Climate vs. wine-growers
July 6, 2015
The 38th annual World Congress of Vine and Wine opened on Monday in the western German city of Mainz, a city situated just east of southwestern Germany's premier wine-growing regions. Among the key topics for some 450 experts attending the Congress, which runs until Friday - how wine growers can deal with the impacts of climate change.
The Congress was opened by Peter Bleser, a deputy minister in Germany's ministry of agriculture. "We're focusing on quality, originality and regionality rather than quantity," Bleser said in relation to the country's wine industry.
The Congress isn't just a talking shop for wine technicians. A number of technical recommendations for new regulations will be voted on by delegates to the meeting - and the votes will be binding. Regulations that are approved will become part of European Union law.
The outgoing president of the "International Organisation for Vine and Wine" (OIV for short, thanks to its French acronym), is Claudia Inès Quini, an Argentine engineer. She told the Congress that climate change will confront oenology - the science of wine growing - with signficant challenges. A changing climate will present wine-growers with more intense sunshine, warmer and drier soils, and increased sugar content in grapes.
More sugar leads to a higher alcohol content as the sugar is metabolized by yeast during the process which turns grape juice into wine. That's one reason why one of the technical challenges to be discussed at the Congress will be how to reduce the alcohol content of wine - without degrading its flavor or quality.
Issues facing wine growers
Among the other issues addressed by 140 scheduled technical presentations will be how to develop and enforce standards in wine-making and labelling. Some controversial issues will be debated as well - including the practice of adding flavorings to wine, which has so far been banned in Europe, and the future of genetic engineering in the wine grower's art.
The state of Rhineland-Palatinate encompasses some of Germany's best wine-growing terrain, and a lot of jobs depend on the industry. That's why the state has a specialized Ministry of Winegrowing. The current Minister, Ulrike Höfken, is a member of the Green party, which is the junior partner in the coalition government composed of the Social Democratic and Green parties.
At the opening of the Congress, Höfken spoke out against genetic engineering of vines, and talked up the successes of certified organic methods for combatting pests that attack vines and grapes.
Claudia Inès Quini will be succeeded in the presidency of the OIV by German oenologist Monika Christmann, director of the Institute for Oenology at Geisenheim Polytechnic, a technical university focused mostly on agricultural and biological sciences. Geisenheim is 30 kilometers downstream of Mainz on the Rhine river, and surrounded by vineyards.
nz/ng (dpa, OIV, German Ministry of Agriculture)