Both Californian and Italian winemakers are raising the bar. Or, they’re creating cuvées that combine different vintages to try to overcome the vagaries of a changing climate. Chris Howell, the winemaker at Cain Vineyard and Winery in California’s Napa Valley, and Riccardo Pasqua, from Pasqua Vigneti e Cantine near Verona, are at the forefront of this trend. Through their innovative approaches, including entirely new methods of viticulture and winemaking, they’re looking to change the long held industry stigma against non-vintage wines.
Chris Howell admits it will take a lot of work to shift the negative stigma attached with non-vintage wines. He emphasizes the need for a shift in consumer perception, stating, “Why are we so obsessed with single vintages? We need to change drinkers’ perceptions. Non-vintage wines can be delicious.” Howell demonstrates his laser-focus on producing the best Merlot possible by committing to only use grapes picked prior to the catastrophic 2017 fires. In fact, he artfully mixes juice from 2017 and 2018 to achieve the style he’s looking for.
After moving away from sparkling winemaking, Riccardo Pasqua has been making non-vintage wine since 2019, inspired by his love of non-vintage champagnes. At his winery, his cuvées combine grapes from as many as five different vintages. This methodology deepens nuance and increases subtlety of the resulting work. “I decided to stick to the plan, and we went forward. It is about getting the best expression of the vineyard. It is like a book. Using more than one vintage gives the wine more chapters,” Pasqua explained.
The Napa Valley region is experiencing more extreme weather patterns, with noticeably hotter summers where temperatures can soar as high as 50°C. Howell says that even in the absence of wildfires, Napa is now experiencing vintages that are more and more unpredictable. This change has led him and others in the industry to think about cross-year blending to ensure a more constant quality.
Pasqua is seeing similar trends in Italy, where climate-related extreme weather events have become the new normal. “In Italy, extreme weather events have gone from the extraordinary to the ordinary,” he states. He points out that late spring frosts and hail storms have noticeably increased. Wineries are running out of options to change their operations. Frost in April or early May and hailstorms have increased in frequency and severity. Droughts with extreme aridity are what we have now, year after year,” he said.
Even with their laudable entrepreneurial spirit, Howell and Pasqua will have an uphill battle in shaping consumer perception of non-vintage wines. Dawn Davie, master of wine, the highest qualification in the global wine industry, was on hand. She breaks down the types of wine buyers into three clear buckets. She points out that, of these two groups, one is especially happy to see the emergence of non-vintage still wines. Yet, non-vintage wines retain a stigma of being just a bit downmarket.
I proposed it to my family and my board, and they told me ‘you are crazy man, this is a big risk! You are going against the wine bible, the vintage is the vintage,’ Pasqua recalled in terms of his choice to make non-vintage wines. This resistance simply mirrors the broader industry trend that values the single vintage wine above the blend.
Climate change is dramatically disrupting centuries of traditional viticulture. Howell thinks it’s critically important for the industry to change, and that now is the time for doing so. He goes on to underline that fires or not, Napa Valley growers are already dealing with more and more unpredictable growing conditions. This truth drives much of his advocacy for embracing non-vintage blends as a way of guaranteeing quality and consistency.
Riccardo Pasqua, of Vinitaly International Academy, can see that wineries throughout Italy are beginning to adopt a more holistic approach. Most of them are now looking at non-vintage production as a sure path forward. The increasing acceptance of this trend is a harbinger of a revolution in the way that wine is produced and tasted.