Climate change has certainly been big news in the past few years. Citizens of the world are rightly concerned about the effects of climate change on the most important aspects of our daily lives, with everything from where we live, to where we eat, to the things we buy and use being looked at in fine detail to see how they are being affected by a warming planet. One aspect of climate change’s effects that is often overlooked as not being as important as others is the impact it is having and will continue to have on global wine production.
We humans have been drinking wine ever since we first realised that old, overripe and fermented fruits had an intoxicating effect when consumed. Indeed, consuming fermented fruits is not limited to humans. Many of the more intelligent animals like elephants will also recreationally consume fermented fruits with an alcoholic content for much the same reason we do. Over the millennia, wine making has become a highly formalised and scientific process, and wine itself has become inextricably linked to thousands of global cultures spanning the centuries.
Sadly, as with food and drink production in general, climate change is making it much harder for even the longest established vineyards to survive a changing world. Grape vines have been heavily cultivated to adapt them to the conditions they are grown in, but this process can take centuries. Climate change is rapidly accelerating, meaning that the conditions grapes are grown in are changing too quickly for nature and even the most knowledgeable botanists and horticulturists to keep up, with often devastating consequences for the individual producer and the industry as a whole.
Fair weather, fine grapes
In order to ripen to perfection and become transformed into the finest wines, a grape needs its growing conditions to be just so. A bout of poor weather can spell disaster for a crop, causing grapes to shrivel on the vine, rapidly over ripen, or rot. The most productive wine regions have always experienced the odd period of inclement grape growing weather, but historically these were few and far between, and often did not result in total crop loss.
As climate change takes hold, these drop destroying weather conditions are happening more and more often and have worse consequences than ever before. In fact, wine producers in the hardest hit regions have to replant their vines or close their businesses altogether much more often than those that are not yet suffering the effects as strongly. These parts of the world should serve as a stark warning of things to come because the effects are likely to intensify for everyone over the coming decades.
Wine makers adapting to change
Though this may all sound like wine making has a grim future, you won’t have to say goodbye to your favourite Italian or French wine anytime soon. In fact, wine making is set to have a relatively secure future as long as producers and consumers are both willing to roll with the punches and adapt to the coming changes within the industry. The good news is that, despite these rapid changes, wine regions are expected to expand in the coming years rather than get smaller.
One of the biggest adaptations that growers will have to make is trying out grape varieties that have traditionally been grown elsewhere. For example, as wine making regions in Europe become hotter and drier they may find a solution in looking at the grape varieties grown in more equatorial regions and the Southern Hemisphere. This is because varieties grown in these hotter, more arid regions are more resistant to extremes of heat and dry conditions.
An unexpected effect of climate change is that it is encouraging good wine producing weather in parts of the world that do not have a strong wine making tradition. For example, parts of Scandinavia and other parts of northern Europe now find themselves able to grow vines very successfully and are now starting to make waves in the wine community. With time and dedication, it will be possible for producers to adapt their approaches and technologies to keep the markets flowing with favourite vintages as well as new and exciting wines.