“No one alive today remembers anything like it,” bitterly laments the 60-year-old viticulturist from Vilafranca del Penedès Narcís Fàbregas. They had never seen his vines, mainly of the Xarel·lo and Tempranillo varieties, die of thirst.
His grandfather Joan and his father Anton were already winegrowers. He did not want to dedicate himself to his father’s bread oven. He was clear that he wanted to be a winegrower, but over the years he has verified that dedicating himself to the care of his vines was not profitable given the low prices that have been paid for grapes for decades. For this reason, he recommended his 32-year-old son Oriol study. He listened to him, studied Geography, but soon saw that what he really wanted to do was dedicate himself to working the family vineyards. Oriol has even promoted a micro-winery in the center of the capital of Alt Penedès. At Celler Cairons they make just over 5,000 bottles, although they continue to make a living by selling grapes from their 31 hectares of owned vineyards in Vilafranca del Penedès, Vilobí del Penedès, Castellví de la Marc and Pacs del Penedès to the Vallformosa cellars.
Father and son have not cried for their deceased vines, but they have spent many sleepless nights, “with a knot in their stomach.” Oriol, who would like his son who has just turned one year old to also continue with the vineyards, has no doubt that if it does not rain “we will be sentenced, we will have to abandon.”
And the wine-growing Penedès is experiencing an extreme situation due to the drought. The anguish in the sector is maximum. The traditional and historical dryland viticulture is currently threatened and so is the very prominent associated agroindustry. The between 30 and 50 liters per square meter of rain that fell on the second weekend in March have been insufficient relief for vines that have been thirsty for too long.
Jaume Domènech, sectoral head of vineyard and wine of the agricultural union Joves Agricultors i Ramaders de Catalunya, affirms that there is a danger that a third of the 32,000 hectares of vineyards in the Alt and Baix Penedès will not sprout this year, and that if They do it, they don’t produce production. There are those who are already talking about a catastrophe comparable to the phylloxera plague that devastated the vineyards at the end of the 19th century. Some producers lost up to 70% of their production last year alone.
A group of winegrowers, winemakers and other people linked to the world of winegrowing in the Penedès have come together to request that the Generalitat send the necessary water urgently to guarantee support irrigation. The Generalitat, which affirms that digital irrigation will allow the Catalan wine sector to maintain its production with 40% less water, has announced aid of 20 million euros for the vineyard to alleviate the effects of the drought. The agricultural unions hope that it will have been paid by the end of next June.
Climate change has been pronounced very severely in recent years. The data indicate that average temperatures will continue to rise, that it will rain less and worse, and that episodes of extreme drought will be repeated. One of the main problems is not that there is less water, but that it will evaporate more and more quickly due to increasing temperatures, according to IRTA researcher emeritus Robert Savé. Experts have concluded that Penedès vineyards will need between one and two times more water in 2030, and up to four times more by the end of the century.
There is special concern in the cava sector, where it is estimated that the drought has caused 60 million bottles to be missing. The DO Cava regulatory council could approve “exceptional and temporary reversible” measures that would be applied over three years to partially reverse the problem. The president of the regulatory council, Javier Pagés, states that “we want to help the sector without the quality of the product suffering and thus prevent the market from being empty, since there is less supply than demand.”
The measures would only be adopted for the category of Guarda cavas, those with the least aging and greatest volume. Pagés assures that the prices paid for grapes must be increased and that “the regulation of Guarda Superior cavas, which are sacred, will not be touched.”
Everything seems to indicate that it will be approved to create a security deposit with reserve wines through a higher percentage of yield from the presses or to increase the yield per hectare in irrigated vineyards up to 15,000 kilos. Another measure that will be discussed later would be to authorize the white winemaking of red Penedès varieties, an exception that would be reviewed annually. Pagés is not willing to allow wines that are not from the current geographical scope of the DO Cava to enter. Those obtained with the new exceptions will not fail to pass a qualitative control to grant them the status of suitable as DO Cava.
