A few years ago, South Africa faced a period of severe water shortage in the Western Cape region. In 2017, the exact place where the Douro River is born, Picos de Urbíon, dried up. This year, in Germany, ice wine harvest failed for the first time due to a warm winter. A year ago, Australia was on fire, with an unrepairable and unprecedented loss for its ecosystems, let alone lives and businesses. As we speak, California, Oregon and Washington are being devastated by wildfires that preceded record heatwaves, followed by storms that ignited the fires. In Maryland, tornados were followed by hurricanes and then frost. Again, countless producers are still unsure about whether they will be able to save their harvest from smoke taint, and many have lost their vintage altogether.

Why? What are the causes? What are the impacts? How can we prepare our vineyards, our operation, ourselves, reduce the impacts and minimize the losses?

Clim4Vitis project coordinator and Professor at the Physics Department of UTAD, Dr. João Santos is hosting an online round-table debate titled “Extreme Weather Events (EWE): Response from The Vineyards” on September 24^th (11 PM Lisbon | 3 PM California | +1 DAY 8 AM Sydney).

The talk will address questions by gathering producers and scientists from different parts of the world that have experienced these EWE’s. They will share their knowledge, experience, different realities, and above all the ideas and practices implemented to tackle this reality. In a conversation starting with a scientific data approach, we will try to understand how can science help producers to predict, adapt and decide which are the best options available to deal with ewe, and how can they do this in a very practical manner.

Discussion Topics

• What is causing these extreme events?
• Which are the main impacts on the wine industry?
• How different adaptation strategies are leading to different resilience results?
• What is the role of the wine industry in the adaptation to EWE and climate change?
• How can science help winegrowers improve their vineyards’ resilience?

Host and Speakers

• Joao Santos, UTAD, Portugal (Host)
• Greg Jones, Linfield University, US (Speaker)
• Phil Freese, Vilofonte, US/SA (Speaker)
• Alisdair Tulloch, Keith Tulloch Wine, Australia (Speaker)
• Richard Hamilton, Hamilton Viticulture, Australia (Speaker)

Streaming Link

The talk will be streamed live on Porto Protocol’s official YouTube channel.

Link to the channel: https://bit.ly/3cohfWo