Stéphane Place, Sandrine Prioul and Arthur Pereira, edited by Gauthier Delomez 11:31 a.m., April 28, 2022, modified at 11:31 a.m., April 28, 2022
With climate change, French winegrowers are obliged to adapt in order to continue producing in the years to come.
Some historic terroirs are suffering from this, while new regions are getting involved.
Europe 1 went to meet winegrowers settled in Bordeaux, in the Channel and in England.
REPORT
French viticulture put to the test by climate change.
The International Organization of Vine and Wine confirmed on Wednesday the drop in world wine production in 2021 for the third consecutive year.
In France, yields have thus fallen by 19% compared to those of 2020, due to extreme climatic phenomena such as frosts and intense rains.
Europe 1 met French winegrowers from Bordeaux, the Channel and also settled in England to understand how these professionals are adapting to global warming.
>> Find Europe Matin in replay and podcast here
First in the Bordeaux region, the winegrowers who work on a 25-hectare estate in Lussac, in Gironde, have opted for natural solutions, less expensive than cutting-edge technologies, to protect their farms.
Here, no antifreeze towers which can cost up to 50,000 euros, no candles to fight against the sudden drop in temperatures.
In the Bordeaux region, natural solutions to keep the ground cool
Olivier Chaigneau, for example, favors late pruning of the vines to preserve the buds as much as possible from the devastating cold snaps of recent springs.
"We used to finish pruning at the end of January, and we traditionally had vines which began to start in April", he explains to Europe 1. The working method then changed.
"For a few years, the vines have been starting at the end of March. If we prune them in March, they will start later. The idea is to come and prune the vines most sensitive to frost during this period", indicates the winegrower.
At the foot of the vines, we plant seedlings, legumes, to obtain a very useful plant cover in the face of global warming, even the heat wave, but we have to find the right balance.
"Keep cool on the ground to fight against the effects of heat waves", details Olivier Chaigneau.
"In fact, the grass cover creates insulation. We are on clay soils which heat up quite quickly and at night, the earth restores this heat", continues the winemaker.
In the Bordeaux vineyards, more and more hedges are appearing to block the air currents that promote frost.
>> READ ALSO
- Do you know Belgian wine?
We make you discover this unexpected vineyard
The bet of wine in Normandy, the land of cider
Despite these changes in working methods, the question of the survival of wine production in the region is raised.
The mildness of the Bordeaux climate could move as far as Normandy.
Making wine in the land of cider is the gamble taken by a winegrower, a former Parisian restaurateur.
For two years, he has cultivated grape varieties from the south of the Loire.
In Saint-Jean-de-la-Haize, in the middle of the bay of Mont-Saint-Michel, Sébastien Arnaud has 9,500 vines (Chenin, Chardonnay) almost two years old.
"Two years ago, people looked at me a bit out of the corner of their eye, taking me for a Parisian crank with a southern accent that came from the vine. Now, it's starting to become more democratic", he specifies to the micro d'Europe 1. Land of granite and shale, as many interesting hillsides for around forty Norman new winegrowers, he says.
"We realized that over the last ten years, we had gained a degree," reports Sébastien Arnaud.
>> READ ALSO
- Olivier Poels' rant against natural wine
The Norman winegrower talks about his way of working.
"The chance we have is that when we start, we adapt our plant material to our soils and our new weather conditions, while the others have problems, because they have vines that are too early because it It's too hot. This opens the field to new terroirs like ours", underlines the Norman winemaker.
His goal is to release 10,000 to 12,000 bottles of a white wine that he promises is chiseled, fine and long in the mouth.
England's coveted soil quality and climate
Other winegrowers are trying the adventure even further north, in England.
This is the case of the Taittinger champagne house, which set up there in 2017. It cultivates 49 hectares of pinot noir and chardonnay in a territory that is now coveted, whereas it was unexploitable in the last century.
"This idea of going to set up in England is linked both to the quality of the soil, and we can indeed say that global warming allows us to have mild temperatures", specifies to Europe 1 VItalie Taittinger, the president of this big house.
This climate, "fairly similar to that of Champagne a good ten years ago", and the quality of the soil also allow the house "to exploit the vineyard more serenely".
“We have been harvesting for three years,” says VItalie Taittinger, “and now we have started bottling. This means that we will be able to put our wines on the market probably from 2024-2025.”
On the strength of this first experience, the house is also looking for "other terroirs, including in Kent", with "a certain requirement also in terms of terroir".
"We are on a plan that is really part of the long term", concludes the president of the champagne house.
Global warming which therefore makes people happy further north, and which forces historical producers, especially in Bordeaux, to review their working methods to continue to produce quality bottles.