On one of the world’s northermost frontiers, grapevines grow on hillsides and farmers talk about terroir and aroma, as global warming and new technologies push the boundaries of winemaking.
“Maybe a touch of raspberry?” suggested Wenche Hvattum, one of two farmers at the Lerkekasa vineyard west of Oslo — on the same latitude as Siberia, southern Greenland and Alaska — debating aromas in the ruby red juice from their freshly pressed grapes.
“This is good. I’d say a hint of blackcurrant,” her husband, Joar Saettem, said.
Such talk would have been unthinkable a few years ago, but warmer temperatures and new, cold-resistant vines are helping push wine production into Nordic countries in a rare, positive spinoff from climate change.
In Blaxsta winery near Stockholm — a farm further north than Aberdeen and Moscow — Goran Amnegard has won international awards for his ice wine based on the Vidal grape. He sells about 3,000 bottles a year to customers as far afield as Hong Kong, and proudly showed off his red Merlot wine and white Chardonnay.
“There is this myth about the cold weather here; the moose and the polar bears,” Amnegard said. “[But] we have had more or less Mediterranean summers.”
Blaxsta won gold at the World Wine Cup in 2012 for its 2009 Vidal Ice Wine. Financial Times wine critic Jancis Robinson gave it a “distinguished” 16.5 out of 20.
“The tendency is ... the climate is going to be warmer summers and colder winters. That seems to be the way it is heading and that will benefit us,” Amnegard said.
The 1,000 vines at the Lerkekasa vineyard lie in neat rows on a south-facing hillside at Gvarv in Telemark, southern Norway.
“We want to demonstrate ... that we believe the climate is getting warmer and it is more possible to grow and make wine in northerly areas,” Saettem said.
Still, Nordic vineyards make a high-risk investment because many summers are still soggy.
“They are certainly slowly improving though, being at the limit of viticulture, are more prone to disaster than vineyards closer to the equator,” Robinson wrote in an e-mail, adding that seagulls had destroyed one crop in Norway.
Tasting the first pressing of the year one autumn day after one of the warmest summers on record in southern Norway, Hvattum said this year seemed like it would be a good, but not outstanding year.
“We struggled with frost and damage we had last year,” she said, when temperatures plunged to almost minus-30oC. “We hope next year will be tremendous.”
Producing since 2007, they expect to make 50 to 60 bottles this season and hope to expand to 1,000 in the coming years.
Crops grow better in the Nordic region than at similar latitudes elsewhere because the sea is warmed by the Gulf Stream current. A comparable latitude in the southern hemisphere would be far south of New Zealand, toward Antarctica.
A generation ago, the northernmost frontier for vineyards was Britain. Now, the title of the world’s most northerly vineyard is a moving target.
Several experts list Lerkekasa as the world’s most northerly commercial outdoor vineyard, since visitors can spend the night at the farm and sample the wines. Some producers in Finland, Sweden and Norway have vines slightly further north, but do not take guests, or have vines in greenhouses.
One producer further north than Lerkekasa, Bjorn Bergum, grows his grapes in Sogndal, Norway, under labels called “Fjord Red” and “Fjord White” marked 61.2o north, the latitude of his vineyard.
“We Nordic grape growers are all crazy,” he said with a laugh.
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