A Thousand Gods
I like to think that when Simon Sharpe and Lauren Keenan heard they'd been named The Real Review Rising Star of the Year, they cried out "miladiou!"
By day Pete Taylor works in the finance industry, developing climate risk models across myriad sectors. But a passion for wine has him homing in on viticulture in his business Auxein, launched this year to help the wine industry move to a “sustainable and resilient future”.
Alongside climate risk and carbon management consultancy, Pete has developed vineyard specific models and datasets related to climate for every vineyard in New Zealand, with a modelled climate projection out to 2100. “These datasets include vineyard-specific attributes to ensure results are tailored to the producer.” Earlier this year, he completed a free pilot study for North Canterbury Winegrowers, highlighting projected shifts in climate indices, with growing season warmth increasing and frost risk declining. “The data suggests significantly earlier flowering, veraison, and harvest dates, changing how grapes ripen, will impact quality in many ways.”
Matt Barbour, Chair of North Canterbury Winegrowers, says the report will be “extremely valuable” for anyone in the winegrowing business, “and for those looking to invest in the future”. It has the potential to influence varieties planted and growth stages over the growing season, Matt says. “The more information you can supply the better, as his model works with so many variables it is mind blowing.”
In 2023 and 2024 Pete studied for his master’s degree in wine and viticulture at Lincoln University, where his research project, supervised by Dr Amber Parker, looked at the impacts of climate on Pinot Noir wine quality, at a single vineyard scale. Previous studies modelled the impact of climate, including temperature, on wine quality. “However, these approaches are limited to regional resolution, with a single climate dataset applied to all vineyards.”
They built a climate record for Pinot Noir vineyards for the 2015 to 2022 vintages, then used the record to simulate phenological timing of flowering, veraison, and ripening, and to determine the influence of frosts, hot days, stress days, and diurnal temperature range on Pinot Noir quality. “Both an increasing incidence of hot days and increasing diurnal temperature ranges between both flowering and veraison and veraison to ripening were positively and significantly related to Pinot Noir quality,” Pete says. The research and modelling approach is being scaled up to include temperature, precipitation, global radiation, and other climatic variables, with outputs including a full climate history and (modelled) projected climate for every single vineyard block in New Zealand, “with endless potential applications”, he adds. The research will be published later this year.
Amber says the work is exciting for researchers and industry as it interfaces different types of dataset (climate, GIS, wine scores) and models (phenology, climate projections) to generate a deeper understanding of future climate risks for Pinot Noir at the single vineyard level. “The approach and platform that Peter has established could easily be extended to other varieties and vineyard. It also has the potential for constant refinement as models and data continue to develop and improve.”
Impacts of Changing Rainfall
Dr Amber Parker has used an ecoclimatic indicator approach to plan for changing rainfall levels in New Zealand’s key winegrowing regions, as a result of climate change. The work looks at rainfall between phenological stages, with key cultivar-regional combinations – Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, Central Otago Pinot Noir and Hawke’s Bay Merlot. For all combinations, precipitation increased between budburst and flowering. Flowering to veraision and veraison to target sugar concentration saw projected decreases in rainfall, but the magnitude varied by region-variety combination, with the greatest increases and decreases projected for Central Otago Pinot Noir, Amber says. “The work has highlighted the need to go beyond calendar projections for future climate scenarios, through using ecoclimatic indicator approaches.” Amber will present the findings at GiESCO (Group of International Experts for Cooperation on Vitivinicultural Systems) in Germany in July.
Amber and fellow researchers received funding through the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Deep South National Science Challenge project, ‘Climate, water and wine’.
