The secret strength of old grape vines | David Williams

In the looming clmate crisis, will old grape vines cope better with the drought and extreme heat than younger plants?Taste the Difference Old Vine Garnacha, Calatayud, Spain 2019 (?10, Sainsbury's) Winemakers love old vines for many reasons. They love them for the history and continuity they represent. They love them for the extra depth of flavour and natural balance their grapes seem to deliver (in wines such as Sainsbury's vividly brambly northern Spanish red). They even love them for the way they look: the roughly wrinkled bark of their twisted trunks inspiring a certain anthropomorphic association with the wisdom of elders. Perhaps most importantly and urgently of all however - not least in this unceasingly baking northern hemisphere summer - winemakers love older vines for the way they cope with the increasingly demented weather patterns brought about by the climate crisis. This last idea was the subject of a fascinating article on wine lovers' website jancisrobinson.com earlier this month, in which the wine writer Tamlyn Currin gathered a wealth of first-person testimony from winemakers all over the world who have discovered that their older vines (35 years and older) cope far better with extreme heat and drought (as well as frost, flooding and disease pressure) than younger plants.Bellingham The Bernard Series Old Vine Chenin Blanc, Stellenbosch, South Africa 2020 (?11, Tesco) Why do old vines seem so much more resilient? Currin's piece posits a handful of hypotheses, starting with the deeper roots that old vines have when compared to their younger peers - the consequence of a life without irrigation in which the vines have been forced to burrow deep down to find their water supply from the moment they were planted. Other possibilities, which Currin concedes require greater study, take in genetics, the complex interactions with fungus in old vines' root systems, their structure and the possibility that, in Currin's words, "like trees, vines 'learn' with time and age, and can even 'support' each other?. Whatever the reason, there is a gathering consensus in the wine world that old vines will have an essential role to play in wine production as the climate crisis worsens - a notion that makes vines such as the 40-year-olds used to make Bellingham's magnificently rich, complex, toasty, tropically fruited Cape Chenin seem all the more valuable. Continue reading...