(Manfred Klimek / Editorial team / animated pic: runwayml)
There is hardly a professional group that experiences climate change more directly than winemakers. They see vegetation not in statistics, but in the vineyard. Budburst occurs earlier than it did just a few decades ago. Harvest begins more and more often as early as August. Heatwaves alter acidity levels, water balance and aromatic character. Hail, heavy rain and periods of drought are occurring more frequently. Anyone who produces wine has been working for years in an open-air laboratory whose conditions are visibly changing. And quickly.
All the more astonishing, then, is an observation I have encountered more frequently in recent months, but especially during the last five hot days. There are winemakers who deny climate change. Of course, not many. Not even two dozen in social media forums. But still enough, including in Germany, that we should take notice of them. Because they are active.
Naturally, they are entitled to do so. In our countries, freedom of opinion prevails—strange that this needs emphasising. And that also means that the majority has to (and should) put up with the absolute bullshit of a minority that sees itself as the majority (as all conspiracy cranks do), even though it is not. It is this claim to speak for a majority that is particularly annoying. And infuriating. Whatever!
Most of these winemakers explain it as a natural climate fluctuation. Others explain the current warming as mere exaggeration by the media. Still others, unfortunately from the natural wine scene, have long since been moving in a milieu where terms such as geoengineering, weather manipulation or secret interventions in the climate are used as a matter of course.
At first, this seems edgy in a land of absurdity. On closer inspection, it is above all human. Climate change is not an abstract political debate. For winemakers, it initially means economic uncertainty. Experiences that worked for decades are losing their reliability. Grape varieties are reaching their limits. Water is becoming an issue. Insurance is becoming more expensive. Yields are fluctuating more sharply. Anyone who has built their entire professional life on experience suddenly finds that experience alone is no longer enough.
That is precisely why some look for other explanations. Not out of malice. Not even necessarily out of ideology. But because conspiracy narratives offer something that reality often does not: certainty. Suddenly there are people responsible. Suddenly there is a plan. Suddenly a complex development becomes a simple story.
The problem begins where this story collides with their own work. For the same winemakers who occasionally play down climate change on social networks are, I have checked, simultaneously investing in irrigation, planting more heat-resistant rootstocks, changing their canopy management or experimenting with new grape varieties. So they have long been responding to precisely those changes whose existence they publicly question.
This observation becomes even more remarkable in the political sphere. We find winemakers with conservative or right-wing leanings who do in fact correctly recognise the promblem, the problems—and consequently recognise the climate ideology of a very right-wing party they would like to vote for as an obstacle to giving it their vote—and there are quite a few of them. Their daily work therefore often contradicts the political narratives to which they feel connected. This is neither about left nor right. Neither about green nor conservative. It is about the ability to acknowledge one’s own reality. And to act. There is nothing political about taking action against the effects of climate change!
Viticulture was always successful when it accepted change. Phylloxera, fungal diseases, new cellar technology, different grape varieties or organic viticulture were initially viewed with scepticism almost every time. In the end, it was not ideology that prevailed, but practice. Climate change will be similar. We can argue about causes, speed or appropriate measures. The vineyard itself is not interested. It reacts exclusively to water, sun and the work of the winemakers.