Photography (top) by Paul White; (bottom) courtesy pf Bertrand Chatelet


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canopy grows wild to promote maximum shade and lengthen the ripening. Rows have been reoriented with uneven or staggered vine plantings to reduce direct sun exposure. Ancient, traditional pergola training, strategically placed parasols, and newly installed protective hail-netting will do double duty as shading. Similarly, the reintroduction of the


Above: Some of the small-batch experimental wines at SICAREX in 30-liter glass demijohns.


inward while old ones linger on. Finding solutions to any of these problems is further complicated by the fact that some are in direct conflict with others—the worst of all possible worlds. Beyond the above hazards, one fundamental aspect of mitigating climate change involves reversing the direction of viticultural progress over the past 50 years. Previously, “progress” focused primarily on overcoming cooler, wetter conditions. Its underlying methodologies grew out of the global “cool climate” movement in the 1980s, initially based around Pinot Noir. Vine growing focused on optimizing ripeness and concentration by diverting vine energy away from leaf and canopy growth into grape and bunch production. Leaf-plucking, shoot-thinning, green- harvesting, bunch-dropping, maximizing sun exposure and ground heat reflection all became standard practices to shorten ripening periods, lower yields, and increase fruit concentration, even in much warmer climates.


Where in the past, lower yields clearly made better wine, increasingly warmer climates may require higher yields to delay ripening, resulting in lower concentration, higher acidity, and less overripe characters. Systematically unraveling the above processes offers the easiest short-term adaptation to a warming world. Where defoliation once ruled, shading will rule from now on. Toward this end, SICAREX is also experimenting with various forms of trellising, including traditional “California sprawl,” where the untrained


28 | THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 87 | 2025


ancient practice of interplanting trees will increase shade, biodiversity, and water retention, with the added advantage of reducing erosion and encouraging more birds that will eat more bugs. Mulching, use of cover crops and regrafting with growth-inhibitive and water-retentive rootstocks could also be used to help retain water. Another reversal practice is to move low fruiting wires from 24in up to 36in (60cm to 90cm), which lowers heat reflection and increases cooling breezes.


The goal is to combine all these


factors toward ongoing solutions. Both Chatelet and Lempereur repeatedly emphasize that this will take years to fine-tune and absorb all the ongoing mitigation strategies.


Geology: Beaujolais’s wild card It’s not widely known that Beaujolais contains some of the most geologically complex terroir in the world. Recognized as a UNESCO Global Geopark, the region has more than 300 distinct types of soil, dating back 500 million years. Based on Inter Beaujolais’s intensive soil-mapping research, done almost on a plot-by-plot basis between 2009 and 2018, this hard scientific data creates new possibilities for understanding the 12 Beaujolais crus and how terroir might play into its climatic strategies. Beaujolais’s terroir is generally


somewhat oversimplified as being evenly divided between the granite- dominant northern village crus and the subregional southern crus with their limestone-clay mixes. In fact, both of those appear—along with schist, volcanic, alluvial, and many other soil mixtures—throughout all regions. Mont Brouilly, for example, has five major stone- derived soils, some sitting alone, others side by side, still others mixed within myriad fans and transitions throughout vineyards—all playing out


differently from top to bottom of this highly weathered old mountain. Add in similar hillside slopes throughout Beaujolais with elevations of between 650 and 1,950ft (200–600m) and a wide variety of sun exposure and shading possibilities, and Beaujolais clearly has a lot to experiment with when it comes to countering climate change in the future.


All this suggests unlimited potential to slot in new Gamay clones, Gamay family varieties, or entirely different grapes, each one allied to newly conceived viticultural solutions and linked to specific soil plots. What might not work on one side of a hill may be perfect for another. Or farther up or down the slope. Obviously, it is early days to speculate on how terroir will play into climate change, given that clones and crosses still need to be better understood and expanded, viticultural solutions refined and implemented, before all these can be predictably applied to specific terroir solutions. Nevertheless, from the perspective of now, these permutations seem almost endless. What becomes more important—


dirt or the grape variety? What happens when you can’t have one without the other? Will crus focus on their terroir’s new potentials or stick within the Gamay family for as long as they can? Better to jump ship? Or to stretch Gamay to its limits, blending in advantageous portions of clones and crosses to make up for what Gamay continually loses? What of the old, historically derived village descriptors? Will Morgon maintain its minerally, firmly structured, long-lived reputation; Chirouble its floral characters; Juliénas its bright fruitiness; Fleurie its spice; Brouilly its fruity depth…? Will the warmest, earliest-ripening cru be the first to give up on Gamay and opt for a later-ripening grape? If so, how soon? It will be intriguing to see how specific crus evolve over the coming decades. Will some disappear as new ones emerge? Will Gamay eventually move on to conquer Romanée-Conti, and Syrah have found new “roasted slopes” at Morgon, both waiting for Grenache to make its next move northward? Only time will tell. 


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