For much of October 2020, temperatures hovered in the low 80s in the Grand Valley American Viticultural Area, a grape-growing region on Colorado’s Western Slope. But, within 48 hours, the unseasonably warm fall quickly devolved into a nightmare scenario for the region’s many farmers, including Bruce Talbott, a fifth-generation fruit grower in Palisade.
On the evening of October 26, 2020, temperatures plummeted to 14 degrees Fahrenheit. The next night, they dropped to 9 degrees. The sudden cold snap, which struck before Colorado’s grapes and other fruits had hardened off for the approaching winter, wiped out an estimated 70 to 100 percent of the state’s traditional European Vitis vinifera wine grapes, many with familiar names like cabernet sauvignon and merlot. “October 2020 hurt us very badly,” says Talbott, who is 63. “We came back the next year with between 5 and 10 percent of our grape crop.”
Most of the grapes that remained in Talbott’s vineyards after the devastating freeze were various cultivars of cold-hardy, hybrid grapes, which Talbott and other Colorado growers had been planting as a bit of an experiment.
These hybrid grapes, which researchers create by crossing European species with native North American grapes and then selecting for specific, preferred traits, are rising stars in the U.S. wine industry. Growers like them because of their ability to handle the cold, their resistance to disease, pests and fungi, and their overall reliability in the face of changing conditions.
Climate change is messing with grapes—and, thus, the wine industry as a whole—in myriad ways. Rising temperatures cause grapes to ripen faster and allow bugs and diseases to proliferate. Increasingly frequent and more intense wildfires lead to smoke taint. Excessive drought puts too much stress on the vines, which can lead to lower yields. Changes to rainfall patterns, coupled with higher temperatures, are leading to higher levels of humidity which, in turn, allow mildew, fungi and other diseases to overwhelm the vines. Grape-growers are also dealing with floods, violent hailstorms, unexpected frosts and other extreme weather events linked with climate change.
“Climate change scares the heck out of me,” says Kaibab Sauvage, who’s been growing grapes in Colorado for more than 20 years and recently co-founded Sauvage Spectrum winery. “Now what was unpredictable is even more unpredictable.”
Hybrids aren’t new—they date back to at least the 1860s—but, as the climate and consumer tastes evolve, they’ve been growing in popularity in recent years. In Colorado, for instance, hybrids made up just 1 percent of overall wine grapes planted in the state in the early 2000s. Today, they represent 20 percent, says the state’s viticulturist, Horst Caspari.
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