As temperatures rise and rainfall declines, this award-winning viticulturalist is embracing change | Canada Voices

From her home in Riebeek-Kasteel, South Africa, Rosa Kruger enjoys a 180-degree panorama of the Swartland region’s rolling scenery marked by wheat fields and vineyards with the Tulbagh Mountains in the background.

However, extreme weather is becoming more common, ushering in challenges for the bucolic landscape and wine production, which is Kruger’s specialty. She’s the founder of South Africa’s Old Vine Project, which promotes and preserves heritage vineyards.

Speaking at the Tasting Climate Change Conference in Montreal last month, she explained that South Africa was in the midst of the most severe wildfire season since 2015. The raging fires wreaked havoc on South Africa’s Western Cape, home to the country’s most renowned wine regions. The extensive environmental and structural damage is still being assessed.

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“I saw fires everywhere,” Kruger said of the scene from her property. While in Montreal, she kept in touch with winemakers fighting fires in the Franschhoek wine region, a popular tourist town located an hour’s drive from her home in Swartland. She also followed news reports about severe floods in Kruger National Park, which was founded by her great-great-grandfather, Paul Kruger.

“One hundred thousand hectares burned down in South Africa in the last month,” she said at the conference. “If anyone doubts there is climate change in the world, they must come to South Africa.”

As the eighth-largest producer of wine in the world, South Africa accounts for almost 4 per cent of global production. There are 86,544 hectares of grape vines for wine production under cultivation across the country, a number that’s declined by 12 per cent since 2014 owing to economic pressure and environmental challenges.

As climate-induced extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, intense and unpredictable in South Africa, Kruger is looking for ways her country can continue growing grapes for quality wine well into the future.

“I’m Afrikaans and we are quite resilient,” she says. “I think we have to put up a little bit of a fight.”

Despite having no formal training in vineyard management, Kruger has become one of the world’s most famous viticulturalists. Her first career was journalism, followed by a legal career. Starting a family changed her aspirations and she took a job running an apple farm in Elgin Valley, 70 kilometres southeast of Cape Town, in 1997. After consulting professors at Stellenbosch University, she planted sauvignon blanc vines on the property and a new passion ignited.

She took jobs at vineyards in Cape Point and Franschhoek before going freelance. Today, she works with top wine producers, such as Boekenhoutskloof and Gabriëlskloof, and, as an unpaid advisor, connects farmers with old vineyards with likeminded winemakers, including Eben Sadie, Chris Alheit and Duncan Savage. She became the first viticulturalist and first South African to win the Decanter Hall of Fame Award in 2022. (Penfolds winemaker Peter Gago, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti co-owner Aubert de Villaine and Robert Mondavi are former honorees.)

When Kruger is approached by a client to design a new vineyard, she says there are many variables to consider in the hopes that those vines will be productive for 50 years or longer.

“There’s going to be many more climatic extremes, more floods and more fires,” she says. With climate predictions of increasing temperatures (as much as four degrees) and lower rainfall (an expected 30-per-cent decrease in annual rainfall by 2050) for the grape-growing regions around Stellenbosch, conditions could possibly become too harsh and hot for popular French grapes, such as pinot noir and sauvignon blanc.

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Selecting the best grape varieties for the region has always been important. But that suitability is no longer determined exclusively by the grape’s ability to ripen and its disease resistance. Intensive research into the site and regional climate analysis are required before settling on a plan, she explains.

Kruger and her team look at historic climate data from the region and order global satellite studies of the property, which Kruger explains are “like an X-ray of your body … it shows everything.” This research identifies natural factors relating to how the terrain slopes, which way the water flows and where warmer and cooler areas are.

The next step is to dig soil pits around the property to understand what is happening beneath the ground.

“If you can know what’s happening under the soil and above the soil, you can imagine what the wine will taste like,” Kruger explains.

One of her clients, Mullineux & Leeu Family Wines, releases a series of syrah and chenin blanc from the Swartland region based on the soil type where the grapes are grown, granite, iron and schist. The latter refers to a course-grained rock made of flaky layers.

“If they are schist soils, the wine will have more structure,” she explains. “If it’s sandy soils, you’ll have more perfume; if it’s clay, you’ll have more weight.”

She takes inspiration from South Africa’s oldest active vineyards, twisted and knotty chenin blanc, cinsault, palomino, sémillon and muscat d’Alexandrie bush vines planted in the early 1900s that show how the right vines, in the right place, with the right management can stand the test of time. She points to the resilience of the vines, with their innate ability to self-regulate even in extreme conditions.

In warmer parts of the country, wineries look to plant early ripening varieties that could be harvested before heatwaves. Kruger was one of the early champions of assyrtiko, a Greek variety that’s drought- and heat-resistant. Plantings of vermentino and nero d’Avola from Italy and other Mediterranean varieties are also increasing.

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For years, Kruger has been adjusting the orientation of vines to limit sun exposure to the grapes. To manage the prospects of heavy rains, she looks to plant vines in rows that conform with the natural lay of the land.

Once established, she believes that a vineyard’s longevity depends on a skilled labour force. Through her efforts with the Old Vine Project, established in 2016 to prevent the removal of old vineyards, Kruger established specialized training courses for vineyard workers on pruning techniques to improve sustainability.

Four per cent of South Africa’s vineyard areas are certified as old, with vines that are at least 35 years old. They produce less fruit, which means a lower return on investment for the farmer, but the ability of those grapes to produce wines with balance, structure and depth mean they are prized by winemakers. Kruger’s training team teaches workers selective and careful pruning methods, which increase the yield per vine so the vineyard can make money.

This is practical viticulture, she explains. “Let’s look for some solutions, because if we keep farming the way that we do, we’re going to run into serious trouble.”