When winemaker Natalie Fryar set off Europe in October to undertake her Don Martin fellowship she planned to study clonal selection in relation to climate change.
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After visiting wine regions in France, Italy and the United Kingdom, Ms Fryar changed that scope to include root stock selection and pests and diseases.
Known for her winemaking experience for Jansz, Pipers Brook and her own sparking wine label Bellebonne, as well as using that expertise to produce gin for The Abel Gin Company and The Splendid Gin, Ms Fryar knows the art of producing a good alcoholic drink, but this research has given her a better understanding of the tools to help those flavours.
“I went with one idea about what was going to be helpful in mitigating climate change factors and I came away with a completely separate understanding about other factors as well,” Ms Fryar said.
Through visiting European winemakers, reseachers and seeing the regions for herself, Ms Fryar returned to Tasmania knowing the state’s wine industry was better placed in regards to climate change research than the regions she had visited.
“It’s not just about hotter or colder, which is most people’s understanding [about climate change], but it’s about wetter, windier and UV penetration,” she said.
“We’re a very collaborative industry and we have a good relationship with research. We’re exactly the right size that people who are working on research actually are embedded in the industry at the same time. We actually have a constant feedback loop between research and the industry, which is wonderful.”
Ms Fryar studied clonal selection and root stock work in Europe, which she hopes will help expand the Tasmanian industry’s knowledge.
“The clonal range they use there is so much greater than what we use here. There’s some Champagne houses that have their own clonal selection program, and have been running it for a long time expressly to counteract what they believe can happen with climate change,” she said.
Viticultural bodies in France and Italy have hundreds of registered root stocks.
“But the industry only actively uses about 20, and here we choose about six. There’s a lot of exploration available in those areas because you can shift the ripening pattern up about 10 days by choosing the appropriate clone/root stock combination.”
“Once you understand your region and what the likely changes are going to be then you can start to think about what does my plant need,” Ms Fryar said.
The third factor Ms Fryar researched was the role of pests and diseases in winemaking.
“I saw a lot of pests and diseases colonising in areas they had not seen them before, simply because they now have a climate that is conducive to them. They didn’t have any combating techniques so they were at the mercy of the insects,” she said.
Tasmania is known for its award-winning cool climate wines, such as sparking, pinot noir, chardonnay, and climate change could impact how they are produced in the future.
“We may have to change out viticultural response to still get the beautiful acid balance, the flavour response, the long cool ripening we want,” Ms Fryar said.
“If ripening gets earlier and earlier, do we actually lose the thing that makes us so special? How do we continue to make the wines that we love when the climate is changing?”