On August 6, between Aldenueva de Ebro and Alfaro, several vineyards cut the first bunches of white Tempranillo. This was the first harvest in the history of La Rioja. And this is nothing extraordinary: in de Valencia they started on August 3; Jerez, July 29; and at Jumilla, on the 27th. and harvest in July.
Something is changing in European wine, we’ve been talking about it for years. Large wine regions are suffering, while there are areas where vines never grew and the sector is booming.
Spain is a good example of all this. Between 2010 and 2025, Spain lost 132,641 hectares of vineyards for wine, according to ministry data. That’s two and a half times the entire vineyard of La Rioja. If that’s not a wake-up call, I don’t know what is.
What exactly happened? Something we’ve seen all too often: dryland vineyards dying and being replaced by irrigated land. Between 2010 and 2025, 160,538 hectares have disappeared; That is, about 25% of vines are without irrigation.
On the other hand, 27,849 hectares have been irrigated. All the loss is from dry land and, if it is not much, it is because the vineyards have moved from one side to the other. In 2004, 22.1% of vineyards were irrigated. In 2021, it was 42.3%.
So what is the reason for the drought? In part yes, of course. About half of the losses occurred between 2022 and 2024, years of major drought. But to this we must add the subsidized plan for grape picking and, of course, the price of grapes (which collapsed, taking the worst quality land off the market) and the decline in wine consumption.
And then there’s climate change. No one has measured the weight of each factor in detail, but it is clear that climate is not only robbing kilos of useful grapes, but also stopping ripening (it accelerates sugar, but not color or tannin). Its specifications had to be changed to accommodate the Rioja.
And are we reinventing ourselves? Indeed. But, come on, this isn’t strictly anything new. Since phylloxera destroyed European wine, we have had to adapt to a reality that changes faster than we do. Right now we are working on grafting European vines using ‘American roots’ and other ways to acclimate them to new water regimes and temperatures.
In fact, the situation is so dire that we are not only managing alternatives based on new technology, we are also rescuing old varieties. Or crossing diversity in every way imaginable.
This same June 26, the European Commission published European regulations on new genomic techniques: from mid-2028, changes that can be achieved through conventional breeding will be considered conventional. The door opens to truly significant changes, and thank God, the future of the vineyards (and a good part of Spain in Spain) depends on them.
Picture | Micah Baumeister
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