Europe’s oldest vineyards threatened by solar power
Home to Spain’s oldest Tempranillo plantings, D.O. Toro’s ancient vineyards are under threat – not from climate change, but subsidies that encourage the installation of solar panels on farmland.
That was one of the more troubling revelations from an interview last week with Bodega Numanthia’s estate director Julio Rodriguez and head winemaker Jesús Jiménez.
Expecting the producers to mention heatwaves and drought as the major threats to viticulture in Toro, db came away surprised to learn that there is a different and more immediate challenge to the incredible pre-phylloxera plants in the region, which is located in Zamora, Castile and León, and home to a highly adapted, robust local clone of Tempranillo called Tinto de Toro.
These grapes are used by the property to make its deliciously rich and long-lived red wines, notably Numanthia’s flagship Termanthia – an expression from ungrafted vines with an average age of 120 years old.
However, due to financial assistance for installing solar panels on farmland, some landowners are opting to switch from grape-growing to supplying energy to the country’s grid because the returns are better.
As a result, one of the motivating forces driving Rodriguez and Jiménez to raise awareness for Toro’s wines from Tempranillo is a desire to preserve the region’s ancient vines, which are relics of viticulture as practised centuries ago.
200 year-old ungrafted vines
“Some of the vineyards are 200 years-old, and they have survived because they have always made such good wine – the owners over history have never pulled them out because the grapes were excellent,” Rodriguez told db in London on 14 May, stressing that the vines are old because the wines they yield are good, and not the other way round.
Although long prized for their quality, these vineyards are now disappearing due to a distortion of free-market forces that are encouraging farmers to move to renewable energy production at the expense of longstanding agricultural practices in Toro.
And the scale of the vineyard losses are significant, according to Rodriguez.
The total area of vineyards in DO Toro is 5,500 hectares, he said, and, in the past five years alone, 2,000ha around the village of Toro is now devoted to the panels, which convert sunlight into electricity.
The incentive to move away from farming is financial, he explained. “Many of the owners in this remote part of Spain don’t live in the area anymore, and they get more return from the land by renting it for solar panels than they get for agricultural activity.”
And the difference in income is substantial. “The best-case scenario for net profit from selling grapes would be €700 per hectare, but they [the landowners] are being promised €2,000 per hectare for 20 years for the solar panels,” he recorded.
Rodriguez is sympathetic to the growers’ predicament. “Many of the landowners in Toro are old, and this [renting the land to solar farms] is the only opportunity for them to finish their lives with some income,” he said.
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Toro’s disappearing patrimony
The tragic outcome, however, is that “Toro is losing its patrimony”, and, the array of black glass installations in this rural landscape “looks awful.”
Toro has become a hub for large-scale renewable energy production using photovoltaic panels due to its high level of sunlight, making it an attractive source of solar power.
While such vineyard losses are extremely concerning, especially as they include very old ungrafted Tinto de Toro, it should be noted that more recent European Union and Spanish government-backed financial incentives promote mixed land uses, combining the solar installations with other agricultural activities – as opposed to a wholesale switch.
As previously written about by db, Numanthia manage around 150 hectares of vines in Toro at an average altitude of 700m, of which 85ha are owned by the winery, all of which are certified organic, along with a further 15ha that are managed by the bodega.
Toro has the largest extent of centenarian vines in Spain, with around 500 hectares, although, despite their extraordinary age, the value of these ancient vineyards is low – around €25,000 per hectare, according to figures from 2022.
Such is Numanthia’s concern for the future wellbeing of Toro’s old vines, the bodega became one of the first sponsors of The Old Vine Conference, which is a new global movement to nurture and value great old vines, and their wines.
Green but low-yielding
One of the reasons why growers in Toro find it hard to draw an income from the region’s old vines is due to their extremely low yields – with Rodriguez telling db that production could be as low as 7.5hl/ha, which is probably the lowest in the world, except for certain sites where late-picked botrytised grapes are harvested, such as Tokaji in Hungary.
While the vineyards in Toro may not always be financially sustainable, they are some of the most environmentally sustainable on the planet – being farmed for the most part without irrigation, fertilisers or pesticides.
Moët Hennessy acquired Toro’s Bodega Numanthia from its founders, the Eguren family, in early 2008.
Read more
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‘Save the old vines’ pleads Spanish Master of Wine
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