(Gerhard Retter / photo: Manfred Klimek)
When it comes to wine, we talk about almost everything. About soils and rocks, about slate, limestone, loess or volcanic rock. About spontaneous fermentation, large wooden barrels, long yeast ageing and that famous minerality that everyone describes but nobody can really explain.
We talk about water surprisingly rarely.
Presumably precisely because water has been taken for granted in Central Europe for generations. Anyone who grew up in Austria or Germany did not learn to regard water as a precious commodity. We turned on the tap, and there it was: cool, clean, reliable. The wine-growing industry, too, long thrived on this certainty. Rain fell. Sometimes more, sometimes less. But usually enough.
That certainty is now disappearing.
Not as spectacularly as it is necessary. No one will wake up one morning to find that, suddenly, grapes are no longer growing. The change is happening much more quietly. It begins in individual plots, with young vines, on shallow soils or steep terraces. It is also evident in those years when, statistically speaking, there has been enough rainfall, yet the vines still suffer from drought stress. For what matters is no longer simply how much water falls in the course of a year. What matters is when it falls, how quickly it seeps away, and whether the soil is even still capable of storing it. In the worst-case scenario – during heavy rainfall – it washes away essential, fertile layers of soil. And as for water bound up in hailstones, there’s no need to even begin to talk about that.
Over the last thirty years, viticulture in Germany and Austria has been among the beneficiaries of global warming. Riesling ripened more reliably, whilst red wines achieved qualities that were previously only possible in exceptional years. Many winegrowers recalled decades when they would hope for sunshine well into autumn and worry whether the grapes would ripen at all. In many places, that concern has disappeared.
It has been replaced by another.
Heat alone does not produce great wine. At some point, the advantage is lost. Early ripening turns into overripening. Dry autumns give way to dry springs. The vine switches to survival mode, photosynthesis slows down, leaves wither, young shoots struggle to survive, and even old vines draw on their reserves.
The romantic notion that great wines arise solely from suffering vines therefore belongs in the realm of wine myths. A vine may be challenged. It must develop roots; it should not grow comfortably. But it must not be allowed to wither away.
This is particularly evident in Austria. Whilst the country as a whole has enormous water reserves, the most important wine-growing regions are, of all places, located where rainfall is often scarce: in the Weinviertel, Burgenland, Carnuntum and the Thermenregion. The national average is of little help to a vine in the Seewinkel.
In Burgenland, the future of European viticulture is already beginning today. Gravelly and sandy soils lose water rapidly. Old vines have an advantage because their roots reach deep into the ground. Young vineyards do not have this luxury. At the same time, viticulture, agriculture, tourism and sensitive natural habitats are all competing for the same resources. Water is therefore not just a matter of good agricultural practice, but also a social issue.
A water licence does not, in itself, provide the answer.
In the Weinviertel, the solution often lies not in the well at all, but in the soil itself. Loess can store enormous quantities of water. But only if rain is allowed to seep in. Compacted soil, erosion and open trackways ensure that precious water disappears within minutes. Planting cover crops, building up humus, using mulch or practising careful soil management are therefore no longer merely ‘green’ accessories. They determine whether a vineyard will still be productive in twenty years’ time.
The situation is quite different in the Wachau, the Kamptal or the Kremstal. There, steep terraces and thin layers of soil produce the distinctive wines for which these regions have become world-famous. At the same time, they are particularly sensitive to prolonged periods of drought. A thunderstorm in Spitz or Dürnstein says very little about how much water is actually available to a south-facing stone terrace.
Even Styria, long regarded as a rainy exception, is now facing new problems. There, water is not generally in short supply; it simply arrives at the wrong time. Torrential rain races down the slopes, carrying soil with it, and disappears just as quickly as it came. A few weeks later, the same vines are suffering from drought.
The wine-growing world is currently rediscovering a truth that earlier generations knew long ago: it is not rain alone that determines a vintage, but the soil that can retain it. And now more than ever, these soils must be protected.