"With wine, we can taste climate change," says Gregory V. Jones, a climatologist at Southern Oregon University who is a leading researcher in the burgeoning field of wine-region climate studies and the son of an Oregon vintner. "You can honestly argue that Bordeaux is better off today. They can now consistently ripen their grapes."
The year 2005 was the warmest recorded in the United States in the 150 years that good records have been maintained. And each of the last nine years has been among the 25 warmest on record in the U.S. Globally, each of the last 15 years has been in the top 25 hottest years on record.
The acute environmental sensitivity of wine grapes separates vineyards from other agricultural systems, says Dan Cayan, a climate researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "If you believe the viticulturists and their classifications of where premium wine can, and cannot, be produced, and you impose the global warming projections," he says, "you find some areas would possibly be thrust into a climate no longer suited to the grapes now grown there."
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Breaking tradition
THE wine world is scrambling to guard against disaster. In a stunning bow to climate change, French wine regulators last month approved the use of vineyard irrigation, reversing centuries of tradition to rescue regions suddenly too hot for dry farming.
UC Davis scientists are breeding new strains of vines and root stocks that can better survive extremes of heat and drought. Spanish vintners are studying whether they can plant vineyards in the cooler foothills of the Pyrenees. Belgium, Denmark and even Sweden are jumping into viticulture.
The changes in traditional viticulture challenge the cherished French notion of \o7terroir \f7-- the predictable expression of soils, climate and traditions in the grapes identified with a particular place -- ushering in a new era in wine.
"The research is clearly pointing to major long-term risks to an industry that people in California care about," says Chris Field, director of the Carnegie Institution, Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University. The question facing the wine industry, Field says, is whether it will be a victim of global warming or "are they going to assume a leadership role to ensure that their way of life is sustainable?"
