It's a sensitive issue on which Robert P. Koch, president and chief executive of the Wine Institute, the industry's chief Washington lobbyist, has kept a low profile. Careful not to get out in front of his brother-in-law, President Bush, or the conservative wine industry, Koch says the Wine Institute's board is starting to discuss its options.
President Bush declined in 2005 to sign the Kyoto Protocol, a United Nations agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming, signed by 169 other governments including the developed nations of the world with the exception of Australia. Other politicians deny the existence of global warming, Koch says, mentioning Sen. James M. Inhofe (R.-Okla.), former chairman of the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works, who calls it a "hoax."
When pressed, Koch distances himself from both Bush and Inhofe. "Grabbed in an aggressive manner, global warming is a challenge that can be solved," he says. Whether they like it or not, Koch says, California vintners "recognize that we [the Wine Institute] are on the cutting edge of this global environmental issue."
In France, the projected climate changes threaten the very definition of wine, says Bernard Seguin, a climatologist with the French National Agronomy Institute. Each one degree increase in temperature in France is equivalent to moving 200 kilometers (or 124 miles) north, he says. By the end of the century, with current warming predictions, the north coast of France will be experiencing weather that today is common for the south of France. Burgundy will feel like the Cotes du Rhone, he says, and Bordeaux will make wines that resemble those the Languedoc produces today.
Up to this point, global warming has been a boon for France, Seguin says. Rising temperatures have produced wines with higher sugars and alcohol levels and lower acids that are very popular.
"Our weather now is perfect," says Jean-Guillaume Prats, the renowned chief executive of Chateau Cos d'Estournel, a second-growth Bordeaux house in St. Estephe. "Global warming has changed the style of wine we make to be a rounder, a more forward wine."
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Ocean protection?
BUT what happens if Bordeaux becomes too warm?
That is not possible, Prats says. "We are Bordeaux." The region is protected by its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, he says. Any further changes in temperature can be managed by technology and, perhaps, a little irrigation, he says. "We will learn from California."
