017 (IWSR Drinks Market Analysis 2018). Organic wine and its siblings are no longer merely a trend.

They are now mainstream, if not premium, products, and the hippie image has been put to rest.

THE DISCONNECT

With 25 years as a wine writer, and with 12 of those years spent in French vineyards, I never connected any of the dots regarding pesticide use. How was I so easily distracted by all of those sexy conversations on terroir, indigenous yeasts and planting densities? With hundreds of winery visits under my belt, how did I miss the sprayers? Why didn’t I ask the important questions?

Nicolas Joly, one of the godfathers of biodynamic wines, passionately argues that the disconnect began with the West’s adoption of Descartes’ Cartesian education, which teaches that the mind is separate from the body: 'We lost our connection to nature and adopted an automated way of thinking.’ With the 22 different permitted additives or 'tastes', today’s wines are artificial, he argues, and 'cut off from all links to the soil’.

In such a sterile mindset, coupled with the aftermath of World War II, the arrival of agro-chemical farming was inevitable. The post-WWII 'Green Revolution’ was anything but, and took us further away from nature. Industrial agriculture destroys the water-holding capacity of soil, which then means it needs irrigation, which then makes the crops more vulnerable to climatic changes. It creates monocultures which ruin biodiversity, and biodiversity is essential for any agricultural system to work properly. What’s more, chemical fertilisers destroy the living processes of soil. But the wine industry, like the world’s staple crops, succumbed to the promise of greater productivity and profit. And crop chemical giants such as Bayer – which last year purchased Roundup developer Monsanto – were happy to oblige.

So what does this mean for vineyard owners, workers and wine drinkers? Winegrowing has become hard work in today’s fast-changing social, economic and environmental climate. As long as the agro-chemical market is dominated by cheap, yield-enhancing chemicals, it’s difficult for producers to adopt organic practices, and it’s too easy to continue on the path of least resistance to ensure maximum profits, especially when all the neighbours are doing the same. It also further distances the consumer from the product, diminishing their control over what they both purchase and ingest.

THE WAY FORWARD

Now, though, is not the time to write up blacklists or start an inquisition. It’s time to find the courage to change. Joly places his faith in change in a new generation of consumers who are asking the right questions. This groundswell is hindered, however, by the tangled mess of quasi-public/private certifications, wine categories and marketing jargon that differ from country to country.

Like the world’s staple crops, the wine industry succumbed to the promise of greater productivity and profit

Ideally, but impractically, there would be flexible universal, international regulations to create a level economic playing field. Transitioning to organic and biodynamic farming can initially create smaller yields and everyone has to be on the same ledger page. There needs to be a 'map’, too: Is 'sustainable’ the umbrella under which all other farming practices should fall? How do they overlap? What incentives can we offer organic producers for economic viability? A good start is to have mandatory ingredient lists on bottle labels. We all want to know if our chicken is corn fed, our vegetables organic and our eggs free range, so why not give the same care to what we drink?

There has to be a public-awareness campaign on this topic. Consumers must have accurate information in order to decide what they put in their mouths. But can this be done in a world where the European Commission calls its pesticides department the 'plant protection products’ bureau? In the book Water Wars, Dr Vandana Shiva is emphatic that 'the solution for the climate crisis, the food crisis, and the water crisis under which the world is reeling is the same: biodiversity-based organic farming systems’. When we are presented with a bottle of wine with a gorgeous label in a busy restaurant as we laugh with friends, it is easy to forget that the contents of the bottle started out as fruit, on a vine, in soil. It is easy to forget that it is a gift of nature. It is only when we connect with this basic truth that we will understand the point of protecting it – and ourselves.

LINK TO PUBLISHED ARTICLE IN IMBIBE: https://imbibe.com/news/chemical-winefare-pesticides-in-wine/?utm_source=imbibe_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_november_19&utm_content=card_title

PESTICIDES WINE WINEMAKING DANGER IMBIBE CHEMICALS

Wine's Water Footprint

We hear a lot about carbon footprints, but water's footprint is less often discussed and examined. This is a danergous omission, as water is essential to every Earth systerm. Water use is measured in terms of a water footprint. The water footprint of a product (good or service) is the volume of fresh water used to produce the product, summed over the various steps of the production chain. ‘Water use’ is measured in terms of water volumes consumed (evaporated) and/or polluted. The ‘water footprint’ includes three components: consumptive use of rainwater (green water), consumptive use of water withdrawn from groundwater or surface water (blue water) and pollution of water (grey water).  

As we know, water is used in every process of wine production. AND In sites where irrigation is legally practiced, this is its greatest use of water. 83% of the surface under vine is irrigated in the New World as opposed to 10% in the Old World -  Institut national de la recherche agronomique (Montpellier.inra.fr). It is the variables inherent in the practice of irrigation; from country to country; region to region; and micro-climate to micro-climate, plant to plant - that renders determining wine’s water footprint, so difficult.

