Back in 1972, the very idea of Australian wine was regarded as comical in England, hardly a country associated with premium vintages itself. The high point of this derision came when Monty Python’s Eric Idle performed a monologue consisting largely of fictional antipodean vintages. Notable among these was the “Old Smokey 1968” which, we were informed, could be “favorably compared to a Welsh Claret.”
Fast forward to 2016 and the UK has long been established as the Australian wine industry’s top export market by volume. Although Claret – the English term for Bordeaux – is not yet produced in Wales. Burgundy expert Jasper Morris confesses to having braved a Welsh Pinot Noir. Perhaps surprisingly, he deemed it “not at all bad.”
While it wasn’t good enough to give Burgundy or New Zealand anything to worry about, it may, though, be a useful pointer to the future.
Australian sparkling wine producers, for instance, are certainly no longer sniggering at England’s performance in their own sector. In fact, English sparkling wine has impressed even the Champenois. One of the reasons most often cited for this bizarre development is – almost inevitably – those dreaded words climate change.
Morris was recently in Hong Kong to introduce the Berry Bros & Rudd <I>en primeur</I> offering from the 2014 Burgundy vintage. While passing through, he did offer his view that changes in weather patterns have certainly made a difference to the wines from that particular part of Europe.
It transpired he had recently attended a conference at which a paper on global warming was presented. It findings were based on readings taken over the course of a year in the vineyards of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, one of the greatest of the Burgundian estates.
Summarising the presentation, he said: “Across the year you can’t really tell the difference from previous averages. In spring and autumn, though, there is a clear change.
“Most obviously, the weather patterns are more erratic. You get heat spikes, unexpected hits of frost and so forth. Taken as a whole, the rainfall patterns may not be all that different, but they may be more violent. While we’ve always had hail problems – every year somebody has a hail problem – now there are much bigger storms, storms capable of wiping out the vineyards of entire villages.”
Thanks to these incidents of extreme weather, Morris says the growers “hardly ever make a full crop anymore.” As a result, now demand for the region’s better wines often greatly exceeds supply.
Other – subtler – changes have also become apparent, at least some of which benefit certain vineyard owners, according to Morris, who has been professionally involved in buying and selling Burgundy wines since 1981. He is also the author of Inside Burgundy, winner of the 2011 André Simon award for Best Wine Book of the Year.
Identifying these changes, he says: “Quality is moving up the hillside a bit. Some vineyards which weren’t that thrilling back in the nineteenth century, when people started doing classifications, are now regarded amongst the best. Chambolle Musigny Les Fuées and Les Cras, and Volnay Clos de Chenes and Taille Pieds are now much better thought of than back then or even when I first came into the business.
“I haven’t yet really perceived any great vineyards as being any worse than they were, though, but it’s something I’m watching out for.”
Another prominent figure in the world of wine with climate change on his mind is Angelo Gaja, a recent visitor to Hong Kong and Shanghai on one of his rare public appearances. He is regarded as one of the most influential figures in Italian wine, with a record of innovation stretching back to the early 1960s.
These days, he says his time is spent managing a range of problems, ranging from new vineyard pests to trying to limit soaring levels of alcohol. He too, though, has seen certain benefits accruing as a result of climate change. This, he says, is particularly the case for Piedmont’s Barbaresco wines, historically less highly esteemed than Barolo on account of the fact they were lower in alcohol.
He says: “I believe that climate change has benefitted Barbaresco. It is a champion of the elegant wines. The champion in Italy, I believe, and one of the elegant wines that always goes better with food.”
He does concede, however, that making such wines has become a great deal more complicated. He says: “In the past we never worked with a vineyard consultant. Why? Probably we were arrogant, but we knew a lot about managing vineyards from our 100 years of history.
“Now, thanks to climate change, things have changed. We currently work with seven vineyard consultants. While we don’t do everything they suggest, we do have to have a degree of consultation.
“The effect of climate change across Europe is that the growing season starts almost a month earlier, so harvest starts earlier, and the average temperature of the growing season is five to seven degrees higher. This means there is a far greater accumulation of sugar in the grapes and that increases alcohol levels.”
A number of winemakers, however, have welcomed this, arguing that naturally high alcohol levels are simply an accurate reflection of vintages. Indeed Gaja, himself, is in two minds about it.
He says: “Initially, I believed the increase in alcohol was good for those wines that, in the past, needed to be chapitalized (have sugar added before or during fermentation) to raise the alcohol levels. In Burgundy, for instance, they now chapitalize far less. In Bordeaux, though, they have to be careful as, in Merlot, the alcohol level can reach as high as 15 percent.”
In the New World, they have devised a solution to the alcohol problem. It’s a technique that Morris archly describes as “post fermentation irrigation” – adding water. In terms of a more sophisticated approach, techniques such as reverse osmosis and spinning cones – which use centrifugal force to separate the flavour elements of the wine from some of the alcohol – are also frequently adopted.
Obviously largely unimpressed by such approaches, Morris says: “In California spinning cones have become quite important. While it says ‘unfined, unfiltered’ on the bottle, it’s actually been centrifuged to death. To date, this is not an issue in Burgundy, but we need to be watchful. I think we need to be on the lookout for more viticultural techniques.”
A more pressing concern for Gaja is that climate change has introduced new pests to many vineyards. His particular worry is the arrival of Drosophila Suzuki, a fly native to Japan that can infest grapes in the early stages of ripening, thus posing a serious threat to the harvest.
Morris, though, is somewhat sceptical about the reality of the problem. He says: “That was a significant threat in 2014, but it didn’t show in 2015. It may just be that, every so often, you get a particular beast that just comes through.”
For buyers, the dilemma with Bordeaux is always whether to buy en primeur (before bottling) or to wait until the vintage is actually released. This, though, isn’t an issue when it comes to Burgundy. Supply is limited and, if you want wines from a particular favourite vineyard, <I>en primeur </I>orders are the only way to secure them. The good news for buyers this year, though, is that prices are somewhat down, a consequence of the currently rather weak euro.
Morris say: “Prices from the growers to us are between the same and five percent up, but we have gained a solid 10 percent on the exchange rate. Burgundy is still expensive, but it’s a move in the right direction.
“In truth, Burgundians aren’t trying to gouge out ever higher prices. In fact, they are not comfortable with the levels they are at. They just need some wine in the cellars and then they can bring the prices down. It’s because they’ve had so many miserably short crops which are the real root of the problem.”
Once again, then, it’s the weather that’s to blame. And if it warms up much more, what then does the future hold? Prospects, according to Morris, are distinctly mixed. On the one hand, England and northeast France may become more viable for red grapes. For some of the world’s great whites, though, the outlook is gloomier.
Painting something of a dismal picture, Morris says: “It may well be that, eventually, Pinot Noir will migrate further north. Then we’ll make sparkling wines in England and still wines in champagne. If global warming continues, though, perhaps that will even stop Chablis tasting anything like Chablis.”