By Anders Lorenzen
Yesterday, the Guardian reported how climate change has begun to threaten the wine industry, citing a recent study which showing that unpredictable weather and temperatures will likely cause a dramatic decline in wine production in Europe, Australia and the US state of California. Chile and South Africa too will see moderate losses. This change would cause a geographical reshaping of where wine can be grown, with some previously prosperous areas becoming unsuitable for grape production and others becoming newly suitable.
These particular concerns are however not new for wine producers, at least not if you ask the charismatic Spanish producer of Torres Wines, Miguel Torres. At the London Observer Ted X talk in March last year, he talked in detail what he is doing to reduce the impact of climate change on his vineyards and business.
Torres was highly inspired to act on climate change after watching Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth. After researching the issue in depth, he began the task of redesigning and adapting the Torres wineries, in addition to setting up an environmental arm of his business, Torres Earth, which proactively invests in activities ranging from biodiversity projects and renewables to CO2 reduction initiatives.
Torres also feels it’s crucial to get as many other wineries signed onto this mission as possible, and by last year he had recruited an impressive 140 Spanish wineries to the coalition Wineries for Climate Protection. He is extremely keen for the coalition to go global and for it to start to include broader wine support industries. Torres poignantly concluded this talk the following remark:
‘’In the future I would like to see wine not only as a nice drink, but also an industry that takes care of it’s environment.’
Subedited by Kirstie Wielandt
