Major European winemakers have warned that climate change could potentially dry and too hot in traditional growing regions, and that they may have to abandon the lands of Catalonia’s ancestors within 30 years.
Familia Torres has already installed irrigation in vineyards in Spain and California, and has planted grapes on the land at higher altitudes in order to adapt to more extreme situations.
“Irrigation is the future. We are not dependent on the weather,” said 83-year-old president Miguel Torres. “I don’t know how long we can stay here. Maybe 20 or 30 years, I don’t know. Climate change is changing everything.”
The family-run business has been making wine in Catalonia since 1870, but Torres said:
“Tourists are very important to Catalonia and we are very close to Barcelona. The area may be for tourist activities, but it’s a viniculture. I don’t think I’ll come here.”
The group, which fights 11% of its profits each year and invests 11% of its profits to adapt and combat the climate crisis, instead “need to move more westwards because it needs cooler and water.”
Familia Torres has over 1,000 hectares of vineyards in Catalonia, primarily in the Penedes region, and sites in other regions of Spain, Chile and California.
Currently, expanding to a higher altitude, Catalan Pre-Pyrenees, produces grapes in the 950-meter tremp, and obtains a plot of Benabare from the Aragon Pyrenees, 1,100-meter. They also use a variety of techniques to reduce or reuse water in their growth and treatment practices.
It comes after the family recorded a 1C increase in average temperatures in the Pendede region over the past 40 years. This change means that harvesting takes place 10 days earlier than it was decades ago, but families employ a variety of techniques to slow the aging of the grapes to protect the quality suitable for winemaking.
Torres’ comments come in a difficult few years for European vineyards. He said it had dropped by 50% in the “worst year I’ve ever seen,” part of the winemaker’s region in 2023, but last year it’s down on historic average amid extreme heat and drought.
This year has so far been better amid the wider use of irrigation in winter and spring rains, but Torres said he is worried that the damper condition will pose a mold threat.
“In the future, if we want to continue the harvest more, we have to stop warming,” he said. “Warming is killing trade.”
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The additional costs of irrigation have benefited in highly competitive markets, along with the additional obligations imposed on wine in the UK in recent years, as well as potential threats from the US, as well as the new packaging taxes that are particularly high on glass bottles and jars.
Torres said exports to the UK have fallen by as much as 10%, and profits have fallen further by absorbing some of the increased costs.
“We don’t make any profit from exports to the UK. That’s the reality. Hundreds of thousands of British people come to Spain on vacation and know the brand. We have to keep it alive in the UK.”
He said Torres is considering bottling some of the cheapest wines in the UK to cut costs.
“We should already import that way in the UK by at least next year,” Torres said. “UK consumers pay more for wine, and there’s no other possibility (to import). There’s very little production in the UK.”