Great winegrowers make good wine even in a bad vintage—at least, they used to. How they will handle a bad vintage in the years to come is an open question. Our lives are already overfull with “once-in-a-lifetime” meteorological events, whether frosts, unrelenting heat, drought, and epic storms during the harvest.
As the mercury ticks up and storms intensify, winegrowers are making architectural changes in their vineyards. By reorganizing physical space, they hope to create a more resilient vineyard structure, better-equipped to weather the outrageous slings and arrows of climate change.
I visited two growers, one in northern France, one in South Africa, who are actively changing the structure of their vines. Then I caught up with a viticultural consultant in Napa Valley to discuss the changes he has made to prepare the region’s vines for the future.
CHABLIS
It was the middle of May in 2022, and I was sweating in the sun as I waited outside the De Moors’ winery in Courgis, a small town in southwestern Chablis. It seemed punishingly hot—the temperatures had approached the high eighties all week, a fact driven home a few days earlier, when I joined the balade des gourmandes—a 10-mile hike up the Côte de Léchet, one of the steepest premier crus in Chablis, punctuated by a few small bites and a glass. I was early for my appointment and relieved when Alice De Moor returned from her work in the vineyard. The cellar was cool, a welcome respite.
Alice and her husband, Olivier, have been making wine in Chablis since the 1990s. They farm 24 acres of vines for their estate wines; they also make wine under their organic négociant label, Le Vendangeur Masqué (The Masked Harvester). There’s an independent streak underlying their estate… their oldest vines are aligoté, a plot planted in 1902, and they make a wine called Sans Bruit from 70-year-old sauvignon blanc vines, the style of the vintage determined by the directions its microbes take. Recent vintages include a wine with 25 grams per liter of RS, a fully dry wine and a micro-cuvée pét-nat.
The De Moors have farmed organically since they started, though they didn’t get certified until 2008. When I asked Alice if they were interested in biodynamics, she sighed. “It’s not very scientific,” she said, though they do use some essential oil treatments and plant infusions, letting the cover crop grow freely to force the vines’ roots deeper. In other words, implementing principles of biodynamics without the cosmic influence.
In April of 2021, the devastating frosts that descended on much of France had huge impacts in Chablis. Two frosts hit the Vau de Vey, one of the premier crus in which the De Moors have vines. The surviving harvest was so small they didn’t make a cuvée. In total, they have 4.3 acres of vines in the premier crus, and none in the grand crus. “Ce n’est pas grave,” Alice told me, expressing no interest in acquiring any grand cru land.
After that harvest, the De Moors decided to experiment with pergola training in eight rows of their parcel in Vau de Vey. They installed higher posts along the vines, with wooden rods spanning the rows.
Their hope was that by raising the buds higher off the ground, away from the coldest air as it settles during a frost event, the crop would be protected. Additionally, come summer, the canopy would fan out above the bunches to help protect the grapes from sunburn. Alice hopes it might turn out to bean elegant solution to evade the intensifying threats in spring and summer “by creating a gentle shade from the sun” to keep the soil cooler and protect the microbial life underground. “After the vine has flowered,” the grapes remain in dappled shade, “without too much sunlight that can cook the grapes, nor too much shade which can make them susceptible to parasites, diseases and gray rot.”
They’ve now had two harvests from these pergola-trained vines at Vau de Vey and seem pleased with the results. 2023 was the first year where the pergola grapes were higher up than the others, and Alice reports that they were “more numerous, larger and riper” but cautioned that it was too early to draw conclusions. “It’s interesting in theory, but we still have to wait to see more results.”
SOUTH AFRICA
As you drive up the south side of the Kasteelberg onto the Roundstone farm, you might be greeted by Chris and Andrea Mullineux’s three massive, lanky, velvet-furred Weimaraners. I had hitched a ride with Chris from the Basson vineyard, a parcel planted in 1900 which they manage for Leeu Passant. The dogs—themselves a small family, a mother, father and son—played a game that involved getting as close as possible to the front wheels of the truck. Each one seemed to disappear under the wheel, until they’d bound past the window a few seconds later. It was a little terrifying, but Chris assured me it wasn’t anything to worry about.
Chris and Andrea Mullineux purchased Roundstone in 2014, having sourced syrah fruit from the vineyard since 2007. When they learned the owner was selling, they pounced at the opportunity. Now, the property hosts their winery, a new tasting room, their home, and a collection of young vineyards.
It’s a beautiful place to make one’s home—just short of 250 acres on the south side of the Kasteelberg mountain, 57 of which have been planted to grapevines. Forty-two of those acres are new plantings, land that had been dedicated to wheat, olives or cattle pasture. The new vineyards look drastically different from the parcels of syrah—the younger parcels are all bush vines, trained with stok-by-paaltjie, the Afrikaans term for echela training (as it’s called in the Rhône). A large post is placed upright by each vine and, as the shoots grow upwards, winegrowers tie the shoots onto the post, protecting the shoots from the wind and encouraging an even growth cycle that helps preserve the fruit’s natural acidity. Chris considers preserving that freshness the biggest challenge in the heat of the Swartland, where temperatures can already climb to over 90° Fahrenheit.
