Climate Change and Winemaking: A Significant Transformation in Agriculture

Abstract

Climate change is impacting agriculture more and more—and impacting winemaking in particular more and more quickly. People can observe the changes almost every year. To understand the dramatic situation and to develop successful measures to cope with it, the Three-Pillar Model (3-P-Model), developed in the book Three Pillars of Organisation and Leadership in Disruptive Times (Wollmann et al. 2020), is extremely helpful. Keeping the sustainable purpose of winemaking in general and of ambitious wineries in particular unchanged—to produce a set of remarkable wines of best quality—it is necessary to have the mindset of a long and challenging journey (travelling organization) and to connect with a broad network of scientists, sommeliers, winemakers, etc. in different countries and regions. It is crucial to understand the journey and the network as an exploration setting foot on—in places—hitherto unknown territory. The article describes and evaluates significant examples of successful development journeys from different perspectives: for one famous grape variety and in some of the most important wine regions of the world—Tuscany and Piedmont—and also explores an interesting case in New Mexico. The journeys are different from grape variety to grape variety and from region to region—but they are ultimately based on comparable principles which can be best described by the 3-P-Model.