It’s fresh and cool today in Tuscany compared to any day in the last three months during the summer. It rained yesterday, and the vines already look revived after months of dry heat. Last night during a walk with my dogs through the vineyards, the once scorched soil around the vines was moist and wet. Some had turned to puddles in mud.
I had begun to think that the heat was never going to end. I flew back from Catania, Italy, on Friday after a six-day tasting/filming trip to Etna and Noto with my team, and when we drove back from the Florence airport to my office in Il Borro, the thermometer in the car read 42 C – that’s almost 108 Fahrenheit. It was almost 15 degrees Fahrenheit hotter in Tuscany than Sicily!
I was really concerned about what sort of wines would be made in 2012. I kept on thinking about 2003 when many wines were jammy and unbalanced. I generally don’t like most high-octane wines. It’s why my tasting journey through Napa Valley was so disappointing, but that’s another blog.
I found it slightly amusing that many winemakers in Tuscany were talking about how the hot, dry weather was not affecting their vines. “I can see that the hot weather has been bad for many of my neighbor’s vines, but mine have not suffered,” one said in Italian. “We have had a few localized storms that have keep our vines fresh.”
It’s funny. Winemakers in Europe are normally saying that their vines have not been affected by the RAIN, not the SUN. “It rained over in my neighbors area with isolated storms, ours was not affected,” they say.
It really has been upside down this growing season in Italy with the boiling summer.
“If the weather continues to be like this in Tuscany in the coming years, we will have to rethink our vineyards,” said a well-known consulting enologist last week to me. “We will have to learn from hot growing regions in the New World and change everything we do, from canopy management to rootstocks.”
Is it global warming? I don’t think so, but it seems that more hot and dry years are ahead of us in Italy. However, I am not sure my weather crystal ball is better than yours or anybody else’s.
I had 2003 Perlato del Bosco......very unripe and bitter, undrinkable.............I had 2003 Il Sole di Alessandro, excellent Cab. with only 13%alc.