What is the impact of global warming on wine regions and the wine industry in general?
Global warming (or the broader term climate change) is both a natural and anthropogenic phenomenon (involving the impact of man on nature) responsible for the increase in average temperatures on the surface of the earth and the oceans over time. Impacts include warmer days and fewer cold nights, heat waves, droughts, erratic seasonal cycles, and other extreme weather patterns. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an initiative of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the increase over the last century has been 1.33 °F (0.74°C).
The main anthropogenic culprits of climate change are stratospheric ozone depletion and emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone gases, which are primarily the result of anthropogenic activities such as fossil fuel use and agriculture. These gases cause the so-called greenhouse effect, first observed by the French mathematician Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier (1768-1830) from the famous Fourier transform in 1824 but not quantified until 1896 by the Swedish physical chemist Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927). . The greenhouse effect is a phenomenon by which radiation from gases trapped in the atmosphere causes warming of the Earth’s lower atmosphere, surface, and oceans.
The study and forecast of climate change is a gigantic scientific endeavor, as it relies on very complex and highly intertwined factors that are studied over long periods of time and on complex models to predict future impacts. Although there is much debate in the scientific community, and in the political arena, regarding the extent of impacts and timing of climate change, one thing is for sure; The impacts of climate change are real and the world must take immediate action to mitigate them.
What impact does climate change have on the wine industry?
Communications director for the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, Mark Shwartz, cites a 2006 study led by Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of Earth system environmental sciences at Stanford, which, based on an analysis of historical data of California, Oregon and Washington, concludes that “global warming could reduce the current U.S. wine grape region by 81 percent by the end of the century.” Now that’s an apocalyptic prediction!
Over time, man has planted and replanted grape cultivars that are best suited to regional and local climates. For example, it is well known that Pinot Noir is better suited to cool climate wine growing areas for premium wine making. The effects of global warming and climate change would transform cold climate regions into subtropical regions and subtropical regions into tropical regions. Cultivars adapted to one type of region could no longer thrive in a different climatic region. It would be like trying to grow Pinot Noir in Central America today. The grapes would develop higher sugar levels and a corresponding increase in alcohol, reduced acidity which will create balance challenges, but probably without a proportional increase in flavor profile, flavor development takes time, not necessarily more pungency. Vineyards would then have to be replanted with more suitable cultivars, a fairly expensive proposition, particularly considering that it takes on average five years for new vines to produce wine-worthy grapes.
Otherwise, vineyards will face many new viticultural challenges, such as: a shorter growing season that may not allow grapes to develop optimum maturity to make premium wines, increased irrigation which means more water use , which is already a scarce resource, and a significantly higher capital. and operating costs, and a whole series of new pests and diseases that will require new technologies and means to combat them.
Entire companies can be severely affected. Consider the existing situation in Germany where to do Eiswein (Icewine) year after year is not a given as the necessary winter conditions are not guaranteed. If there will no longer be cold winters, there will be no deep frosts to make those delicious sweet nectars of the gods and growing grapes in Champagne to make high acid wines for bubbly will also become a challenge. On the other hand, we could see wines, perhaps even premium wines, produced in non-traditional wine-producing areas, such as the UK and Scandinavia.
Although wine regions around the world have adopted and are implementing sustainable agricultural and wine practices, it is up to all of us to go “greener” and support climate change mitigation measures, at least for the sake of wine.
* Excerpt from “MYTHS, FACTS AND WINE SLUB: 81 Questions and Answers on the Science and Enjoyment of Wine” by Daniel Pambianchi (Véhicule Press, 2010).