2011

A year of climatic anomalies and extremes

The day after the umpteenth climate anomaly of the year 2011, a well-known weather forecast website opened with the headline “Italy, closer and closer to becoming a land of extremes”. This was a reference to the alternation between unseasonal warm weather and early cold snaps, something we will have to get used to by accepting the fact that we have entered a new climate era in which the abnormal is the new normal.

Though such a claim may be proven wrong by the “extremely” normal weather conditions of 2012, the agro-meteorological report for 2011 indicated four climatic anomalies:

1. Very warm April, nearly as warm as in 2003

2. April and May have never seen so little rain

3. July and early August have never been so cool

4. Late August and September have never been so hot

“Never” means that periods with such weather conditions (for instance, the highest April temperatures in 200 years, or the highest September temperatures since 1895, even higher than in July) had not been registered in a long time and, in some cases, as far as man can remember.

More specifically, the 2011 weather conditions in the Langa and Roero area can be summed up as follows:

• A relatively dry winter season with below-average rainfall and snowfall;

• In March, it rained twice as much as in 2009 and 2010, with above-average temperatures which, from late March on, caused rapid bud-break and unusually early lengthening of the buds;

• In April and May it rained very little (3 mm in May in Monforte d’Alba) with well-above-average temperatures in April (early April was so warm that it was called “fake summer”), which, around May 9-10, caused an early flowering of the Nebbiolo plants and berry-set around the 17th-20th, about 15 days earlier than in 2010;

• In June, precipitation was high in the first ten days, with temperatures within average, so grape growth proceeded at a regular pace and, at the end of the month, Dolcetto grapes were already starting the veraison process;

• In July and in early August, a significant and steady drop in temperatures with little rainfall did not, however, affect the plants’ growth cycle. In fact, the veraison process began regularly on all plants in the first ten days of July and was completed at the end of the month;

• Over the second and third ten days of August, temperatures rose enough to accelerate the grapes’ ripening process and pushed the harvest of the early varieties ahead of schedule, to prevent the alcohol from becoming overpowering;

• In September, it rained very little and temperatures were so exceptionally high that the grapes were harvested early in the morning during the first part of the month. Harvesting of Barbera grapes began in the second ten days of September while, for Nebbiolo grapes, it began in the last ten days and was completed within the end of the month.

In late September, the temperature summation (the totality of effective day-degrees above 10°C) reached 1830° in Monforte and La Morra and 2000° and higher in the Barbaresco and in the Serralunga areas: that is, 250-400 degrees more than in 2010, despite the cool temperatures registered in July and early August.

Therefore, this was a very early and warm vintage with low vineyard yields, comparable with other warm vintages such as 1997, 2003 (in part), 2007 and 2009, whose perfect phenolic maturity and well-balanced alcohol component are due to good vineyard management, including proper green harvesting and canopy management. In 2011, however, the intense heat was registered only at the end of the season, which is what distinguishes the 2011 vintage from the above-mentioned ones, so it would be better matched with other vintages, such as 1996.

As usual, Nebbiolo is the only variety that did not suffer from the excessive heat of the summer (by being burned and drying), and gave grapes with top-quality tannins and anthocyanins in addition to an excellent acidity and bouquet.