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Viennese Winemakers Are Using an Ancient Method to Make Climate-Resilient Wine
In August 2002 a devastating flood hit Austria. After days of relentless rain, the Danube burst its banks, large swathes of the country were under water and more than 10,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.
After the floodwaters receded, winemaker Rainer Christ surveyed the damage to his Viennese vineyards: “It was horrible to see, rot and mold everywhere, entire slopes were affected.” Then he reached his family’s oldest vineyard, where multiple grape varieties were interplanted in the traditional style. “And everything was fine,” he recalls.
His grandfather used to talk about field blends, the ancient way of wine growing that was standard until the mid-19th century, but Christ dismissed it as the nostalgic musings of an old man — monovarietal vineyards and a high-tech approach were the way forward; everybody knew that. “That was the first time I thought, I guess they knew what they were doing back then,” recalls Christ. “They didn’t have a large chemical arsenal to help out, but they observed nature very closely, on the lookout for things that could be put to good use.”
Eighty-five-year-old Gemischter Satz vineyard Ried Wiesthalen. Credit: Herbert Lehmann
That vineyard is 85 years old now, still producing an excellent field blend known in Vienna as Gemischter Satz, and Christ has become one of the Viennese winemakers that has brought this all-but-forgotten wine back into the mainstream.
The practice of strategically interplanting multiple grape varieties was long considered an insurance strategy, mentioned by Columella and Pliny the Elder back in Roman times. With different grape varieties reacting differently to cold, heat, rainfall and drought, at least some would survive a season regardless of what nature had in store. “It was a risk minimization strategy that developed from experience,” says Johannes Friedberger, a winemaker and lecturer at the College and Institute for Viticulture and Pomology Klosterneuburg.
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