Skip to main content

Time to lay down some wine before global warming kills off the vines?

Climate change's ever-widening tentacles......

"Champagne produced in southern England? Bordeaux in the Loire Valley?

Climate change is threatening to redraw the world's wine-producing map, and the effects are already being seen in earlier harvests and coarser wines, experts told an international conference Friday.


"The consequences of global warming are already being felt. Harvests are already coming 10 days earlier than before in almost all wine-growing regions," said Bernard Seguin, the head of climate studies at France's INRA agricultural research institute.


He was speaking at the opening of the Second International Congress on Wine and Climate Change.


More than 350 experts from 36 countries, including France, Spain, the United States, New Zealand and Australia, are taking part in the two-day conference in Barcelona.


It concludes Saturday with an address by former US vice president and climate campaigner Al Gore.


"Wine and wine-producing will change in a way that will depend on how we confront" global warming, said Seguin.


"If the temperature rises two or three degrees (centigrade), we could manage to see Bordeaux remain as Bordeaux, Rioja as Rioja, Burgundy as Burgundy. But if it goes up five or six degrees, we must face up to huge problems, and the changes will be hard," he said.
Grapes are damaged if they ripen too quickly, due to higher temperatures and a lack of rain.


"When a grape matures more quickly, you get higher concentrations of sugar, lower acidity and a higher PH level," said Fernando Zamora of the oenology faculty at the University of Tarragona in Spain.


The result is coarser wine, with a higher alcohol level and lower acidity which can destroy the delicate flavour of good quality wines, he said.


It would also lead to higher prices in countries which tax wine according to its alcohol level.
"The types of wines will change in almost all regions," said Vicente Sotes, a professor at the Polytechnic University.


And some regions which still produce good wine would no longer benefit from the ideal climatic conditions that are responsible for their world renown.


"The French will have problems," especially in the Bordeaux region, said Pancho Campos, the president of the Wine Academy of Spain, who organised the Barcelona conference.


"There are (French) Champagne producers who have bought land in Sussex and Kent," in southern England, he told the newspaper El Periodico.


German producers on the banks of the Rhine will be the least at risk, he said.


The French "Grand Crus" could be further threatened by the "New World" wines of Australia, California, Chile, Argentina, South Africa and New Zealand, who would have the best climatic conditions.


"The countries in the southern hemisphere are next to a greater mass of water, and it is sea currents which maintain the temperature at its level," said Campos."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reading the Chilcot Inquiry Report more closely

Most commentary on the Chilcot Inquiry Report of and associated with the Iraq War, has been "lifted" from the Executive Summary.   The Intercept has actually gone and dug into the Report, with these revelations : "THE CHILCOT REPORT, the U.K.’s official inquiry into its participation in the Iraq War, has finally been released after seven years of investigation. Its executive summary certainly makes former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the British push for war, look terrible. According to the report, Blair made statements about Iraq’s nonexistent chemical, biological, and nuclear programs based on “what Mr. Blair believed” rather than the intelligence he had been given. The U.K. went to war despite the fact that “diplomatic options had not been exhausted.” Blair was warned by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the

An unpalatable truth!

Quinoa has for the last years been the "new" food on the block for foodies. Known for its health properties, foodies the world over have taken to it. Many restaurants have added it to their menu. But, as this piece " Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa? " from The Guardian so clearly details, the cost to Bolivians and Peruvians - from where quinoa hails - has been substantial. "Not long ago, quinoa was just an obscure Peruvian grain you could only buy in wholefood shops. We struggled to pronounce it (it's keen-wa, not qui-no-a), yet it was feted by food lovers as a novel addition to the familiar ranks of couscous and rice. Dieticians clucked over quinoa approvingly because it ticked the low-fat box and fitted in with government healthy eating advice to "base your meals on starchy foods". Adventurous eaters liked its slightly bitter taste and the little white curls that formed around the grains. Vegans embraced quinoa as

Climate change: Well-organised hoax?

There are still some - all too sadly people with a voice who are listened to - who assert that climate change is a hoax. Try telling that to the people of Colorado who recently experienced horrendous bushfires, or the people of Croatia suffering with endless days of temps of 40 degrees (and not much less than 30 at night time) some 8-10 degrees above the norm. Bill McKibben, take up the issue of whether climate change is a hoax, on The Daily Beast : Please don’t sweat the 2,132 new high temperature marks in June—remember, climate change is a hoax. The first to figure this out was Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who in fact called it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” apparently topping even the staged moon landing. But others have been catching on. Speaker of the House John Boehner pointed out that the idea that carbon dioxide is “harmful to the environment is almost comical.” The always cautious Mitt Romney scoffed at any damage too: “Scientists will fig