This is the title of a piece I wrote for Imbibe Magazine in 2019. I was alarmed by the fact that across Europe, irrigation was becoming the default adaptation strategy. This is a mistake: Irrigation may promise short-term/immediate security - but ultimately, it’s an acceleration toward collapse. It may buy that harvest, but it sells the future ones.
The EU’s historic ban on irrigation in top appellations was not only about quality, but about yield equality: creating an economic level playing field. It has also become, unknowingly, an early climate-resilience policy, protecting both terroir, soil health, and water.
I have been watching the rules unravel since 2006 when the Languedoc droughts were the catalyst to the Sarkozy-era liberalisation. Agriculture Minister Dominique Bussereau authorised the first major loosening of the irrigation ban. This was the beginning of the “derogation system”: irrigation could be allowed after flowering, by prefectoral decree, for certain AOCs or IGPs under supervised conditions. The intention was to make French viticulture “competitive” with New World producers (especially Spain, Australia, and California) who were achieving stable yields through drip irrigation. Since 2017, INAO and EU continued reforms have allowed “emergency” irrigation, and national decrees keep widening the loopholes.
But we are going the wrong way. I see everyone sinking to the same lowest common denominator. Instead of dry farmers joining the irrigation brigade, the irrigators should convert to dry farming. But with a market so distorted, there is no incentive - apparently, not even the fear of no water. I’ve had producers admit to me that they will irrigate until they are told they cannot or there is no water left.
What if the EU ban were made a global policy? If all producers were subject to the same yield constraints, dry farming would remain viable, both economically and environmentally. The only reason many European growers feel forced to irrigate is because their competitors can inflate yields. I’m usually an anti-regulation sort of person, but in the context of our global water crisis, I cannot see any viable justification for irrigating a luxury crop with freshwater for profit. The world does not need more diluted chardonnay.
In regions where groundwater is collapsing and agriculture is rationed, continuing to irrigate vineyards for premium wines (who buy the water rights/certificates) reveals an ethical fracture in our industry. It suggests that profit now ranks above both people and place. It’s not climate that’s forcing irrigation; it’s market pressure.
Why not instead reinforce the Old World’s dry-farming ethos, not abandon it. If the global wine sector applied yield caps tied to water use, rewarding producers who limit yields to what their land can naturally sustain, we’d create both equity and resilience. It’s hard to hear, but it’s the only way to transition the sector away from dependency and to future-proof wine quality - and wine itself.
#EuropeanUnion #INAO #OIV #EUGreenDeal #FarmToFork #CommonAgriculturalPolicy #ClimatePolicy #WaterGovernance #SustainableAgriculture #UNSDG