Bordeaux adopts grapes from other regions
Originally published
This article first appeared in the Times of Malta on 23 August 2019.
Read the original article in the Times of Malta
A Second Pour
Looking back at articles I wrote for the Times of Malta, I sometimes find my views unchanged. At other times, years of teaching, tasting, judging wines and meeting people across the wine world have added new perspectives. Revisiting these articles offers an opportunity to reflect on what experience has reinforced and what it has changed.
When I wrote about Bordeaux in 2019, the region had just approved the introduction of new grape varieties to help prepare for a changing climate. It was a remarkable decision. One of the world’s most traditional wine regions had acknowledged that standing still was no longer an option.
Seven years later, the conversation has moved on. The debate is no longer about new grape varieties, but about irrigation.
For generations, irrigation was regarded as incompatible with the idea of terroir. Great wines, we were told, came from vines that had to fend for themselves.
There is some truth in that. But terroir is not about roasted grapes. There is also a point at which water stress stops expressing a vineyard and simply begins to damage it.
Terroir cannot depend on yesterday’s climate while letting vines shrivel in today’s.
In Malta, irrigation has never carried the same philosophical baggage. Our summers make it a practical necessity rather than a moral dilemma. Used with restraint, it supports the vine rather than replacing nature.
Perhaps it is time to question another long-held assumption. Where is the evidence that skilful irrigation destroys terroir-based flavours in wine?
The history of wine is also the history of adaptation. Rootstocks, clonal selection, canopy management and, more recently, new grape varieties were all once controversial. Ironically, many of yesterday’s innovations become today’s heritage—and tomorrow’s orthodoxy.
Tradition deserves respect. But it should never become an excuse for refusing to adapt. After all, climate doesn’t negotiate with convention.
The Original Article
The article below is reproduced exactly as it appeared in the Times of Malta on 23 August 2019.
Wine revolution in Bordeaux
The current wine revolution in Bordeaux is not a history lesson. But it reminds anyone in Malta concerned about the future of our grapes and wines, that history, as long as it continues to happen, gives us always another chance to do what’s right.
Before we come to the state of wine in Bordeaux, let’s reminisce.
At the time of the renaissance in Maltese vineyards in the 1990s, Delicata kept on advocating for the preservation of our two native varieties. The winery’s thinking was – and still is – that Malta’s Girgentina and Ġellewża grape varieties ought to be used for winemaking alongside the international varieties that got planted here at the time.
For a while, the support for our own native Girgentina and Ġellewża grapes was scorned by cynics who pleaded only noble grape varieties, preferably with Bordeaux ancestry like Merlot and Cabernet, should be permitted for making quality wines of Malta.
Slowly but surely, even the toughest critics came round, though. They, too, now speak out in favour of the preservation of Girgentina and Ġellewża, which can only be applauded.
Times are a changing, you see.
Firstly, the number of wine drinkers prepared to pay good money for well-made wines from interesting and rare native grape varieties with a unique story to tell is still steadily on the increase.
And, of course, there’re also the possible consequences of climate change on viticulture to consider. Certain grape varieties are better suited to warm climes than others. Girgentina and Ġellewża might just have in their genes a greater potential to cope with heat than others.
After all, they’ve had centuries of adaptation to the hot and dry local conditions, are naturally unhurried and late ripening, and have a leafy canopy providing ample shade to mitigate the impact of climate warming.
Now then, how telling is it that precisely Bordeaux, the wine region that’s world famous thanks to its noble varieties, has come to the shocking realisation that it must adapt by adopting native grapes and crossings from elsewhere?
Already, seven grape varieties completely alien to Bordeaux passed a first vote and are expected to be allowed in blends for Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur appellation wines as part of efforts to fight global warming.
The adopted grapes with the ability to cope with warmer conditions include the red-skinned Marselan, with its roots firmly in the Languedoc and Provence, Touriga Nacional, originally native to Northern Portugal, plus the now nearly extinct Castets and Arinarnoa, which is a crossing of the Pyrenean grape variety Tannat with Cabernet Sauvignon.
For white wines, the adopted cultivars are the Portuguese Alvarinho, Petit Manseng from the Jurançon and Pacherenc du Vic-Bilh regions, and Liliorila, which was born in the 1950s following a crossing of Baroque and Chardonnay.
Malta take note
A French revolution in wine is starting and the Maltese powers that be would do well to sit up and take note. Assistance of any kind to the survival of Girgentina and Ġellewża varieties for winemaking purposes seems warranted more than ever.
All over Europe, traditional native varieties are being rediscovered and favoured for reasons of a renewed demand for all things genuine and, as is the case in Bordeaux, future sustainability.
There’s never been a better time than now to act and actually support Malta’s unique, autochthonous vines and wines.
About the Author
Georges Meekers is the founder of Wine Campus, author of the award-winning Wines of Malta, an international wine judge, wine educator and member of the Circle of Wine Writers. He has written about wine for the Times of Malta for many years.
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