Anne Krebiehl MW picks out her seven key things to take away from the recent International Cool Climate Wine Symposium held in Brighton and the UK for the first time.
1 Defining ‘cool climates’ is about far more than just temperature
“Vines are now grown as far north as Gothenburg in Sweden at a latitude of 57.7°N,” reported Professor Hans Schulz of Hochschule Geisenheim. “Many potential regions are emerging but factors other than just climate need to be considered. Day length and the adaptive capacity of photosynthesis are decisive,” he claimed.
Professor Shulz illustrated this with Sweden which at 57.1°N has a maximum of three hours and 20 minutes more of precious daylight than the Adelaide Hills at 34.7°S. While a climate might be suitable in summer, winter frosts can be detrimental. Despite climatic similarities, water availability can be vastly different.
2 Cool climates are prized
Wine critic, Oz Clarke, on how a cool climate can be a wine region’s best friend
“Cool climate is one of the most precious possessions a wine region can be blessed with. Cool climate offers thrilling possibilities but it comes with risks and limitations,” declared Oz Clarke, broadcaster and writer.
3 There still is vast potential for English wines
Alistair Nesbitt of the University of East Anglia, by cross-referencing climatic and geological data, identified a whopping 197,000 hectares of arable land on limestone soils that would be suitable for planting vines. Of those, 17,000ha are in Hampshire alone. Thus there still is huge potential for growth.
4 Climate change continues
Dr Monika Christmann, of Hochschule Geisenheim and current president of the OIV, said that “we will see an increase in temperature.” However, rather than steady, linear warming, climate change is fraught with ever greater variability in climate. “We have to be prepared for all different scenarios,” she warned.
5 Distribution rather than marketing
Nigel Greening of Felton Road on building a “distribution” rather than a “marketing” strategy
Nigel Greening, owner of Felton Road Winery in Central Otago, New Zealand, charted how Felton Road became a successful micro-player in a competitive market: “I avoid all conventional marketing like the plague,” he said, focussing instead on traits like authenticity, honesty, artisan production, real farming and ‘somewhereness’, a term coined by the American wine writer Matt Kramer to denote a sense of provenance in wine. “We never had a marketing strategy, we had a distribution strategy,” Greening said and emphasised the importance of building personal, international networks.
6 Consumers are engaged and in demand for cool climate wine
Davy Zyw of Laithwaite’s Wine, the world’s largest home delivery wine merchant selling 70 million bottles annually, reported that while cool climate wines represented only 15% of UK sales, they sold at 25% more than the average Laithwaite’s price. He also noted that customers who buy cool climate wines are more engaged and ready to spend more. This he hailed as “a clear sign-post of style.”
7 Technology enters the vineyard
Dr Tony Proffitt of Curtin Univeristy in Western Australia highlighted new technologies used throughout the growing season to “optimise yield, quality and production efficiency.” He reported on the data collection capabilities of so-called unmanned aerial vehicles –or drones– which “can be used to acquire imagery at ultra-high resolution in near-real time,” in order to create vineyard maps that help making vineyard inputs ever more targeted, efficient and environmentally friendly.
Even robotic birds of prey have been developed to prevent birds from feasting on fruit while drones can also be used to disperse beneficial insects to combat pests. Smart apps are being developed to calculate the incidence and severity of fungal infections, helping to target both preventive and curative measures more effectively.
- The 10th ICCWS will be held in 2020 in Ontario in Canada.
