“AN INCREASE IN TEMPERATURES, SCARSE SUMMER RAINS, ABUNDANT RAINS IN CONTINENTAL EUROPE, AND GRAPE CULTIVATION OUTSIDE OF HISTORIC TERROIR. EUROPEAN VITICULTURE MUST LEARN TO CONFRONT THIS…”: THE WORDS OF AGRO-METEOROLOGIST LUIGI MARIANI

Average temperatures are increasing, summer rains are ever scarcer around the Mediterranean basin while increasingly abundant over continental Europe, and there is now the possibility of the cultivation of vineyards in areas other than the historic terroir: these are just some of the effects (actual and potential) of the current climatic changes, recently discussed at Vinitaly (Verona, 29 March – 2 April), the most important international fair of the wine sector.

And these changes actually have a precise date when they began to occur. In fact, for the European wine world, 1989 will go down in history, not only as the year that the Berlin Wall fell, but also as the year of a decisive and sudden climatic “caesura”, a total discontinuity from what weather conditions had been like previously, and whose effects are at the center of international climate debates.
Starting in 1989, the climate changed suddenly and drastically, becoming much drier due to the increase in temperature and the decrease in rainfall. It can be considered truly a climate “novum”, a new climate, which has affected the most important wine producing continent in the world: Europe has now witnessed widespread evidence of changes in the vegetative processes of its vineyards.

It is a new climatic period that has become increasingly apparent since the end of the 1980’s and which could, on the one hand, ever more radically accentuate the differences between the European wine-growing areas by affecting specific areas and creating a net diversification between zones and climates that are considered oceanic (France, for example) in respect to those that are considered Mediterranean (Italy). In the first area, for example, there has been an increasing concentration of rainfall in summer months, while in the second area, there has been a notable decrease in rainfall in the same period. On the other hand, these climatic changes could render wine-growing less “risky” in countries like England, usually considered a country that only buys wine, but which cannot produce it.

Looking at the climatic system as a whole, the main cause of this sudden climatic inversion, according to Professor Luigi Mariani (head of the Agrometeorology Department of Vegetal Production at the University of Milan) in an interview with WineNews, is the sudden mutation of the Atlantic atmospheric circulation. The usual alternation between winters from the East, which are colder and more severe, and winters from the West, which are milder, has been totally interrupted, sparking a new atypical cycle that has completely moved to a solely West circulation (a phenomenon that has occurred before in the past, and which, according to historic data, should last about 20-40 years).

This new cycle, beginning during that “fateful” 1989, has caused an increase in temperatures (of about 1.5° C, consequently increasing the evaporation of water and thus further increasing the temperature), and the drastic reduction in rainfall in the Mediterranean basin (by about 100 to 200 ml of water per year).

Given the extreme vulnerability of agricultural systems to climatic variations, especially viticulture, it would be opportune to give more attention to the evolution of these phenomena. And attention to meteorological recordings should begin with producers themselves, who, until now, have not demonstrated adequate sensibility.

Simple measurements (at least for rainfall and temperature) should never be missing from production controls, and together, evidently, with an increasing awareness of better agricultural methods to adopt in vineyards.