Wine and Global Warning

This
February, in Barcelona, Spain, will be the Climate Change
& Wine 2OO8 conference. Normally, I try to get people to
join me for a conference, but this time I’m hoping someone
else attends and reports back to me. Just to define it,
“climate” is the average temperature over a long period of
time with the standard averaging period being thirty years.
Even though you could have an above freezing, sunny day in
January here in New England, on average it will be below
freezing. “Climate change” would be a significant difference
in the average temperature. At present the average world
temperature is increasing a third of a degree every 1O
years, or three degrees in a hundred years. As little as
this may seem, it is in fact massive. As context, the
difference in average world temperature between a period of
“ice age” and the warmest period on earth is only five
degrees. Further, a three-degree increase in one-hundred
years is the most rapid seen in over ten thousand
years.

Dr. Gregory Jones from
Southern Oregon University reported on twenty-seven
different wine regions within a fifty year period. His study
compared Sotheby’s hundred point system with historical
trends in quality and growing season temperatures. It also
looked at a model projecting these regions over the next
fifty years. Researchers found that the growing season
temperatures have definitely increased over the past fifty
years, on average two degrees. The study showed a
significant relationship between the vintage rating and the
monthly average growing season temperature in most regions.
In hotter regions, the flavor development is going to get
harder and harder to achieve. Former cooler regions will
have to adapt to the weather by making varietal changes as
its former grapes will have difficultly in the new increased
temperature.

Consistent with climate
change concerns, Champagne houses, such as Roederer, are
going to England, specifically around Kent and Sussex, to
find alternate sites for sparkling wine production.
According to Roederer’s Group President, Jean-Claude
Rouzaud, “The company might consider investment in southern
England where the chalk soils are similar to those in
Champagne. But we would need to be convinced that global
warming and the pattern of climate change are permanent.” As
climate change is imminent, this would be a smart business
decision. Perhaps Piedmont should look to Switzerland or the
Napa Valley to the Okanagan Valley – cooler regions to the
north.

Certainly for the short
term (meaning perhaps decades) some areas will benefit from
climate change, as we have seen in Burgundy. Six out of the
last ten years in the Cote du Nuits have been exceptional or
rated 9O or greater points by the ubiquitous Robert Parker.
This is not the norm. One can also see that the style of
Alsace has changed. A bone dry, ice-picks-on-your-tongue
acidity is becoming harder and harder to find. The fat,
richer, lower acidity style that is born of warmer seasons
is becoming much more commonplace. One is certainly not
greater than the other, yet the weather patterns and their
effects cannot be ignored.

For now I have been looking
at the 2OO6 vintage reports with a little more attention to
figure out what wines I ought to lay down so my daughter can
experience wines from her birth year. To drink your birth
year has always been a joy to experience that I want my
daughter to encounter for years. Yet, when conceptualizing
this article, another factor was now on my mind. What styles
of wine, because of climate change, will my daughter not be
able to experience without some studied drinking in her
twenties? The clean slate and mineral driven Mosels will
likely be rare; Riesling may in fact no longer be planted
there in 3O to 4O years. Spatburgunder could be the quality
grape of choice in that region thereby making a classic
white-wine region a red region. It could become the norm
that Chateauneuf du Pape can only be experienced from fluke
cool years because the climate now cooks the grapes and
philonic ripeness is impossible. The only thing that might
be able to grow in the Rutherford dust is perhaps only dust.
Napa Valley may wither in the heat, especially on the valley
floor where temperatures already reach over 1OO degrees at
times; buy up those famous names from the floor while you
still can. It’s enough to make me want a Prius . .
.