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Low-alcohol wine provides fresh hope for Spanish vineyards

A man walks through the Casa de la Ermita vineyards in Jumilla, near Murcia, Spain, during the early hours of the morning on April 9. WARNING: EXCESSIVE CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL CAN DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH. PHOTO : AP

Global warming may be the latest threat to the wine industry, but a clutch of producers in one of Spain’s hardest-hit regions say they’ve found a way to survive and even profit from it.

Vintners face a twin danger from climate change. Higher temperatures mean grapes with more sugar and thus more alcohol, but wines packing a heftier wallop are less popular these days, in part because people are wary of drinking and driving. Plus, drought can stop vines from producing fruit altogether.

So winemakers in Spain’s southeastern Murcia region thought up a way to coax their vines into making a product that retains the character of a classic wine, only with much less alcohol — 6.5 percent by volume, compared with 14 percent or more for many traditionally made Spanish wines.

The technique and product are so groundbreaking the EU had to devise a new category — “wine with reduced alcohol content” — for it to be marketed.

“Vineyards are migrating north to avoid heat. If we want to stay in the business we have to adapt. And this method gives us a means to do so,” said Pedro Jose Martinez, the brains behind the project at a winery called Casa de la Ermita winery, near the town of Jumilla.

His pride and joy, called Altos de la Ermita, is redolent of cherries, plums and blackberries, with a smoky hint of the oak barrels it spent six months maturing in. It tastes light and fruity, like a good summer drinking wine. Only a slight lack of “legs” — tear-like traces wine leaves on the side of a glass — gives away the low alcohol content.

“And you can drink two good glasses with your lunch and still be under the legal limit,” said the project’s chief winemaker, Marcial Martinez, who is unrelated to Pedro Jose Martinez, raising a glass of his own.

The winery says it knows of no other producers making this kind of wine but expects competition to emerge. It plans to release 770,000 bottles of Altos in this the debut year and 1.5 million next year, with sales planned in Spain and around the world.

Much is at stake in Spain’s slice of the global warming crisis.

The Spanish wine industry posted 5.7 billion euros (US$9 billion) in revenue in 2006 and employs 400,000 people, the Spanish Wine Federation said. No other country on earth has so much land dedicated to growing grapes.

Most wine-producing areas in Spain have changed little in appearance in 3,000 years since eastern Mediterranean traders like the Phoenicians first introduced staples such as olives, almonds and grapes.

Wine regions like La Mancha and Murcia face pressure from several sources: changing consumer preferences, new laws to cut the road accident death toll and EU legislation aimed at reducing overproduction.

“Hot country” wines like those of southern Spain, with levels as high as 15 percent alcohol, are no longer popular in the world’s trendy wine shops. Gone are the days when wine-lovers enjoyed heady, oaky wines typical of the late 1980s and 1990s. The pendulum has swung the other way and today people prefer lighter styles, like French Bordeaux with 13 percent alcohol.

But it is rising temperatures and drought that are worrying vine farmers most. Records show Spain is experiencing its driest year since record-keeping began 60 years ago.

“We are getting higher alcohol levels because of hot weather and excessive evaporation from the grapes,” said Jorge Garcia, manager of the Vitivinos cooperative winery in Villamalea on the southeastern fringe of La Mancha — the world’s single largest wine-producing region, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

“Producers are leaving winemaking for mushroom cultivation and edible rabbit breeding,” Garcia said, as a whiff of mushroom compost drifted from low-built white buildings dotting fields where vineyards once thrived.

Juan Manuel Gomez, agriculturalist at Casa de la Ermita, said it had not rained in his area since October. Luckily, the vineyard has a spring for drip irrigation. But areas unable to irrigate, he said, “are almost certainly doomed to give up wine production.”

The Ermita vineyard’s technique uses carefully controlled irrigation to trick vines into making grapes with less sugar and thus significantly less potential for alcohol. The finished wine is then put through rotating cones to separate out alcohol molecules.

It is this step that made it necessary for the EU to devise a new category of wine.

“We manage to achieve a product that retains all the sensorial characteristics of a classic wine, but with only 6.5 percent alcohol,” Marcial Martinez said.
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