No one alive today remembers anything like it”, bitterly regrets the 60-year-old wine grower from Vilafranca del Penedès Narcís Fàbregas. They had never seen their vines, mainly of the Xarelello and Hare’s eye 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. It was clear that he wanted to be a winegrower, but over the years he has found that dedicating himself to the care of his vines was not profitable, in view of the low prices that have been paid for grapes for decades. That is why he recommended his son Oriol, 32 years old, to study. He paid attention to it, he studied Geography, but he soon saw that what he really wanted to do was to dedicate himself to working the family vineyards. Oriol has even promoted a micro-cellar in the center of the Alt Penedès capital. Al Celler Cairons produces just over 5,000 bottles, although they continue to live off the sale in the Vallformosa cellars of grapes from their 31 hectares of vineyards owned in Vilafranca del Penedès, Vilobí del Penedès, Castellví de la Marca and Pacs del Penedès .
Father and son have not come to cry for their dead stocks, but they have spent many nights in white, “with a knot in their stomach”. L’Oriol, who would like his son who has just turned one year old to also continue the vineyard business, has no doubts that if it doesn’t rain “we will be doomed, we will have to abandon him”.
And the fact is that the Penedès wine region is experiencing a borderline situation due to the drought. The anxiety in the sector is maximum. The traditional and historic dryland viticulture is currently under threat and so is the very prominent associated agro-industry. The 30 to 50 liters per square meter of rain that fell on the second weekend of March was just insufficient relief for some stocks that have been thirsty for too long.
Jaume Domènech, head of the vineyard and wine sector of the agricultural union Young Agricultors and Farmers of Catalonia, says that there is a danger that a third of the 32,000 hectares of vineyards in the Upper and Lower Penedès will not sprout this year, and that if they do, they don’t produce. Some are already talking about a catastrophe comparable to the plague of phylloxera, which 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 viticulture in the Penedès have joined together to request the Generalitat to deliver the necessary water urgently to guarantee support irrigation. The Generalitat, which claims that digital irrigation will allow the Catalan wine sector to maintain its production with 40% less water, has announced aid with 20 million euros intended for the vineyard to alleviate the effects of the drought . The agricultural unions hope to have been paid at the end of June.
Climate change has been pronounced in recent years very seriously. The data indicate that average temperatures will continue to rise, that rain will be less and worse, and that episodes of extreme drought will repeat themselves. One of the main problems is not that there is less water, but that it will evaporate more and more quickly due to rising temperatures, according to IRTA researcher emeritus Robert Savé. The experts have concluded that the Penedès vineyard 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 particular concern in the cava sector, where it is estimated that the drought has caused a shortage of 60 million bottles. The DO Cava regulatory council could approve some “exceptional and reversible conjunctural” 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 affecting the quality of the product 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 aged cavas, those with less aging and more volume. Pagés assures that the prices paid for the grapes must increase and that “the regulation of the superior guard cavas, which are sacred, will not be touched.”
Everything seems to indicate that it will be approved to create a safety stock with reserve wines by means of a higher yield percentage of the presses or to increase the yield per hectare in the irrigated vineyards up to 15,000 kilos. Another measure that will be discussed later would be to authorize the white vinification of red Penedès varieties, an exception that would be reviewed annually. Pagés is not prepared to allow wines that are not from the current geographical area of ??DO Cava to enter. Those that are obtained with the new exceptions will not fail to pass a quality control in order to grant them the condition of being suitable as DO Cava.
