(Manfred Klimek / Editorial team / animated pic: runwayml)
There is hardly any other profession that experiences climate change more directly than winegrowers. They see the effects on vegetation not in statistics, but right there in the vineyard. Budbreak occurs earlier than it did just a few decades ago. The harvest is increasingly starting as early as August. Heatwaves are altering acidity levels, water balance and aromatics. Hail, heavy rain and dry spells are occurring more frequently. Those who produce wine have been working for years in an open-air laboratory whose conditions are visibly changing. And rapidly so.
This makes one observation all the more astonishing – one I have come across more frequently in recent months, but particularly during the last five days of heat. There are winegrowers who deny climate change. Admittedly, not many. Not even two dozen on social media forums. But there are enough of them, even in Germany, that we should take note. Because they are taking action.
Needless to say, they’re entitled to do so. In our countries – strange as it may seem to have to emphasise this – there is freedom of expression. And that also means that the majority must (and should) put up with the utter nonsense spouted by a minority who see themselves as the majority (which is what all conspiracy theorists do), even though they are not. It is this claim to speak for the majority that is particularly annoying. And infuriating. Never mind!
Most of these winegrowers attribute the current climate to natural fluctuations. Others dismiss the current warming as mere media hype. Still others – unfortunately from the natural wine scene – have long been operating 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 glance, this seems like edgy nonsense from Absurdistan. On closer inspection, however, it is above all a human issue. Climate change is not an abstract political debate. For winegrowers, it means, first and foremost, economic uncertainty. Experiences that have worked for decades are losing their reliability. Grape varieties are reaching their limits. Water is becoming an issue. Insurance is getting more expensive. Yields are fluctuating more wildly. Those who have built their entire professional lives on experience suddenly find that experience alone is no longer enough.
That is precisely why some people seek other explanations. Not out of malice. Not even necessarily out of ideology. But because conspiracy theories offer something that reality often fails to provide: clarity. Suddenly, there are people to blame. Suddenly, there is a plan. Suddenly, a complex development becomes a simple story.
The problem arises when this narrative clashes with one’s own work. For the very same winegrowers who occasionally downplay climate change on social media are, as I have checked, simultaneously investing in irrigation, planting more heat-resistant rootstock, adjusting their leaf 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 striking in the political sphere. We find conservative or right-wing winemakers who do indeed recognise the problem – or problems – very clearly – and consequently see the climate ideology of a very right-wing party, which they would gladly vote for, as an obstacle to casting their vote – and there are quite a few of them. Their day-to-day work thus often contradicts the political narratives to which they feel connected. This is neither about the left nor the right. Nor is it about being green or conservative. It is about the ability to acknowledge one’s own reality. And to act. There is nothing political about these actions to combat the effects of climate change!
Viticulture has always been successful when it has embraced change. Phylloxera, fungal diseases, new cellar techniques, different grape varieties or organic viticulture were almost always viewed with scepticism at first. In the end, it was not ideology that prevailed, but practical experience. The situation will be similar with climate change. We can argue about causes, the pace of change or appropriate measures. The vineyard itself isn’t interested in any of that. It reacts solely to water, sunshine and the work of the winegrowers.