WELCOME TO THE VINEYARD OF THE FUTURE: CAPRAI, THE SYMBOL OF SAGRANTINO, LAUNCHES A UNIQUE EXPERIMENT THAT SIMULATES HOW THE CLIMATE 50 YEARS FROM NOW WILL AFFECT THE UMBRIAN VINEYARDS

Welcome to the vineyards of the future: they are located in the Italian region of Umbrian, where Marco Caprai, the name that can only be related to Sagrantino, has launched the only experiment in the world that simulates what effects climate changes 50 years from now will have on his vineyards.
The idea was born out of the desire to discover the characteristics future vineyards will have, which will most surely be altered by the global climate changes that are occurring.

“We wanted to work on the effects of climate changes from many angles” – explained Marco Caprai, the man who re-launched the antique varietal of Sagrantino to the top of the world wine classifications – “in order to see what the main implications would be before they were already verified. And this curiosity has animated the company’s technical staff, headed by Luigi Mariani (the most authoritative agro-meteorologist in Italy), so much so that a real open air experiment was created. Thus, we set up a vineyard of Sagrantino in a way to reproduce the most immediate effects caused by global warming on this varietal. For one, we covered the leaves with a length of material to increase the temperature of the plants and simultaneously interfering with photosynthesis, as well as adding a sort of aluminum mirror to increase solar radiation”.

“The results of the 2008 harvest could already be able to offer data that can be worked with” – continued Caprai – “creating a very preliminary forecast of that which will await us in the future, if and when these climatic mutations effectively interest even the cultivation area of Sagrantino”.
After years of experiments and scientific research on one of the most important antique varietal cultivations, with numerous approaches to different farming methods that finally led to what is now known as Sagrantino bianco, it was now the turn for a climatic simulation in order to understand the reactions the Sagrantino grape will have on possibly radical environmental changes in the future.

As for the rest of Caprai’s 2008 harvest, he is fairly positive: “we have already taken the grapes from the early ripening varietals into the winery with excellent results, but we won’t begin the main part of the harvest until next week, with a Sagrantino that is decidedly very beautiful”.