That said - Incorporating all water sources, the Water Footprint Network reports that it takes an average of 110 litres of water for a 125 ml glass of wine. In drier regions, the average is higher (Australia = 120 litres and California = 131 litres) (WFN, 2014).

It has to be mentioned here that these estimates are challenged by many New World oenologists. They believe that the Dutch researchers at the WFN, failed to consider the higher yields in California and other non-European vineyards, arguing that there is “more wine for the water buck”. And in drought-ridden southern Spain, where limited irrigation is now permitted, researchers argue that the water footprint alone is not a viable enough indicator with which to measure water’s “economic productivity”.

Now … this shared argument overlooks the illogical attempt of justifying increasing irrigation with higher yields and thus, greater economic profitability, when higher yields due to increased irrigation will ultimately lead to lower quality and lower economic profitability in the context of water scarcity. Any profit initially afforded by the greater yields will eventually be consumed.

Linda Johnson-Bell

The Number One Victim of Climate Change is Water

“The number one victim of Climate Change is water. Either there is too much or too little and at the wrong time”.
                            - Johan Rockström, “Water Matters”, Nobel Week Dialogue 2018

If climate can be likened to a person’s personality, then weather is their mood … And moodiness is the new norm. The UN confirms that “higher temperatures and more extreme, less predictable, weather conditions are projected to affect availability and distribution of rainfall, snow melt, river flows and groundwater, and further deteriorate water quality.”

Water is the bloodstream of our biosphere and without it, we cannot maintain a stable eco-system and with a rising demand and a dwindling supply, all eyes are on the agricultural sector, as, according to the OECD, it is the largest and most inefficient user of freshwater (70% of global extraction).

Where does viticulture fit into this picture?

• Only 3 percent of the world’s water is fresh, 75 percent of which is stored in glaciers

• Contemporary global water demand has been estimated at about 4600 km3 per year and projected to increase by 20%-30% to between 5,500 and 6,000 km3 per year by 2050 . (Burek et al 2016),  (Almar Water Solutions)

• With the existing climate change scenario, by 2030, water scarcity in some arid and semi-arid places will displace between 24 million and 700 million people. (UNCCD)

• A third of the world’s biggest groundwater systems are already in distress. (Richey et al., 2015)

• Only about 15 percent of the world’s crops are irrigated, but this tiny group is responsible for 70 percent of the world’s blue water (freshwater) withdrawals”. (Waterwise 2007) (FAO)

• But global irrigated area has increased more than six fold over the last century, from approximately 40 million hectares in 1900 to more than 260 million hectares (Postel, 1999; FAO, 1999) and irrigated areas increase almost 1% per year (Jensen, 1993) 

• 80% of the world’s vineyards are irrigated

Linda Johnson-Bell, Session #7, Water Management, CCL Porto 2019

Al Gore: Our Keynote Speaker at Climate Change Leadership Porto 2019

Climate Change Leadership Porto Conference Interview with TWACCI's Johnson-Bell, by Nick Breeze

ICPS Paris Conference: The Psychology of Wine Tasting

In March, I enjoyed a day on a discussion panel at the International Convention of Psychological Science held at The Palais des Congrès de Paris. My fellow panalists were Charles Spence of the Univesrsty of Oxford, Maria Del Rosario Caballero Rodriguez, Profesora Titular De Universidad, Spain and Franck Ramage, head of the Wine Department at the Cordon Blue, Paris.

FROM THE CONFERENCE:

Objective: To create a “fun” but informative event where attendees could taste some wine, while also gaining a deeper insight in the field of wine appreciation and related psychological mechanisms from both scientific and professional perspectives. Featuring a short list of wines such as Château de France, which will also be available to conference attendees at the evening reception. 

Some of the key questions the panel will be addressing involve: Tasting is defined as a sensory examination and evaluation of wine. What are the different stages and what are the psychological mechanisms involved in these stages? We have all noticed in our daily life that wine tasting is a personal experience. Thus, the appreciation of a given wine may differ between people. How do wine makers take these individual differences in wine appreciation into account? What does science make of individual differences in wine tasting? Finally, are there cultural differences on the appreciation of wine? If so, how can we explain these differences?

Conference Abstract: “Drinking wine has been part of human culture since antiquity and many of its psychological effects are since well-known. Though the practice of wine tasting is ancient, modern science – and notably cognitive science – provided a deeper insight on psychological processes involved in wine tasting. In addition, professionals of wine use scientific insights to produce, present and advertise wine and an ever more complex and specialised terminology to describe wine tasting. The objective of this panel is to bring experts together from science, humanities and the professional wine world to discuss the current state-of-the-art in wine tasting "  

Join us at the Climate Change Leadership Conference in Porto 2019

The sustainability solutions needed in viticulture to ensure future wine quality, soil quality and water conservation can also be applied to other luxury crops and even the major staple crops. Wine is not a niche topic, but rather, the perfect poster child for getting true mitigation practices accepted and in place. I'll be moderating the Water Management Panel... please join us. President Al Gore has accepted to be the Keynote Speaker.

