Hybrid Grapes Are Paving the Way for Sustainable Vineyards

Stretching back to 6000 B.C., wine is one of our oldest alcoholic drinks. Steeped in tradition from location to religious rites, it doesn’t exactly inspire thoughts of innovation. Yet the wine industry is adapting. 

As the impacts climate change reach across our planet, wineries are caught in the crosshairs. An astounding 70 percent of the world’s wine-producing regions may become unsuitable if global temperatures rise above 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels, according to recent research.

To add insult to injury, increased disease is another potential impact of global warming. Unfortunately, vineyards are already plagued with expensive fungal diseases, costing at least $1.5 billion per year to replace dead vines globally.

Yet there’s an underdog in the wine world ripe for saving the day: hybrid grapes. Once passed over for more traditional wines like merlot or malbec, these grapes are coming into their own. Resistant to many diseases, could hybrids be the key to a more sustainable, wine-forward future?

Hybrid wine 101

Hybrid wines are a little different than their purebred counterparts. The familiar varieties of wine — like chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon and riesling — all come from the European grapevine Vitis vinifera.

Yes, that stunning array of wines in the supermarket aisle is just one species. Hybrids are a cross between two different species, usually the European Vitis vinifera with the North American species Vitis labrusca or Vitis riparia. 

Hybrids have several advantages. Besides disease resistance, they flourish in colder climates. If you’ve gone wine-tasting in a region like New York or Michigan, you may have tried varieties like chambourcin, traminette or vidal blanc. 

While hybrids are nothing new, they haven’t always been in favor. They were banned in certain European wine regions until 2021. Despite that, some areas have grown hybrid wines for centuries.

“In Germany, we've always had quite a long history with crossbreeding because we have a cool climate region here, which means that we have a lot of problems with fungi, a lot of pressure on the grapes with sickness,” said Florian Koch, head of education at the German Wine Institute. “You can look back even to the beginning of the 19th century, the first cross-breedings were introduced simply with the goal of increasing the resistance to fungi and different diseases.”

The rest of the world is wising up to hybrid wines’ appeal for a good reason: pesticide use.

Pesticides in your pinot 

Your favorite cabernet might bring dark fruit and chocolate to mind, but unfortunately, pesticides are probably in there too. For instance, a recent study found 25 different pesticide residues in wine. Fungicides and insecticides were the most common.

That’s not surprising given French vineyards are sprayed 20 times per year with pesticides. This helps ward off diseases, insects, and weeds but also damages soil biodiversity, pollutes water, and harms wine growers, workers and neighbors. These chemicals can end up at the consumers’ door (or lips). Even organic wines use copper sulfate to combat diseases, which can harm the soil if used in excess.

Things aren’t looking rosier as climate change intensifies. Wine is particularly sensitive to climate change, with water scarcity and heat already threatening the industry. But that’s not all, diseases are looming on the horizon. While global predictions for major grapevine diseases — including downy mildew, powdery mildew and gray mold — are uncertain under climate change, some regions are bracing for an impact. For instance, New Zealand could lose up to $100 million per year from increasing fungal infections.

Hybrid grapes as a sustainable solution

Despite this bleak outlook, hybrid grapes, which are resistant to many fungal and bacterial diseases, are a promising solution. Switching to hybrid grapes from traditional ones can decrease pesticide use by up to an astounding 90 percent, Koch said. They also fit squarely into the new set of agricultural policy initiatives in the European Green Deal.

“In Europe, we have the Green Deal, which [includes] an agreement of the European states to reduce the use of [pesticide] sprayings by 50 percent overall,” Koch said. “So this is a big help for us if we've got grape varieties where we can drastically reduce the use of sprayings. Also, we've got a plan to go organic by 30 percent of our acreage.”

In addition, Koch explained that hybrids can have other advantages such as withstanding intense sunlight, being easier to harvest and having looser clusters — which further reduces susceptibility to fungus. Many hybrids can also withstand extreme weather and are ideal for producing dessert, ice wines. 

Hindrances to hybrid adoption

In spite of their benefits, hybrid grapes are still novel. They’re planted in less than 5 percent of vineyards globally for a variety of reasons. For starters, marketing a new, unknown wine can be challenging since grape variety is critical in wine choice. 

“The huge problem is that we do not have the profile of [hybrid grapes] as of now because the winemakers only knew about these varietals for 10 to 15 years,” Koch said. “When you're thinking of riesling, you think high acidity, very aromatic, lemon tones, green apple, honey. But when you're thinking of johanniter, you have no idea what it's going to be like.” 

Then there’s the critical factor in wine taste: terroir, or the environmental factors of the region that influence production.

“Riesling or silvaner, for example, are heavily influenced by the terroir, by climate, by soil, by the rocks that you have, by yeast, by sunshine hours,” Koch said. “And we do not know yet how this will affect stuff like vidal blanc. We’ll have to wait and see. We've got 2000 years of experience with riesling but two years of experience with cabernet blanc.”

Koch pointed out that wine name also matters. For instance, the German name for hybrid grapes, pilzwiderstandsfähige reben, translates to “fungus-resistant grape varieties,” hardly the most appealing moniker. And laboratories have created other, difficult-to-pronounce names for hybrid wines.

Future of wine

Despite this fledging market, interest in sustainable wine is on the rise, particularly in the United States and United Kingdom. While the overall wine market in the U.S. is predicted to decline over the next few years, the organic, natural, sustainable and biodynamic segment is poised to grow. Nearly half of American drinkers consider sustainability in their purchasing decisions, while hybrids are among the fastest-growing wine varieties in Germany.

“Everyone is trying to do their best,” Koch said. “This is our version of it. We see the results and they're great, actually. I mean, reducing [pesticide] sprayings by up to 90 percent is immense — thousands of tons of sprayings in Germany alone. And it still produces amazing wines.”

Next time you’re in the wine aisle, try a bottle with a little hybrid vigor. After all, sustainability is always the perfect palate.