Climate Change Adaptation

We are entering an era where climate patterns no longer follow predictable cycles. Temperatures continue to rise, rainfall becomes erratic, and weather events grow more violent and frequent. Climate adaptation and climate change resilience are becoming urgent challenges for wine growers. The new normal is the extreme and although every wine region faces its own particular climate challenges, the need for change is clear: resilience needs to be built into every vineyard’s planning.

Regenerative viticulture’s practices help growers adapt to climate change (by making vineyards more resilient to drought, heat, floods and diseases) and mitigate climate change (by building soil carbon and enhancing biodiversity that stabilises ecosystems). Unlike some short-term technical fixes, regeneration goes beyond just ‘sustaining’ and builds long-term balance and resilience in vineyard environments.

Some traditional wine growing regions are contending with heat spikes that last for weeks (sometimes multiple times in one growing season), droughts that last for years, and ripening during the hottest months, with a loss of acidity, phenolics, anthocyanins and tannins, altering wine styles. There is also increased vintage variation. When rains come they can be extreme. Bare, compacted soil does not allow storm water to infiltrate. Instead it flows rapidly through the vineyards taking topsoil with it and damaging vines and infrastructure and degrading the vineyards’ ecosystems.

Regeneration of vineyard environments and ecosystems offer solutions that can be implemented in vineyards the world over.

Here we outline different techniques that can be used to combat climate change and increase resilience to specific viticultural challenges. These approaches address several challenges simultaneously and strengthen the whole system, making it more capable of meeting many challenges at the same time.

Click on the buttons below to find out more about each of the challenges.