Promo - CCLP2019 from Um Segundo Filmes on Vimeo.

Judging the Welsh Wine Awards 2018 at Llenarch Vineyard

A wonderful 3rd year judging the Welsh Wine Awards with fellow judges Sue Tolsen and Dylan Rowlands. Robb Merchant, Chairman of the Welsh Vineyards Association put on another great event thanks to the help of Ryan of the stunning Llanerch Vineyard. And a special thanks to our special guests, The Rt. Hon. Lord Dafydd Ellis-Thomas AM, the Minister for Culture, Tourism and Sport and Welsh Wine Ambassador Dr. Norma Barry as well as members of the team from Visit Wales. And the greatest thanks go to all of the growers who participated. You get more delicious every year!

EAT ORGANIC? DRINK ORGANIC! Oxford Wine Class

EAT ORGANIC?  DRINK ORGANIC!

WINE CLASS

Do you like your eggs free-range, your chicken corn-fed and your vegetables, organic? Then you probably would like to apply that same preference to your wines. Whether for environmental reasons or for your health, or both, the “trends” in green wines have firmly taken hold. But are you confused by all of the hype? Would you like to know the difference between wines that are “natural”, “sustainable”, “green”, “bio-dynamic”, “organic”, “vegetarian”, “eco-friendly”, “dry-farmed” and “carbon neutral”? You will not be surprised to know that these are not new practices … just new names given to the old ways of making wine properly. As with the food industry, the wine industry, too, has succumbed to the allure of the mass market and technical convenience. Let award-wining wine writer, judge and author, Linda Johnson-Bell, answer all of your questions as you sample a few examples of these wines.

Linda is the CEO of Oxford’s Wine and Climate Change Institute and her most recent book is “WINE AND CLIMATE CHANGE: Winemaking in A New World.”

Monday, October 22^nd at 7 – 9pm

Upper Wolvercote, Oxford

£20 per person including wine

Reservations: linda@thewinelady.com

Dry lawns, dry farming, and wine ...

BLINK DRUNK: Wine or Water - my Indiegogo campaign

OLD VINES are not NEW. Grow up “trend-making” New World!

As I have sat back and watched this wine industry evolve over the past 25 years (I started my career very young!)… it never fails to amaze me how often New World “trends” are just things that quality Old World wine makers have ALWAYS done. It’s like watching teenagers ignore the advice of their experienced parents and go off to make all of the same mistakes. When they finally figure out that perhaps their parents were correct, they act as though they have “invented” the answer. I want to scream, “I TOLD YOU SO!”

The latest trend to piss me off is South Africa’s OLD VINE PROJECT and its accompanying certification programme. The vines have to be at least 35 years old. For xxxx sake, that’s nothing in Europe – it’s a baby. Do these people ever travel and educate themselves? I remember my first trip to Napa and watching 20 year-old vines being pulled because they were “too old” and were not producing enough fruit for the yield –hungry mentality.  I was horrified, as my classic education had taught me that the vines were only just getting interesting at 20. Like people, actually.

The most frustrating thing is that the Old World producers have quietly been going about their business and the consumer has no idea what really is entailed in quality wine production, so if some flash New World wine association comes along and does a PR-job on how smaller yields are better, or how organic, natural wines are set to take the world by storm, or how they are now planting on hillsides and not in valleys, or are favouring indigenous yeasts, or are dry farming, etc., the poor consumer, understandably, gives all the credit to the New World teen-age trend-setter. Ack! I just wish that  they would hurry and grow up.

 http://www.winesofsa.co.uk/news/440/world-first-as-a-new-certification-seal-is-launched-by-the-old-vine-project/ 

THE ORGANOLEPTIC ORACLE

In much the same way that climatologists follow the grapevine because of its sensitivity to climate changes, I consider wine to be the “Organoleptic Oracle”. I am certain that viticulture is the perfect “poster child” for transitioning other crops, both luxury and staple, to embrace and transition to dry farming. If it can work in this sector, the methods could be super-imposed and adapted to others. The more I research, the more I am learning that there is almost no crop that cannot be sustained with a minimum winter rainfall and under desert-farming conditions – the issue is always the need for obtaining higher yields than this will allow. Still, I think that the wine sector is a good place to start because wine is a known and “safe” industry to all international stakeholders. It’s a “famous” product. There also exists valuable historic climate data recorded by winemakers and a strong, coherent network between the players (producers, shippers, retailers, etc.), not to mention all of the international marketing and media and communication structures that are already in place. Grape farmers already have experience in adaptation techniques for long-term resilience and on the whole, the industry has a strong sustainability mind set. The wine industry is also investment-friendly, possessing the magic trilogy of economic viability, technical possibility and political acceptability. It is an industry with a very long value-chain, which means that it offers more opportunities for adaptation products. And most importantly, it is a highly-visible, consumer market: wine producers must be seen to be taking action for reasons of brand protection. All of these factors make the wine industry a natural leader in the global struggle against climate change.

