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Italian wine makers and the climate crisis

The sun has finally managed to prevail against the omnipresent fog behind which the vineyards south of Bologna often hide at this time of year. But precisely these friendly light conditions make one thing painfully clear for Flavio Restani: the vines have no leaves, even though it’s only the beginning of November. To the untrained eye, this may not be noticeable, but for local winemakers, it shows that the changes the climate crisis is supposed to bring have already arrived.

“All these vines should still have leaves shortly after the last harvest,” he says. One hypothesis is that the additional stress the plants were exposed to caused them to put all resources into the grapes and discard the extra burden, but no one has been able to concretely solve the mystery so far.

With his still-young winery Koi, Flavio cultivates 10 hectares, while his friend Alessandro Fedrizzi works another 30 hectares here, 20 minutes from Bologna, in one of Italy’s most important wine-growing regions, Emilia Romagna.

Alessandro, the younger of the two, started experimenting with purchased grapes as a teenager and secretly produced Chardonnay with friends and neighbors before, with the help of his parents, he was able to afford his first own vineyard. Flavio studied oenology and later gained experience at several stations in traditional and later purely sustainable wineries before becoming self-employed.

Both, like all the protagonists in this story, rely exclusively on organic viticulture and see only in sustainable agriculture a chance to master the climate crisis in the long run. However, this not only involves large investments for producers; German consumers also notice unusually high price increases at the supermarket. This leads to a contradiction.

Consumers continue to demand low prices for olive oil, tomatoes, Parmesan or Prosecco, but the reality of a worsening climate crisis makes this expectation increasingly unrealistic. The figures speak for themselves. While olive oil cost about 4 euros per liter in 2022, the price rose to over 7 euros in 2023—an increase of more than 75 percent. Similar developments can be seen with tomatoes, whose export prices rose by 40 percent, or with Prosecco, whose price rose by 11 percent. These price increases are not merely random fluctuations but direct consequences of extreme weather events such as floods and hailstorms in Emilia-Romagna and Veneto.

Flavio and Alessandro were also directly affected. “Viticulture has always had to master major changes. But our biggest problem today is the extremes, which are almost impossible to plan for,” says Alessandro, who was named Young Winemaker of the Year by Slow Wine magazine in 2019. Flavio agrees: “It’s a challenge for us because we’ve had major droughts since 2014, while the last two years were suddenly far too wet. So there’s no single strategy we can use. The weather has become unpredictable and volatile.”

The effect of these changes on production volumes can also be seen at the business run by Fabio Bottonelli, who, together with his wife, operates Manaresi Vini 12 kilometers away.

“In 2020, we still produced about 60,000 bottles. In the following years, the amount dropped to 45,000,” he says. In the wine world, irregular quantities can cause problems with distribution partners. “If we can’t meet our agreed quotas, we could lose buyers permanently,” he adds. As for the future of the business, however, he is, by his own admission, fatalistic. They have just expanded and purchased two hectares nearby, so he doesn’t want to think too much about the risks. They have already adapted to the new reality.

“What is often overlooked is the harvest time shifted by rising temperatures. On average, we start up to three or four weeks earlier than before, often in the middle of summer. We are one of the few wineries that still harvest by hand, mainly for quality reasons. But our field workers can’t work safely when temperatures are too high. That’s why we usually have to stop harvesting by 2 p.m. The grapes then go into a cooling container we bought to keep them fresh until the next day. Another climate-related investment.”

High temperatures accelerate the ripening of the grapes, which increases their sugar levels but decreases their acidity. This puts winemakers in a dilemma: harvest early and sacrifice complex aromas, or harvest later and risk overripe, shriveled grapes or wines that are high in alcohol and low in acidity. At the same time, the market has shifted toward wines with lower alcohol content. “For a small winery like ours, it’s increasingly difficult under these conditions to produce wines with low alcohol levels—that favors large industrial companies.”

Alessandro also touches on the investment costs needed to remain competitive. “We have a lake to collect water, but we haven’t completed the installation of a pump yet because it’s expensive—about 100,000 euros.” New land was also recently leased. One of his attempts, besides technical solutions, to prepare for whatever might come involves experiments with so-called PiWi grapes. The term comes from the German for fungus-resistant (pilzwiderstandsfähig). “We are currently conducting tastings to find varieties that might be suitable for us.” Flavio, on the other hand, is not too keen on such variants. “I’m not a full supporter of the PiWi approach, where grape varieties are crossed to achieve greater resistance to some fungi. These are then often planted as monocultures. We’ve seen the problem with downy mildew and with phylloxera: some of the formerly resistant varieties are now susceptible again.”

