This is the third of a four-part series on winemaking and climate change.
TREMP, Spain — High in the foothills of the Pyrenees, outside this small city in northwestern Catalonia, one of the most unusual vineyards in the world can be found on a plateau and descending along stony slopes.
The more than 200-acre Sant Miquel vineyard, around 3,000 feet above sea level, includes the usual suspects: sauvignon blanc and chardonnay, merlot, cabernet franc and so on. It also contains two grapes so rare their names did not exist a few years ago.
They are called pirene and forcada, and they, along with Sant Miquel, are experiments aimed at finding solutions to the problems for wine posed by climate change. Sant Miquel’s owner, Familia Torres, a global wine powerhouse based in Catalonia, has made responding to climate change a company priority.
All over the wine-producing world, climate change is causing a thorough reconsideration of the hard-earned wisdom that in some cases has been passed down through generations.
Where to put vineyards, which grapes to choose, how to farm, how to make the wine and how to sell it — these key issues for wine producers must all be rethought in the wake of climate change.
Already, vineyards are experiencing increased temperatures, earlier budding (which makes spring frosts a greater threat), surprise hailstorms and other natural disasters.
The overall effects of warmer temperatures on grapes are increased sugar content and lower acidity, creating wines that may be unbalanced, high in alcohol or otherwise changed in character.
“We’re facing stronger and more unpredictable events,” said Miguel Torres Maczassek, the general manager of Familia Torres, as we walked in the Sant Miquel vineyard in May. “We are the first generation that doesn’t know what we can plant.” He added, “The problem with wine is the least of the earth’s problems.”
Mr. Torres and his father, Miguel A. Torres, who led the company until 2012, have transformed Familia Torres from simply a top Spanish wine producer into an industry leader in the fight against climate change. This has meant both finding innovative ways to counter the effects of climate change on the wines and diminishing its own carbon emissions.
With six wineries in Spain, along with estates in Chile (Miguel Torres Chile) and in California (Marimar Estate in the Russian River Valley, run by the elder Mr. Torres’s sister, Marimar Torres), this family company has the size to exert the sort of influence impossible for small farmers.
To make the case that climate change poses a dire threat to the wine industry and requires a concerted response, Torres has teamed with Jackson Family Wines, another international wine company based in California, to form International Wineries for Climate Action.
The organization, which has set up a rigorous standard for admission, is set to announce additional members by the end of October, and will lobby others in the wine industry to make reducing carbon emissions a top priority.
Torres can lead by example. From 2008, when it audited its carbon emissions from the vineyard through transporting the finished product to market, the company has reduced its carbon output by almost 28 percent, with a goal of 50 percent by 2030, and 80 percent by 2045. This corresponds to goals for limiting global warming set out by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Torres’s Pacs del Penedès winery near Vilafranca del Penedès, was opened in 2008 and is powered by solar, geothermal energy and biomass, a method of turning organic matter into energy that the company says has reduced its natural gas consumption by 95 percent. Roofs and other surfaces are designed to collect rain, important as drought becomes more of a consideration.
It has a fleet of 125 electric and hybrid vehicles in Spain, including a little solar-powered train that ferries tourists around the grounds of its visitors center. Employees are offered subsidies for using bicycles, electric vehicles and solar power at their homes.
Among other steps, Torres has made carbon footprint part of its criteria for choosing supply and transportation companies. It has installed a biomass boiler fueled by vine cuttings, pomace and other materials that traditionally were burned, emitting plumes of carbon dioxide. It has encouraged local growers to bring their cuttings to Torres rather than burn them. The company estimates this saves 1,300 tons of carbon dioxide a year.
Torres is also experimenting with sequestering the carbon dioxide produced by fermentation and putting it to work. One method is to feed it to microalgae, which would eventually be used to produce energy. So far, Torres is capturing 5 to 10 percent of the fermentation byproduct.
“It’s a start,” Mr. Torres said.
The company has purchased land in Spain and in Chile and planted trees, part of a reforestation effort. And it has bought land at high elevations, that even today are too cold for wine grapes, but may be just right in 25 years.
“This is a very long-term project,” Mr. Torres said. “I’m not sure I’ll see the results myself.”
