Next, my series of articles exploring the effects of climate change on the wine vineyards of the world takes us to the southern hemisphere. World-renowned winemaker Duncan Savage, owner of Savage Wines in Salt River, Cape Town, South Africa, shares his thoughts and observations regarding this important issue. I hope you are as curious as I am to hear what Duncan has to say about events in and around 33 South Latitude. Here’s what Duncan told me is happening in his vineyards.
“Climate change is obviously of major concern to everyone, particularly those of us in agriculture. The biggest concern is the extremes we are experiencing, the blurring of seasons, and general unpredictability.
In South Africa heat has always been a factor and I think we have become fairly good at managing vines with this in mind. The real challenge is water. We are a dry country and it seems the trend is a drying one. That being said we are having one of our wettest winters in a long time after the experts said it was going to be dry, so who knows?
A lot of SA’s quality wine production is made possible due to our proximity to the cold Atlantic which has a massive moderating effect. While Europe has been really hot of late we have been experiencing some quite moderate summers. 2021 and 2023 for example yielded no heat waves in the growing season which is obviously tremendous for freshness, purity, and balance in the wines. Our only really hot years of the last few have been 2016 and 2022.
At Savage Wines we are also quite fortunate as many of our plots of land are relatively close to the ocean, some being just a few kms away. The wind can be a factor as it dries the soil out and challenges the plants but it is fortunately our aircon off the Atlantic.
The long and short is that change is upon us and we need to adapt. Will be interesting to see the dynamic in the coming years.”
My deepest thanks to Duncan for taking the time and effort to share his insightful knowledge of this global concern that is also very local in its impact.
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Photos Courtesy: Savage Wines
wpawinepirate 
Hi and hope you are well. An interesting article on climate change. I wrote an article for UMass Amherst and Rutgers U that analized the 2022 growing season in the northeast. It also, looked at trends in our weather patterns and how climate change is affecting different varieties of grape varieties in different ways. If you want to use that for an article, that would be great or if you want me to frame it up differently so that you can use it that would be fine. The cites are “The 2022 Grape Growing Season in the Northeast”, Fruit Notes, Vol. 88, no. 1 (2023), 20-22 and the same name of the article that was published in Horticultural News, vol. 103, no. 1 (2022):Winter. I believe that you can get these articles on the webl If you cannot find them, I will see if I still have a link to it. Hope all is well.
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Thanks for the offer, Steve. I will certainly read your articles and use them in future articles.
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