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The challenge of climate change
Climate change is having a daily impact on our environment. The pressure of increasing atmospheric scourges and global warming is forcing vineyards to adapt.
After 2 years of maturing the project, the Saint-Emilion winegrowers voted at their Extraordinary General Meeting in January 2021 to set up a collective hail control system with the company Selerys.
This solution, deployed across the Lussac Saint-Emilion, Puisseguin Saint-Emilion, Saint-Emilion and Saint-Emilion Grand Cru appellations, covers the entire vineyard, i.e. 7,500 hectares and almost 900 winegrowers.
This collective system works precisely because of the strength of the collective. An extremely precise radar detects all moving or forming storm fronts within a 30 km radius. The system alerts the twenty or so volunteer winegrowers to the approach of a potentially hail-inducing storm. They can then automatically and remotely trigger any or all of the 37 firing points spread across the region.
Biodegradable balloons inflated with helium are then released and sucked up by the updrafts generated by the thunderstorms. Once at the heart of the cloud, a torch disperses the hygroscopic salts which limit or prevent the formation of hailstones, triggering precipitation instead. The entire system is powered by photovoltaic panels.
t’s a system that greatly reduces the impact of hail, although we’re still experimenting with it and learning from it.
It’s thanks to the solidarity and unity of all the winegrowers that this unique system has been deployed.
Frost is a scourge dreaded by all winegrowers, who can lose an entire year’s work overnight. In the face of climate change, winegrowers use and combine different methods: candles, wind towers, spraying…
To gain a better understanding of all aspects of the frost phenomenon, the Conseil des Vins de Saint-Emilion has been working for a number of years with Professor Jean-François Berthoumieu, physicist-climatologist and President of the Association Climatologique de Moyenne-Garonne (ACMG), to produce a thermal map during a night of frost, enabling us to understand the flow of cold air by convection and possible cold sink zones, such as the Dordogne or other wetlands.
As part of the AgriDataValue project, these initial findings will be supplemented by more comprehensive measurements using telescopic masts and thermal sensors in the Saint-Emilion vineyards.
In addition to the more widespread methods of active control (candles, wind towers, etc.), Saint-Emilion wines are also implementing passive practices and studying their effects on the vines:
