Spanish winemaker Torres warms to environmentalism

Climate change could devastate vineyards so Miguel Torres is preparing his family company for the worst
Elena Moya
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 October 2009 18.27 GMT
Southern Britain may not be the only place in the world where risk-loving vintners can take a chance on global warming. Climate change is already changing habits at vineyards in southern Europe, forcing some producers, such as Spain's Torres, to buy land in the Pyrenees – "just in case", says the company's chairman, Miguel Torres.
Production of pinot noir and chardonnay at 1,200 metres above sea level has already started, showing no less quality than the wine produced on the gentle hills of the Penedès region, just south of Barcelona. Fears are growing, however, that lowland areas could be reduced to dust in a couple of generations. "Temperatures have already risen by one degree," Torres says. "If they increase by five, southern Europe will be full of arid steppes." This one-degree rise has already brought forward the harvest by 12 or 13 days, he says. "Vineyards are very sensitive."
Torres has donated €10m (£9m) of his own money to environmental issues, and is aiming to reduce the output of CO2 in the winery by 30% by 2020. He has a hybrid car and has bought them for his staff, invested in a wind park and is experimenting with the capture and use of CO2 from wine fermentation.
The businessman has not used synthetic chemicals in his vineyards for more than 20 years, instead using insect traps baited with sex pheromones secreted by females to trap the males and thereby stop reproduction.
Next week, the 67-year-old will wine and dine, in his home, 200 environmental experts, who are meeting in Barcelona before the Copenhagen climate conference in December. "We want to show them that they're not alone," he says, "that here, in the [wine] industry, we are also very worried about this.
"It would be dramatic to have a very hot year, such as 2003, coinciding with a drought," he muses. "Luckily, we had a lot of rain in the spring of 2003."
The fourth generation of a family that has produced wine in Catalonia since 1870, the veteran vintner has increased exports, which now account for two-thirds of the company's almost €200m annual sales. Britain is Torres's top export market, with 4.2m bottles sold a year, including brands such as Sangre de Toro and Viña Sol. The company also sells, in upmarket shops, high-end brands such as Salmos Priorat, for £16.99, or its top Reserva Real, for £68. Is it worth that much?
"It's a matter of perception," Torres says as he shakes a glass of red to bring out the aroma before smelling it and having a sip.
He says he would not spend the £8 or £9 charged for a large glass of wine in many UK bars and pubs. But the 19th-century Bordeaux he opened at a 50th birthday party in Germany is the best he has ever tasted. "You closed your eyes and you could hear the birds – it was impressive."
Wine in the UK is more expensive as each bottle faces £1.61 of tax, Torres says. The popular Sangre de Toro ("bull's blood") sells for €4.05 in Spain – without the little plastic bull tied to the bottle here – compared with £6.99 in Britain.
In any case, wine is a matter of quality, not quantity, Torres says. He drinks half a bottle a day – "as much as the doctor lets me" – and always with food, he stresses.
Torres claims to have only passed out once, when he was 10, after drinking cava, wine and champagne at a family party. Since then, he says he only became a bit "dizzy" after a heavy lunch in Madrid, in 1991 – he remembers the date as the bill reached €600 after he ordered a few wines to show to a journalist. It is a sampling that he has never repeated, he says.
Motivated
Moderation is the idea that Torres wants to engrave in his family business, shying away from a glamorous lifestyle. The biggest present to his children was to pay for half of the homes they bought when they married. He has never given them cars and he pays them as much as other employees of the same level at the company, which now employs some 1,200 people.
Torres feels he is fair to his staff, as after reading Marx and Bakunin in his youth, he "can understand how workers feel, and the need to have a motivated workforce," he says. The funds he allocates to his employees' pensions surpass the 5% of profits that are distributed to shareholders – all family members, he says.
He learned about life and the less privileged in society when he fled Franco's Spain to study oenology in Dijon, France, as young man. "They didn't tell us about the poor," he says of his posh Barcelona school. But he remembers the darkest days of the Franco dictatorship, in the late 1940s, when those with almost nothing could see the diners in the open-air restaurants of Barcelona's Passeig de Gràcia through the hedges put up to screen the tables. This was as close as the poorest got to food, Torres recalls.
In France, where he went to study after dropping out of the University of Barcelona, Torres saw an open society. It was far from insular Spain, "where girls had to be home at 10 o'clock, otherwise their fathers would go out to find them", he says.
Torres married a German holidaymaker, a painter whom he met one summer in the more liberal coastal town of Sitges, south of Barcelona. They have three children.
For four generations, the Torres business has been passed from "father to son", with no woman leading the company. Now, the son and daughter employed at the firm are both capable of running it when he retires in two or three years, he says, unwilling to give more details. "Family businesses are very delicate issues," he admits. He has hired advisers to "look for the right equilibrium for the fifth generation".
Above all, he wants to make sure that the company stays loyal to what he calls its principles of honesty, profitability and quality. A stockmarket flotation is far from his thoughts: "That would be a deadly sin – that would send us to hell; that's when you become short-termist."
Disputes
Family ownership guarantees a patient and long-term outlook, much needed in the wine industry, Torres says, adding that his firm re-invests 95% of its profits in the business. Torres says he learned to be patient when his father refused to pass control of the company to him, believing that he would "die while working" some day. After taking a year off in Montpellier at the age of 40 to distance himself from family disputes, Torres says: "As my father saw me more relaxed, he started to yield control."
During his tenure, Torres has been more focused on production than his father, who was a "great salesman", he says. He has improved technology and will start producing organic wine for the Spanish market this year.
A traditionalist, he is also keen to revive ancient varieties of Catalan grapes, which are in danger of disappearing. The region once had more than 100 varieties of vines but after the phylloxera epidemic of the mid-19th century, only a dozen have survived. In the past 15 years, he has rediscovered 58 types by contacting farmers and asking them to alert him when they find a vine they do not recognise.
Apart from tending his 2,000 hectares of vineyards in Chile, California and Catalonia, Torres also plans to expand his olive oil business as demand for healthy Mediterranean products grows around the world. Good habits and moderation are the key, he says, as he heads off for a short siesta.
Born: Barcelona, 1941.
Education: Started chemistry at Barcelona University but dropped out a year later, in 1958, to join University of Dijon (Burgundy, France), specialising in oenology and viticulture.
Career: Joined the family business in 1962; became president after his father died in 1991.
Married: Waltraud Maczassek, from Germany, with whom he has three children.
Hobbies: Reading, being with grandchildren, and sports including cycling, tennis, skiing and jogging.
Books: In 1977 he published Vines and Wines, which has been translated from Spanish into Catalan, French, English, German, Norwegian, Finnish and Japanese. Has also written Spanish Wine: An Uncertain Future (1979), and The Distinctive Wines of Catalonia (1982).