What Wine Tomorrow? In Conversation with Michelle Bouffard & Jeremy Cukierman MW

Michelle Bouffard, from Quebec, is a well-known author and media figure, as well as a wine educator. She is also the founder of Tasting Climate Change, an international symposium. Paris-based Jeremy Cukierman MW is director of the Kedge Wine School, where he has introduced courses on sustainability and climate change.

They spoke to Pauline Vicard, CEO of ARENI.

This is a lightly edited and condensed transcript of the conversation. You will find the entire podcast here.

What Wine for Tomorrow? In Conversation with Michelle Bouffard and Jeremy Cukierman MW, recorded on March 29, 2022

ARENI

Why is it still important to talk about climate change and its impact today?

Jeremy Cukierman MW

It’s paramount because climate has changed again and there are lots of things happening. There’s more unstable weather in the vineyard. It’s also getting warmer. And there are lots of good things happening in the vineyard in terms of solutions. While there are lots of potential solutions and lots of people working to adapt and mitigate, it’s very difficult for them to exchange [ideas]. Firstly because the industry is very fragmented, but also because the problem is global and everyone is focused on their own issues. So that’s why we thought that this book was so important; bringing together some knowledge and some potential solutions.

ARENI

What I love about the book is it’s a kind of checklist of the different steps, from planting to selling to retailers, and putting the wines in bottle and shipping.

Michelle Bouffard

Yes, and things are moving quickly. So once you have that checklist with you, you can do further research within that area.

ARENI

As I’m sure you can tell, we’re a Francophone group. Both Jeremy and myself are French and Michelle is in the French speaking part of Canada. We talk a lot about climate change. And we talk a lot about it in English. How do you see this conversation going on in the French speaking world?

Michelle Bouffard

It doesn’t matter where you’re from. I think climate change is a topic that’s everywhere. One of the challenges is we don’t focus enough on solutions. Regardless of the language, we have to put forward the solution more. I think it’s going to give hope, because people are kind of paralyzed. But if we keep on proposing solutions, like we do in the book in small ways, all of a sudden you start feeling engaged.

Jeremy Cukierman MW

I think if you scare people and you tell them that there’s no future, how can you expect them to do something? It’s always better to focus on solutions. I agree with Michelle, that we don’t see this really big difference between the world and the French world. The perspective can be slightly different from one region to another, because we need to bear in mind that in certain regions, climate change has had some positive impact. England has benefited from climate change for example.

In the meantime, we heard so many predictions and forecasts about vineyards that would disappear, but they’re still very much alive! So we need to be careful about predictions, because human resilience is very high.

We heard so many predictions and forecasts about vineyards that would disappear, but they’re still very much alive! Human resilience is very high.

Jeremy Cukierman MW

ARENI

French people haven’t been really good traditionally at working together. Do you see them being better at working together when it comes to assessing climate change and its impact?

Jeremy Cukierman MW

I think so. I see lots of new organizations and new conferences. It’s true that for the moment it’s more regional than national. This is very French and probably very Italian as well. But it’s also because there are lots of particularities in each of the wine regions. So the impact of climate is very different from more region to another yet. The challenge – and also the good part – is bringing people together.

As we say in the book, the wine industry can be an example.

ARENI

I want to go back to one of the things that you said earlier, Jeremy, that we always have to be careful with predictions. The first part of your book is dedicated to understanding climate change with a proper scientific approach and there is loads of data. I’m not sure I understood everything properly because it’s quite complex, but what I remember from that part is that there are a variety of scenarios. They all explain quite clearly that the climate is changing. But we don’t know yet to what extent, because modelling climate is hard.

Jeremy Cukierman MW

The idea is just to tell people basically where we are and, and what we can potentially expect from the future.  

Michelle Bouffard

I think when you do a presentation, you need to talk about the state of the planet. But I’ve been holding conferences since 2017. So I don’t do an introduction each time anymore. I think now it’s time to focus on everything that is possible to be done. One very positive change is when I first started, I had to raise money to be able to pay for the venue and so on. And I barely made it because wine countries associations did not want to be associated with climate change, because they thought it was going to give a bad image of their country.

I remember losing sleep thinking, “Oh my God, am I going to be able to raise money?” And, second, will people come to it?  The first year, the events sold out within a few weeks. I had 300 people and I barely made it to fund the event. But what’s interesting is that the wine regions or the associations saw it was sold out. And they also saw who was in the room, which was journalists, importers. And they were all interested and asked if I would do a second edition, but for eight hours and not half a day.

