Climate change advances wine grape harvest by two weeks

NEW DELHI: It’s the season, but it’s come couple of couple of weeks ahead of schedule. The grapes are ripe and ready to be crushed! Harvesting of wine grapes, one of the most crucial activities in wine making has started at the Sula Vineyards, a maker of wines. Though global warming and climate change have had an impact, advancing the harvest two weeks earlier than before, said a statement from Sula.

“This year we will crush close to 13,000 MT of grapes, up 20% from 2015. Total farmer payments will cross Rs 50 crores,” said Sula CEO Rajeev Samant, in a statement. The grapes will come from across Maharashtra at Sula’s three wineries, and from across Karnataka for its Karnataka winery. This year the effects of climate change and global warming are highly apparent with our harvest starting fully two weeks earlier than ever before.

Samant added that the industry as well as wine growers are bearing the brunt of climate change and having to rapidly adapt their practices to cope with the often adverse effects.

The last three harvests were good in terms of quality and quantity but 2016 looks to be much more challenging with lower yields due to unseasonal rains post monsoon, the company said.

This year’s wine grape prices have again increased with red grape prices going as high as Rs 50/kg for reserve quality.

The wine industry has played a key role in generating rural employment ever since Maharashtra unveiled the first wine policy in 2001 and Karnataka followed with a more liberal policy three years later. In 2016 the industry will crush over 27,000 MT of grapes. The industry has set itself a target of 100,000 MT in five years. Only 2% of India’s over 1 lakh hectares of vineyards are currently planted with wine grapes, while in the rest of the world the figure is over 90%