From her home in Riebeek-Kasteel, South Africa, Rosa Kruger enjoys a 180-degree panorama of the Swartland region’s rolling scenery marked by wheat fields and vineyards with the Tulbagh Mountains in the background.
However, extreme weather is becoming more common, ushering in challenges for the bucolic landscape and wine production, which is Kruger’s specialty. She’s the founder of South Africa’s Old Vine Project, which promotes and preserves heritage vineyards.
Speaking at the Tasting Climate Change Conference in Montreal last month, she explained that South Africa was in the midst of the most severe wildfire season since 2015. The raging fires wreaked havoc on South Africa’s Western Cape, home to the country’s most renowned wine regions. The extensive environmental and structural damage is still being assessed.
“I saw fires everywhere,” Kruger said of the scene from her property. While in Montreal, she kept in touch with winemakers fighting fires in the Franschhoek wine region, a popular tourist town located an hour’s drive from her home in Swartland. She also followed news reports about severe floods in Kruger National Park, which was founded by her great-great-grandfather, Paul Kruger.
“One hundred thousand hectares burned down in South Africa in the last month,” she said at the conference. “If anyone doubts there is climate change in the world, they must come to South Africa.”
As the eighth-largest producer of wine in the world, South Africa accounts for almost 4 per cent of global production. There are 86,544 hectares of grape vines for wine production under cultivation across the country, a number that’s declined by 12 per cent since 2014 owing to economic pressure and environmental challenges.
As climate-induced extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, intense and unpredictable in South Africa, Kruger is looking for ways her country can continue growing grapes for quality wine well into the future.
“I’m Afrikaans and we are quite resilient,” she says. “I think we have to put up a little bit of a fight.”
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