Climate change alters wine production in Argentina – 11/05/2023 – Environment

In front of an endless row of olive trees, Gabriel Guardia, 50, remembers the image of snow-covered fields. “When I was a boy, it was impossible to plant in some areas,” says the winemaker, who has now swapped the blanket he used at the time for air conditioning at bedtime.

Gabriel grew up in Mendoza, the capital of Argentine wine and olive oil, which, like him, has felt climate change on its face. Located in a desert at the foot of the Andes Mountains, the city has been experiencing a lack of water for so many years that it no longer calls its situation a drought.

“We understand that we are in a condition of water stress, because it has been like this for 12 years,” says Sebastián Melchor, coordinator of the province’s Climate Change Agency. Rising temperatures have reduced the snow that should fall high in the mountains in winter and melt in spring and summer.

The region depends on this melting ice to fill rivers, flood reservoirs, supply the population and irrigate crops, which are also punished by extreme events that are increasingly longer, more intense or more frequent. Therefore, some of the best wineries and olive growers in the world have had to adapt.

They began to advance harvests, plant in increasingly higher areas in search of cooler climates and diversify the types of grapes to preserve the quality of the drinks. They also expanded the drip irrigation system and waterproofed canals in order to prevent water loss — after all, each glass of wine consumes 120 liters of the resource.

“All phenology [o ciclo da planta] has advanced by 15 days, I would say, in the last 30 years. I finished harvesting in May, now it’s over on April 15th”, says Alejandro Vigil, celebrity winemaker at Catena Zapata, voted the best winery in the world in July and full of Brazilians on scheduled visits.

Its imposing headquarters in the shape of a Mayan pyramid is located in Luján de Cuyo, a Mendoza region that is 950 meters above sea level. But the best wines don’t come from there, but from an area 70 km to the south and 1,500 meters high, where the view of the mountain range gets closer and closer. It’s the Uco Valley.

“At the beginning of the 1990s, they told me: there is a crazy person who is going to plant it up there, the grapes won’t ripen. Today there are more than 3,000 hectares cultivated there, 80% of the production”, estimates Vigil, considering that Argentine production it still doesn’t suffer as much as Europe, with hellish summers, forest fires and biblical floods.

“The temperature in this area used to be super extreme, very cold, now it’s not so much,” says winemaker Gonzalo Carrasco at the century-old Rutini, one of the first to plant crops in the area. He says that the change in height also met a recent market demand for fresher and more acidic wines, not as strong.

With the reduction of snow, the region, however, is reaching its limit. The winery has had to deepen its three wells in recent years in search of water. To do this, it is necessary to undergo strict control by the provincial government, which is also the one who grants and charges the “irrigation right” to producers according to the size of the plantations.

Gabriel, manager of the Laur olive farm at the beginning of this text, takes his cell phone out of his pocket and shows the message he receives weekly on WhatsApp. “Shift proof: Monday at 10:30 am until Thursday at 7:30 am”. As it is Tuesday, the water is running through the open ditches that run along the street, along the sidewalk, until it enters the olive trees.

Mendoza has a long system of canals that spread throughout the city, pre-Hispanic technique. Whenever the deadline set for each property ends, it is necessary to go to the property entrance and close a manual gate, so that the water continues to flow down the common ditch to the next farm.

Along this path, however, a lot of water is lost, absorbed by the earth, which is why the government and wineries have prioritized waterproofing these canals with concrete. “Another change is drip irrigation, which is much more efficient,” says Sebastián Zuccardi, winemaker at the famous winery that bears his surname.

Previously, surface irrigation was used, that is, the entire soil was covered with water, which infiltrated. Now the new fields have automated hoses that constantly drip onto the vine roots. “This doesn’t necessarily save water, but it uses it more rationally”, recalls Vigil, from Catena Zapata.

Another major challenge has been the more frequent and unseasonal frosts, which can reach minus 7°C. When they can predict these events, most wineries still build huge rows of fires around the vines to prevent the grapes or buds from freezing, which can be very polluting.

The Bodeguer winery found an alternative using the igloo technique. They place a mesh over the plant, made from ballistic vest material, and drip water onto it. “When this water freezes, it forms a layer that preserves the heat of the vines”, explains Milagros Vargas, responsible for tourism, considering that the system is very expensive.

“We are returning to our ancestors”, says Veronica Riccitelli, partner of the eponymous brand, younger and artisanal, which has also been looking for adaptations. “Here we stop seeing the winery as a monoculture and start seeing it as biodiversity, planting other things together and discovering which grapes do best in each place. If we don’t understand nature as a whole, things will get complicated.”

In recent months, with the onset of the El Niño phenomenon, nature has given Mendoza a respite, increasing the amount of snow in the mountain ranges a little and guaranteeing water for next summer. But it is still not enough to recover from all the years of water stress, says Melchor, the government official. “We have to work knowing that drought and extreme events will now be a constant.”