Besides the difference in training, the rows of the vineyard follow the contour of the hillside. This is not a new idea—recall the terraces of the Mosel, the Côte-Rôtie, or the Douro—but the Mullineuxs expect it to be a key tool to aid in the protection of their soils. As rainfall becomes more unpredictable and intense in a warming climate—see the temporary summer lake in California’s Central Valley this year—so will the threat of erosion. Planted to rows spaced about one and a half meters apart, they also included what they call a “larger contour row where we can channel the water.” Basically, for every three meters’ drop in altitude, they leave an empty space large enough to drive a tractor or other vehicle through (the vine rows are too narrow to allow them to pass). “The contours are allowing the water to run away fast enough to move, not to puddle up and create a flash of erosion, but not so fast so it takes the soil with it.”
Andrea claims that this setup allows them to collect 100,000 liters of water for every centimeter of rain—if the ground is already sufficiently saturated. To limit evaporation and keep the soil moist, they also leave a permanent, low cover crop of fynbos in the vine rows. These native plants go dormant during the summer, using very little or no water during this critical period for the vine.
The Mullineuxs have also planted what they call “fynbos corridors,” these explosive swaths of plants native to the cape. These tall, bushy species look very different to the ground-hugging cover crop, and comprise about fifteen to twenty percent of the surface area of the vineyard. They offer a number of benefits, including habitat for beneficial insects, helping to lessen the speed of water running down the hill, and breaking up the vinifera monoculture, allowing more diverse forms of life to prosper in the vineyard, something that Andrea believes will enhance the expression of the terroir.
The decision to organize the vine rows to be “untractorable” is one the Mullineuxs undertook expressly to protect their soils. “Our soils are 500 million years old and they’ve been weathered for so long, their structure is very fragile.”
Taking tractors in the rows risks compacting the soil. Andrea says it takes years to break it apart again. In the event they need to spray organic treatments, they’ll affix a “spray cannon” to a tractor and drive it through the channeling contour rows, or take backpacks into the rows by foot. All these choices have created a “literally fluffy” soil out of the ancient schist that “you can stick your hand right into,” says Andrea.
It’s an exciting time to be a viticulturist in South Africa—the rediscovery and celebration of truly-old vine vineyards has ensured that growers continue to keep their vines in the ground. The Old Vine Project has become a nexus of information and training for growers who are looking to plant vineyards that will grow to be old, despite increasing climatic pressure.
NAPA VALLEY
Steve Matthiasson has been working in the Napa Valley for 21 years, and has seen the wines change during that time. “If you taste mainline Napa wines, they’re way less jammy, pruney, or cooked-tasting than they were ten or fifteen years ago, despite the fact it’s gotten warmer. It’s about the viticultural advancements that have become the norm here.” The available capital in Napa has allowed for some pretty slick tech: a smart-phone attachment tracks the heat in the vineyard via infrared camera; misters installed along the trellis wires use a small amount of water to dissipate heat via evaporation; and there are shade cloths galore—some of which stay up from veraison until harvest. Matthiasson says there are also effective, comparatively humble adjustments that can make the difference in the freshness of the grapes.
Minor tweaks to the orientation of the rows and their spacing can improve the vines’ ability to weather heat events. Matthiasson says, “Everybody is redesigning their trellises period. The biggest growers to the smallest growers. No one’s putting in a VSP (Vertical Shoot Positioned) trellis anymore. Those are basically done in our climate in Napa.” Instead, growers are turning to “cross-arm” trellising, adding an attachment to the posts to allow trellises to jut out slightly from the row. “Now, it’s a given that you’re going to have cross arms so the canopy spreads out and shades the fruit. The question is, ‘How wide are your cross arms,’ not ‘Are you going to have them,’” says Matthiasson. “You have dappled light with the cross arms,” rather than the excessive shade from old-fashioned California sprawl, or too little shade from VSP. “You can manage your light environment,” he says, working to bring in “lots of light, not much heat.”
Previously, the vineyards in Napa had rows oriented north-south, to maximize sunlight accumulation for photosynthesis. “We now know that we have more than ample photosynthesis, and the more relevant concern is balancing heat load rather than solar radiation and protecting the fruit from direct sunlight,” Matthiasson explains. Because the ambient temperature is lower in the morning, by planting rows thirty-five degrees east of due north, Matthiasson finds that “during the hottest time of day in August, the sun is coming straight down the vine rows so the fruit’s protected underneath the canopy.” The vines have more shade above and on their west-facing side, helping to balance their heat load. He considers August to be the most critical time to manage the heat since that’s when the grapes are producing their flavor molecules—not to mention that the darkly pigmented, post-veraison bunches retain more heat.
Meanwhile, when I ask him about experimental varieties in Napa Valley, whether drought-resistant or heat-tolerant, Matthiasson is emphatic that those vines are not coming after cabernet. He has done considerable research, and is known for some alternative varieties of his own, but Matthiasson is confident that cabernet will remain king in Napa until the end times, like Nero and his fiddle.
“With the way global warming is now, we can adapt to it viticulturally and still make wines that are true to their terroir,” he says, positing that varieties that have proven to be the most effective communicators of the land will continue to be, even as the mercury rises. “If it ever gets so hot that we can’t manage it through viticulture, then I think it’s probably already going to be like Mad Max, and there won’t be a lot of people buying Romanée-Conti.”
Corey Warren is the Tastings Editor in addition to covering the wines of the Loire, Southern France, Argentina and South Africa.
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This story appears in the print issue of Winter 2023.
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