Top winemaker ‘may have to leave its Spanish vineyards due to climate crisis’ | Food & drink industry

The pioneering European wine maker warned that he may have to abandon the lands of his ancestors in Catalonia for 30 years because climate change may make the growing, growing and very hot traditional areas.

Familia Torres is already installing irrigation on chrome farms in Spain California and chrome cultivated on the ground at higher altitudes as it tries to adapt to the most extreme conditions.

“Irrigation is the future. We do not rely on the weather,” said Miguel Torres, his 83 -year -old president. “I don’t know how long we can stay here in making good wine, maybe 20 or 30 years, I don’t know. Climate change changes all conditions.”

Family business has been working on wine in Catalonia since 1870, but Torres said: “Within 30 to 50 years, we may have to stop cultivating pink here.

“Tourists are very important for Catalonia and we are very close to Barcelona. This region can be active for tourists, but Phoenix cultivation, I don’t think it will be here.”

The group, which invests 11 % of its profits every year to combat the climate crisis and adapt to it, may have to transfer at least some vineyard farms “more to the West because it is cooler and we have to have water.”

Familia Torres has more than 1000 hectares of chrome farms in Catalonia, especially in the Beneed region, as well as sites in other parts of Spain, Chile and California.

It now expands to higher altitudes, as it results in a timer, in the Cataloni before the fibers, at a height of 950 meters, and gets pieces in Benapar, in the Brangon Mountains, at an altitude of 1100 meters, where the atmosphere is still very cold to provide chrome. It also uses a variety of technologies to reduce or reuse water in its growing and processing practices.

This came after the family recorded a 1c temperature in the average temperature in the Benedes region over the past forty years. The change causes the harvest 10 days ago from what it was a few decades ago, while the family employs a variety of techniques to slow grape ripening to protect the correct characteristics of making wine.

Torres’s comments come after a few difficult years for European chrome chrome. He said that production decreased by up to 50 % in some areas of the wine maker in 2023 – “the worst year I have ever seen” – and I am still in historical average last year amid intense heat and drought.

This year has so far been better – amid rain in winter and spring and the use of irrigation on a wider scale – but Torres said he was concerned that the conditions of the inhibitors bring the threat of mold.

“In the future, if we want to have more continuity in harvest, we have to stop the warming,” he said. “Warming kills trade.”

The additional costs of irrigation are eating in profits in a high competitive market with potential threats from the US import tariffs in addition to that Additional duties imposed on wine In the UK in recent years, as well as a new packaging tax, especially for bottles and tractor.

Torres said that exports to the United Kingdom decreased by up to 10 % and the accommodation of some cost increases led to the increase in profits.

“We do not have a profit in exports to the UK, and this is the reality. Hundreds of thousands of English come to Spain on vacation and the brand’s knowledge. We have to keep it alive in the UK.”

He said that Torres was considering mobilizing some of the cheapest types of wine in the UK to reduce the cost – because it is less expensive to import in large quantities in carriers.

“At least next year, we must already import this way in the United Kingdom,” Torres said. “British consumers pay more for wine and there is no other possibility [to importing]. UK production is very few. “