What is dry farming? Nothing new!

Dry farming is nothing new. It’s how European vineyards have always been farmed. When I tell a consumer that irrigation has always been illegal in the quality vineyards of France and Italy, they are shocked. Water usage and wine are not dots that consumers have ever connected or cared about.  Never mind that your glass of irrigated South African Chenin Blanc required more than 150 litres of precious freshwater to produce.  Dry Farming is not just simply “not irrigating”. There is more to it than that. There needs to be careful soil preparation so that the soils retain winter rainfall: only nine inches annually are required. We know that when we irrigate, we artificially increase the yields, decrease the wine quality, deplete and over-salinate the soils (look at Australia), and increase the plant’s vulnerability to climatic stress. This is because irrigated vines have shallow root masses whilst dry-farmed vines are forced to dig deeper to find water and nutrients – and taste – this is where “terroir” is found, by the way.

Irrigation is used primarily in the New World regions to increase yields. Period. In Napa Valley, spray irrigation systems were initially installed in the 1960s to combat winter frosts and were not really used throughout the growing season until the 1980s to coincide with the New World wine boom. The Californian wines that won the infamous Paris Tasting, were all dry farmed! There are still pockets of dry farmers in Napa, in South Africa’s Swartland, Chile, Lebanon – in fact, we know we can grow wine in the desert. More and more New World wine producers are transitioning to dry farming and letting the consumer assume that it is some new trend. It is not. It is the way in which quality wines have always been grown.

What worries me, is that now that the wine laws in Europe are loosening and irrigation is being allowed that we will see more of the Old World vineyards churning out New World yields. And perversely, as water legislation tightens and water supplies dry up in the New World, dry farming will become their norm and we will have a reversal of roles – how ironic. For there are plenty of European wine producers who would kill to be rid of the yield restrictions so that they could compete with international yields. But this is how the wine industry got into such a mess in the first place. It is time to create a level playing field- something Mother Nature seems to have already figured out.

Why am I picking on Wine?

You may ask why I am picking on wine and its water use, as surely there are crops that are far thirstier than the wine grape. There are. And I will cover those in later chapters. I could easily rant about the amount of water that is used to irrigate corn and other cereals that will then be fed to the animals we eat. The insanity of that sends me over the edge. Cotton, which relies on freshwater (or blue water) irrigation to rainfall (or green water), can take more than 20,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of cotton; equivalent to a single T-shirt and pair of jeans. 73% of the global cotton harvest comes from irrigated land (WWF). But I have narrowed my focus to the use of precious freshwater (blue) supplies to irrigate luxury crops: tea, coffee, cacao, sugar, and wine. We don’t need these to live. And dry farmers across the world prove to us every harvest that the vine is a resilient beast that can survive on as little as 9 inches of winter rainfall if the soils have been prepared correctly and are of the right sort. Some soils are too porous. I am simply asking that we set out priorities straight and to find a way forward in which we can have our planet and drink it, too.

Where irrigation is legally practiced (mostly in the New World), this is the greatest blue water, or freshwater, use. And 83% of the New World wine regions are irrigated, where only 10% of the Old World is irrigated. But the use of irrigation in Europe risks increasing as legislation gets more lax, and as wine growers ignore and leave the appellation system in order to compete with international yields. There are some European producers who are thrilled to be able to irrigate and to compete with the international volume of production.  And when we place wine into the context of fruit - wine grapes are the most important fruit crop. There may be only 8 million global hectares planted, but its blue water use is disproportionate to its production value. And all of the “foot-print” data is so difficult to gather because wine’s blue-water footprint is unique in that it varies dramatically from country to country, from region to region, and even from vineyard to vineyard.

Trying to convince the entire industry that dry farming is the future, is a fascinating but challenging goal, as the industry has so many factions. In any one region, and Napa is a great example of this, we can find die-hard dry-farmers who insist that the European ideal of terroir can only be achieved by dry farming, pitted against those who insist that we can manipulate nature and still make a great wine. The great John Williams of the iconic Frog’s Leap Vineyard in Napa says that by dry farming, he saves 10 million gallons of water a year, or, 64,000 gallons saved per acre!

The Wine and Climate Change Institute's Founder comments on world wine shortage on SKY NEWS