Here, Flavio brings up a topic that people in viticulture don’t like to talk about openly: the phylloxera catastrophe, which fundamentally changed winegrowing. It was also one of the first signs of how vulnerable many areas of the agricultural industry are to globalization and environmental influences. Phylloxera left something like a trauma in the industry after it arrived by ship from the USA over a hundred years ago and wiped out three-quarters of European wine within 20 years, reports Eleonora Lolli, who worked as a sommelier in starred restaurants for a long time before starting with Alexandro and now helps with marketing, among other things. “About 90%-95% of all vines in Europe are grafted onto American rootstocks, as those are still mostly immune to phylloxera.” She confirms Flavio’s comment: “There are first signs that the pest has adapted and can now also infest American vines.”

How much the climate crisis manifests itself in extremes and in very localized ways becomes clear when you wind your way for an hour through small towns and villages in the Ferrara region, northeast of Bologna. There lies Società Agricola Mariotti, run by Mirco Mariotti since 2009, who, like his colleagues from Bologna, relies exclusively on natural cultivation and processing methods. However, he has different concerns than landslides or hail.

“The biggest climate-related threats here in Ferrara are due to the fact that large parts of the region lie below sea level, similar to the Netherlands. Without a complex water management system and massive pumping stations, wide areas of the region would be floodplains. Since the late 19th century, technical innovations such as steam and electric pumps have preserved these plains as agricultural land. But extreme weather events like we saw last week in Spain pose a major threat to the region.”

Like Flavio, he sees diversification and the revival of old native grape varieties as the best approach to be better prepared for the future. “Just recently, I had a meeting with a group of oenologists who have started a project to find the most suitable grape varieties from all over Italy. Personally, I don’t believe we need new genetically modified grape varieties; we need to identify the best-adapted among the 900 varieties in Italy.”

Very similar efforts in Spain have led to a noteworthy success. There, Miguel A. Torres led a project in the 1980s to rediscover forgotten grape varieties. Over decades, his winery rediscovered 54 ancient grape varieties from Catalonia, six of which were good enough to be marketed commercially. The adaptation of the vines to climate change that he discovered in the process was a “happy side effect.” People in Italy now have similar hopes.

Indeed, in Emilia Romagna, one also finds winemakers who, based on their personal experiences, attach relatively little importance to the changing climate. Paolo Crotti, who runs Podere Giardino società agricola in the lowlands near Reggio Emilia with his siblings, explains: “When it comes to climate change, I’m rather skeptical and convinced that the media often exaggerate what’s really happening. Yes, we’ve had changing conditions in recent years. In 2023, it was rather dry, but the quality of the grapes was excellent. This year, there are very many grapes because of high rainfall with sufficient quality.”

A surprising statement if one looks at the mood in the industry as a whole. Presumably, this is due to the specific composition of the business activities, which is not unusual here in the lowlands.

“Our operation is very broadly diversified, and we haven’t had any major losses from extreme weather so far. Soil erosion, which often occurs as a problem in the hills, is not really a factor for us. This is due to the special composition of the soil here, which we call Cataldi, and which absorbs rain very well.” He also says: “Our operation always had two main pillars: milk production for Parmigiano and natural wines. Some farms also have pigs for Prosciutto.”

Because of this versatility, farmers in the lowlands have a locational advantage over their colleagues in the hills. There, people are increasingly turning to agro-tourism to develop additional sources of income. This is also true for Fabio Bottinelli and his wife, who recently expanded their land with the purchase of a historic villa and the surrounding meadows. “We hope to finish the renovations in 2-3 years so we can then offer guest rooms.”

This adaptability and creativity of the winemakers, which has grown out of the circumstances, is enviable and goes far beyond what most people likely imagine when they think of viticulture. Knowledge of biology, chemistry, and meteorology is familiar to everyone; most have completed studies in oenology. A happy coincidence also plays into their hands, especially in Emilia Romagna: almost all have sparkling wines in their lineup, and many of the winemakers mentioned here even focus predominantly on them.

This market segment, which for a long time many consumers associated only with Prosecco and the sweet Lambrusco ubiquitous in the 1990s, has diversified massively and undergone an evolution. Sparkling natural wines such as Pet Nat, which—unlike conventional methods—are not infused with carbon dioxide from an external source but rather foam through their self-produced carbon dioxide, have taken the U.S. by storm from the East Coast outward and have found more and more enthusiasts in Europe in recent years.

It is one of the few globally growing market segments and fits the current trend of consumers preferring products with a sustainable reputation. In 2022, the sparkling wine industry was estimated at around 36.7 billion dollars. Between 2020, 2021, and 2022, consumption recorded double-digit percentage growth, which continued in 2023. This trend could, at least temporarily, help to compensate for production losses and declining demand for classic varieties.

In 2023, Italy lost its title as the world’s largest wine producer because extreme weather conditions and diseases impaired production. Therefore, most agree that something must be done soon to reduce global emissions. And consumers also have a role to play.

Alessandro says: “Unfortunately, we’re not yet at a point where consumer awareness of the climate crisis leads to prices that enable us to invest more in adaptation. That might be feasible for larger regions with higher industrial production, but for those of us who value sustainable agriculture, it’s not currently possible.”

oliver fiegel

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