Now with the third edition, people were coming to me and saying we want to be part of the discussion. We want to support you because we are suffering.

It’s very encouraging to see that people are involved. When we wrote the book, we had to do a lot of research and interview people, and the encouraging thing is there are so many solutions that people are not aware of out there.

In 2017, wine countries associations did not want to be associated with climate change, because they thought it was going to give a bad image of their country. […] Now they really want to be part of the discussion, it’s very encouraging.

Michelle Bouffard

Jeremy Cukierman MW

I was thinking about your previous question. I think there’s an example that we use in the book, which I think a good one. It’s the one about the weight of the [bottle]. They can lower the weight and Champagne for example has been working on this. We know that technically it’s quite a challenge because of the pressure in the bottle in Champagne. It’s huge. But it’s a good example of a collective solution, because they collectively went to see the suppliers, the glassware industry, and said “you need to find a solution for us”.

ARENI

There’s another winemaker working in Napa that to get his bottle from a kilo to 800 grams. And now he’s working with a glass manufacturer to take it to 650 grams. It’s quite technical, because you want to maintain the prestige in how good it looks.

And again, to your point, Michelle, I think it helped a lot that sommeliers and retailers are encouraging this.

Michelle Bouffard

You do see a difference in some countries that have been dealing with it for longer, like Australia. They’ve seen water issues, they have planned for it, and they don’t have, let’s say the rules or the heavy legislation of France. In McLaren Vale, for example, there are producers like Steven Pannell who are now planting 20 different types of grapes because the pH of Shiraz is too high. He’s going to Italian grapes to have a lower pH. They all know how precious water is, and how expensive, so they have no choice but to change and adapt. And I think we have to learn from that.

ARENI

Is there any aspect of climate change in regards to viticulture that we do not talk about enough?

Jeremy Cukierman MW

You could write three, four or five books on the topic, but I don’t know if there’s a specific focus or an area that we don’t discuss enough. We see lots of initiatives, but everything needs to be tried and investigated. Water is a very good example. In the New World they’ve had issues with water for quite a while. They’re doing everything to use less water, while in European countries, we’re asking for irrigation. Clearly, we need to learn from [each other]. We had to deal with the problems already. And that comes back to the problem of sharing knowledge, of sitting around the table and saying, OK, you want irrigation? Believe me. I had this problem 20 years ago. And we went for irrigation and it makes superficial systems and more dependent vines.

Michelle Bouffard

I think it’s about being willing to leave behind what we know and what we are attached to. Even in a traditional area, you need to be willing to look at things differently. You think of Australia. I had a conversation with Mac Forbes in the Yarra Valley last week, and Mac doesn’t irrigate at all. It takes risk, but so far, he hasn’t lost any of his vines. And he said to me, I think we’re going to have to look at rootstock. We have to get information from the Old World and perhaps the countries in the Old World who want to irrigate have to look at Australia. Being open to change is key.

It’s about being willing to leave behind what we know and what we are attached to. Even in a traditional area, you need to be willing to look at things differently.

Michelle Bouffard

Jeremy Cukierman MW

It will take a long time in France. One area we need change is bottling at destination, which is a big topic in the book. Nowadays, technically, you have more chance of having a stable and balanced wine if it’s shipped in bulk and bottled at destination. The problem is, in any regions, it’s linked to low quality wines.

I did a presentation on the future of wines and I said, if you look at the history of wine, people were shipping in bulk for a long time and we know how to do it. So that might be something that we need to think about.

ARENI

Again, that’s a big change for the legal system, because there are many AOCs that won’t allow you to do that.  

What will the world look like in ten years?

Michelle Bouffard

I think the future is very bright because we have the younger generation coming and they demand a product that is sustainable. I think that we really need to pay attention to this. There’s a whole section [in our book] where we talk about all the research that has been done in terms of how much more the younger generation would be willing to pay for about a wine if they knew was sustainable. It was $3 more per bottle.

I think the future is very bright.

Jeremy Cukierman MW

We hear very often that wine is too expensive, but many wines are not expensive enough to be sustainable.

ARENI

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been talking a lot about the concept of eco-literacy. How life is created needs to be taught at school, just like maths or English or French, because if we don’t understand the natural systems, how can we protect them? How do we prioritize education?

Jeremy Cukierman MW

The people you need to convince are the future wine professionals, because they are the ones who will speak about wine, who will sell wine, who will market wine. If they do it differently, people’s perception will evolve as well.

The role of an educator is to give lots of perspectives. What I see with students is that they they’re very receptive to sustainability.

Quel vin pour demain?
Available in French, éditions DUNOD

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