Sogrape Vinhos' R&D is making available forecasting models that support the planning of wine strategies and operations. These models are an important step in adapting to the challenges of an increasingly unstable climatic future, namely in selecting sites for new vineyards, varieties, and port-grafts to be planted, management of operations in the vineyard, the decision of vintage dates and even anticipation of consumption trends in different world markets.

In recent years, Sogrape Vinhos has been collaborating in an international study led by the Royal Meteorological Institute of the Netherlands (KNMI). This initiative is aimed at creating tools capable of monitoring climate change over Europe, with particular attention to the occurrence of extreme events.

"Climate change and variability profoundly affect wine production. Climate change has the potential to change the characteristics of the wine produced in each region, in addition to increasing its variability from year to year", explains António Graça, responsible for Sogrape's Research & Development (R&D) area, which collaborates directly in the mentioned study, made in the scope of the European Climate Assessment and Dataset (ECA&D).

"The challenge for the wine community is to closely monitor climate change in order to adapt its production and commercial practices in a timely manner," António Graça says about Sogrape's special interest in participating in an international study in this area.

In fact, in the context of this study on climate change, Sogrape Vinhos makes available to KNMI data collected in a network of 20 automatic weather stations located in several vineyards of the company, from North to South of Portugal, which record continuously and every 15 minutes parameters like temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind and solar radiation.

Sogrape contributes so that a tool called "Climate Explorer", accessible on the Internet and which allows the visualization of data from more than 11,000 weather stations dedicated to the observation of climate change, can also be used in the territory of Portugal.

The importance of this tool was also evident in the interest shown by the community gathered at the World Congress on Vineyard and Wine in 2017, where Sogrape Vinhos presented the study and the "Climate Explorer". The data collected allows to accurately analyze climate evolution, detect extreme events, identify new trends and feed forecasting models that are increasingly accurate and efficient.

The extension of this type of services to South America is already underway, and it is anticipated that Sogrape Group companies in Argentina (Finca Flichman) and Chile (Viña Los Boldos) will soon be able to benefit from this type of services as well.