12/11/2020
https://www.ft.com/content/3afc63da-475d-457c-996b-348a946073ce
Burgundy’s vineyards feel the heat of climate change
Dry, hot summers and earlier harvests have upended the calendars of winemakers in the region
October 24 2020
For most French people who can afford it, the summer holiday is sacrosanct. Long before Covid-19, offices, shops and restaurants in France were routinely closed for the entire month of August.
However, as in the rest of France, Burgundy’s vignerons have had to reshape their annual schedules. July is the latest they can safely go on holiday now that climate change is moving their harvest dates inexorably forward. This year marked the earliest grape harvest ever in many important wine regions, not least Burgundy.
The first grapes were picked there on August 12 and the harvest was well under way by the third week of the month. It used to start a good month later.
At Domaine Michel Lafarge in Volnay, one of Burgundy’s most respected producers, the 2020 vintage ripened so much earlier than expected that there wasn’t time to move the 2019s before the new crop arrived. Sylvain Pataille got back from holiday on August 24 with just four frantic days to prepare his team, winery and picking equipment before the start of the harvest in Marsannay at the northern end of Burgundy’s heartland, the Cote d’Or.
Marianne and Pierre Duroché in Gevrey-Chambertin, whose delicate red burgundies are all the rage, had made plans to fly back from their holiday in Canada on August 21. In the end, they couldn’t travel to North America because of Covid-19, which saved them from being disastrously late for the start of their 2020 harvest.
The pandemic made an extraordinary vintage exceptional in other ways too. The picking teams had to be socially distanced, for example, and there was none of the usual end-of-harvest jollity. On a recent trip to Burgundy to taste the 2019s, Loïc Dugat of Domaine Dugat-Py described to me how, instead of feeding everyone companionably inside, gloved employees issued the pickers with airline-style pre-packaged meals in the vineyard. To celebrate finishing, the team had to make do with an aperitif in the courtyard.
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As Dugat (who now takes his holidays in December) pointed out, vignerons are having to get used to the fact that grapes ripen much faster in the long, hot days of August than they do at the end of September. It is vital, therefore, that they are picked quickly, so he has doubled his picking team from 30 to 60 for just 10 hectares of vines. By contrast, Guillaume d’Angerville of Volnay halved his picking team this year to 20 because of Covid-19 and was delighted to find that productivity was by no means halved. In his father’s time, picking was spread out over a fortnight; now they must do it in just a week.
In the hot, dry summers to which Burgundians are becoming accustomed, the problem of sunburned grapes challenges growers who struggled to ripen them less than a generation ago. On arrival at the cellar, the crop used to be sorted for grapes that had rotted in the rain. These days, those at the sorting table need to pick out all the scorched grapes without an ounce of juice. Mid-afternoon is when the risk of sunburn is highest, exacerbated if there are vestiges of vine treatments on the grapes. (Producers were keen to stress that any treatments would be organic.)
Meanwhile, Lalou Bize-Leroy of Domaine Leroy in Vosne-Romanée was particularly thrilled with the quality of her 2020 grapes and claims that, thanks to her high-trained, exceptionally leafy vines, none of hers were burnt and all of them were superbly healthy. A leading practitioner of lunar-influenced biodynamic viticulture, she describes her 2020 vintage as “great” — even better than 2018 and 2019. Her 2020 alcohol levels are sometimes as high as 15 per cent but the wines are balanced, she assures me. Certainly no one I met in Burgundy complained of low acid levels in 2019 or 2020 — the acid was concentrated, along with the sugar, in the small, sun-dried berries.
Although Bize-Leroy’s unusual methods were initially ridiculed, unsurprisingly more and more growers are starting to copy them for their most valuable vines. It is costly in terms of labour — she keeps a permanent vineyard staff of between 12 and 24 people to cosset her 22 hectares — but it does seem to yield results.
This summer was not just hot but extremely dry — winemakers were stunned by the effect on older vines
This summer was not just hot but extremely dry — so dry that Denis Bachelet of Gevrey-Chambertin seemed in the depths of despair at the number of his older ones that had perished in the drought. It is usually young vines that are most at risk in dry summers because their roots have not had time to pe*****te deeply into the soil but this year both Bachelet and Jean-François Coche of Meursault were stunned by the effects of drought on their older vines as well. Irrigating anything other than baby vines is banned in France. I naively asked Bachelet whether there was a move to ask the authorities for permission to irrigate. “Where would we find the water?” he replied.
The vinifications were finished so early in September that wine producers now find themselves unexpectedly idle — not least because Covid-19 has dramatically shrunk the number of visitors expected during the popular autumn tasting season. Vintners are busy doing maintenance jobs they used to do in the depths of winter.
Presumably the dry summer was at least appreciated by the bevy of builders I saw in the region. Morey-St-Denis has been invaded by those building new cellars for Bernard Arnault at Clos des Lambrays, François Pinault at Clos de Tart and the Seysses family at Domaine Dujac. In Gevrey-Chambertin, the landscape is dominated by the crane for the Rousseaus’ new cellar and the stack of portacabins needed to direct reconstruction of Domaine Rebourseau for yet another prominent French businessman, Martin Bouygues.
Arnault, Pinault and Bouygues all bought into fashionable — but changing — Burgundy in the past six years. I wonder whether their staff did full analyses of the likely effects of climate change before they invested their millions.
The Burgundian wine calendar old and new
Bottling of the previous vintage is usually sometime between December and April.
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Dry, hot summers and earlier harvests have upended the calendars of winemakers in the region