From a wine lover’s view, perhaps Torres’s most interesting effort to adapt to climate change has been the experimental high-altitude vineyards it has planted, including Sant Miquel; another, even higher vineyard at almost 4,000 feet in the Aragon Pyrenees; as well as a vineyard around 750 meters, or 2,500 feet, high in Priorat.
At these altitudes, viticulture would have been impossible 25 years ago. At the Priorat vineyard, Mas del Rosa, on a hilltop above the town of Porrera, old stone walls hold up abandoned terraces that once held vines.
“Grapes were able to ripen well at 500 to 550 meters, but not at 750, so it was abandoned,” Mr. Torres said.
Torres bought roughly 50 acres there and is slowly planting a portion with carineña and garnacha.
“People in Porrera thought we were crazy,” said Jordi Foraster, the winemaker at the Torres Priorat winery. “It’s a bet for the next generations to keep making wines with the freshness that we want.”
In Sant Miquel, in Aragon and in another vineyard in a hot, dry area in the Costers del Segre region, puckishly called Purgatori, where the summer temperatures regularly climb over 100 degrees, Torres is experimenting with six virtually unknown grapes, including pirene and forcada, that may be better suited for future climate conditions.
The six grapes are the legacy of a search the elder Mr. Torres began 30 years ago, when he had the idea of gathering ancestral Catalan grapes to create a historic collection. As climate change became an issue, the family began to think of these ancestral grapes in another way.
What if some of these grapes had been abandoned by growers precisely because they ripened too late and were too acidic? These characteristics, a problem under the prevailing climate of the last couple of centuries, could be beneficial now and in the future, when a primary goal for growers is to prevent grapes from ripening too fast in the heat and to retain fresh acidity.
Of the 52 old and forgotten Catalan varieties gathered in the search, Mr. Torres and his colleagues identified six of particular interest because of their high acidity and tendency to ripen late. Then began a long process to create vines that were free of viruses and other maladies, to plant them and eventually turn them into wine.
“It takes 15 years to recuperate ancient varieties to see if they are useful, and then years of bureaucracy to make a commercial wine,” Mr. Torres said.
On my visit to the Sant Miquel vineyard in May, we drove through stone canyons and over rivers, threading through small Catalan towns bedecked with the yellow ribbons of the separatist movement. We passed groves of almond trees and a military base dedicated to the training of “sub-officials’’ — “We’re the most guarded vineyard in the world,” Mr. Torres said.
The vineyard offered a beautiful view of the valley below, where an old panel truck rattled along a twisting country road. Trailing high in the sky, floating in lazy circles, was a group of vultures. It turned out that this area was also a vulture sanctuary. The truck was carrying meat that would be left out for the birds.
“We had grave doubts when we started,” Mr. Torres said. “We were looking for freshness. Pirene ripened too early in the Penedès, but it’s just right at this elevation.”
Later on, I tasted some of the wines made from the ancestral grapes. A 2016 Pirene, a red grape from Sant Miquel, was bright and lively, with floral and berry flavors. A 2018 was fresh, floral, balanced and altogether lovely.
Forcada, a white grape, ripens about a month later than chardonnay. A 2015 was dense and richly textured, almost oily yet with firm acidity and plenty of energy, while a 2016 red wine made of the gonfaus grape, grown at the hot Purgatori vineyard, was fragrant with purple fruits and flowers, lightly tannic and fresh.
The grapes were named for the places the vines were recovered. Mr. Torres said the plan was to share them with other Catalan growers.
“These are not our vines,” he said. “These are vines that existed in Catalonia since ancient times.”
Small quantities of these wines have been released to wine-oriented restaurants in Spain, places that can explain to consumers what they are. But Mr. Torres said more of these vines, particularly forcada and moneu, a red grape, are being planted. Eventually, he said, they will be released in greater quantity. Some of the grapes will also be used to blend with more familiar varieties.
With all the urgency Familia Torres feels to fight climate change and inspire others to do so as well, Mr. Torres could not help but see glimmers of brightness ahead.
“Never in the history of viticulture has there been so much change,” Mr. Torres said. “There are going to be new places, places we don’t expect. We’ll see new appellations being born, making new and fantastic wines.”
