Dhe car bumps up the narrow path. Steep vineyards to the right and left. The last wisps of morning mist clear and reveal a green sea of vines. At the wheel is a winemaker who steers the car to its destination: the Mehringer Blattenberg. Some of the vines here are more than 100 years old.
A narrow slate staircase leads up to the vines. The winemaker makes her way. It’s not that easy, the Blattenberg is a steep slope. But the view is worth it: the sun makes the grapes shine on the slopes and the water of the Moselle glitters in the valley. Riesling, in particular, grows here, a late-ripening grape variety that characterizes viticulture on the Moselle.
“We are in the middle of the harvest,” says winemaker Eva Lenhardt, looking at some workers standing between the vines. A few of the helpers are currently loading grapes that they have picked onto a trailer. They’re about to take a lunch break.
Plant growing season shifts
In the past, grapes were harvested in November, says the winemaker. However, due to the warm temperatures in recent years, the vegetation period of the plants has been postponed. They are now reading in mid-September. With summer temperatures of 25 degrees, that means picking grapes in a T-shirt. This used to be unimaginable. “Climate change has arrived in the vineyard,” says Eva Lenhardt. That means, among other things: greater heat, more extreme weather.
Eva Lenhardt runs the Lenhardt winery with her mother and brother in the local community of Mehring in the Trier-Saarburg district in Rhineland-Palatinate. For a few years the family specialized in pure grape production. They have been producing their own wines again since 2017.
The winemaker examines individual berries on a vine and talks about this wine year. It was very dry until the end of July. This was particularly bad for young vines whose roots had not yet grown deep enough. The vines came under drought stress. The Bavarian State Institute for Viticulture and Horticulture cites dried tendrils and shoot tips as well as drying leaves as symptoms of this.
Dry phases will become more frequent in the future
Dry phases will continue to occur more and more often in the future, says the winemaker. Additional artificial irrigation must therefore be considered. Eva Lenhardt sees this critically, especially for the entire area. Because water will have to be saved in the future, she says. Drinking water is a scarce commodity. In addition to the drier locations, there are also those that have more water available in the soil. Every vineyard therefore reacts differently to a lack of water.
The winemaker lets a little earth trickle through her hands. The Moselle region is known for its slate soil. The nutrient-rich slate offers the best conditions for a mineral note in the wine. It stores the sun’s heat during the day and can release it to the plants at night. This was precisely what was an advantage in viticulture for years. However, in dry and hot summer months this can harm the plants. If there is a lot of sunlight, the slate heats up significantly – and gives off a lot of heat. Young vines literally burn. Planting new vines in the next few years will therefore be a challenge, says Eva Lenhardt.
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