International Cool Climate Wine Symposium: Cool viticulture the hot topic in Brighton

By Andrew Catchpole

Published: 27 May, 2016

As the 9^th International Cool Climate Wine Symposium opened its doors in Brighton yesterday, a 30-country strong delegation of 600 producers, exhibitors, marketers and communicators descended on the seaside town for a three day event dedicated to examining all aspects of making and marketing fine wine from cool climates

The first session went off with bang, with keynote speaker Jancis Robinson MW OBE using her platform to respond to George Eustice MP, Minister of State for DEFRA's opening remarks, while also outlining how far the English sparkling wine industry has come on in recent years.

"Plumpton College's Wine Skills programme has had to be abandoned because DEFRA has rescinded its funding," said Robinson, adding "For some mysterious reason, DEFRA has failed to renew its membership of the OIV (International Organisation of Vine and Wine), which means that Plumpton can't participate in international research projects, leaving it marginalised from the world wine academy."

The points were well received, given that English wine producers were out in force supporting the event, following a successful pitch in Hobart four years ago, led by Chris Foss of Plumpton to bring this quadrennial Symposium to the UK for the first time.

The three-day programme itself is far reaching, covering aspects as diverse as myriad aspects of managing cool climate viticulture, climate change, developing strong regional identities, educating the wine trade, engaging though new technologies and social media, plus marketing cool climate wines.

In one of the first session, 'Emerging cool climate regions', Professor Gregory Jones of South Oregon University highlighted the benefits and challenges of cooler climate viticulture, graphically illustrating how global climate change is fast evolving the possibilities for viticulture to spread in to previously uncharted territory.

Highlighting how vine growing is pushing towards the poles, from southern Argentina and Chile, to Gothenburg in Sweden and the Okanagan Valley in Canada, Jones gave a simple example of how the planet is warming.

Jones outlined, with striking graphic representation of the evidence, how the mean temperature during the northern hemisphere's key growing season of April to October is increasing. Oxford is now as consistently warm as Geisenheim used to be during the 1980s, and Gothenburg in turn is as warm as Oxford was in the 1980s. Many delegates were also surprised to discover that it rains more in Dijon than Oxford.

While many factors, including frost potential, spread of rainfall, and so on, complicate the picture, the possibilities this opens up, as the fringe for viticulture moves ever further north (and south), is clearly evidenced in England and Wales. Here climate change appears to be delivering warmer, drier autumns, benefitting the ripening of grapes, to the benefit of the industry.

In a later first day session, entitled 'Emerging markets and new consumers', Richard Halstead of Wine Intelligence outlined the importance of emerging and relatively recently established cooler climate regions to the trade, based on research carried out by the company across many global markets.

"Emerging markets should mean a great deal to the trade, because that is where new business will come from, and people in emerging markets are the most interested in new wines," said Halstead."

Music, one presumes, to the ears of the many English sparkling wine producers exhibiting at the Symposium as they currently ramp up their collective and individual export drives.

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