A New Age Of Wine

Hi everyone and welcome to the interview and analysis corner! This week, Meg’s going to give us an update on the global wine industry and how it’s being affected by climate change.

While all seems to be okay in the traditional wine regions of the world, changing weather patterns may give us a completely different wine map in the next few decades. Let’s dig in.

Hi there, Meg speaking.

Last month, Nature Reviews released a study that outlined the effects of climate change on wine production. 

In short, we wine-drinkers should be a little worried. The study found that drought and more frequent heat waves are “affecting grape yield, composition and wine quality” with some regions potentially losing the ability to produce top quality wines altogether.

This could create an entirely new geographical lay-out of wine production. 

The situation

Current wine-growing regions are located where the environment is warm enough to encourage grape ripening, but cold enough so that grapevines can grow.

These areas are called “mid-latitudes” and, famously, include places like California, Southern France, Northern Spain and Italy.

However, higher temperatures have not only delayed harvesting times in these regions, but have also affected the sugar concentration of grapes, which can compromise the taste of the wine altogether.

And, while grapes can still be produced, these regions have seen harvests delayed by up to three weeks over the last 40 years. 

These changes in harvest times have even been seen to affect the wine-alcohol level in production hubs like Bordeaux!

What’s to come? 

With 90% of the traditional wine-producing regions - Spain, Italy, Southern California - under threat from rising temperatures, there is a chance that these wine havens could disappear altogether by the end of the century.

On top of that, extreme weather breeds an environment perfect for pests and diseases, affecting not just grape yield, but agricultural practices more generally.

Of course, there are winners and losers in this situation. Warmer temperatures are likely to create new wine-production hubs like Northern France, Oregon, Tasmania, Washington and, shockingly, the South of England.

A need to worry?

Obviously, damage to the established wine production line is worrying for manufacturers, suppliers, and consumers. But there is another layer to this.

Wine is unique and the quality of the wine is often dependent on region, history, and grape type. In fact, the reputation of a region from which a bottle of wine comes is often the reason why some bottles can cost more than $1000.

But now, given that new regions will be more suitable for producing wine, the wine market itself could be entirely reconstructed. 

Adaptation and innovation

It could be argued that these projections are overly pessimistic as they don’t account for growers ability to adapt to changing weather.

Some farmers will be able to utilise different plant material, training systems, and seasonal management practices.

And, from a more biological perspective, wine producers may even be able to diversify their grapevine varieties as, at the moment, each wine region tends to have its go-to grape type.

In this new wine age that battles the heat, wine growers may make hybrid bottles of wine made from several varieties of grape that are more heat resistant.

What should we expect?

Ultimately, I believe that, whichever route wine producers take, we are about to see a new wave of wine reaching the shelves over the coming decades.

While reversing the effects of climate change would be preferable to some, the most recent data is showing that precarious temperatures aren’t going away soon.

So, in the meantime, whether it is the emergence of new wine producing regions or the hybrid model of wine production, customers and connoisseurs will have to brace for impact and, potentially, change their definitions of “quality”.