European wine producers are grappling with more drastic effects of climate change than grape growers in other regions, new findings show.
The study, published earlier this month in PLOS Climate studied 500 grape varieties and 10 climate measures and found climate change impacts have been “highly uneven across the world’s winegrowing regions and the impacts are variable across the growing season.”
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The report, compiled by researchers from Spain, France, the US and Canada, found unequivocally that Europe had been hardest hit in terms of the frequency of hot days throughout the harvest season.
“By far the largest shifts… are in European regions, where the number of hot days (more than 35C) and maximum growing season temperatures are several standard deviations higher than before significant anthropogenic climate change,” the study said.
Speaking on the results as part of a statement from Canada’s University of British, researcher Dr Wolkovich said not only producers were being impacted, but the quality of the product itself. “Europe is feeling the biggest impact, with parts of the continent heating up by as much as 2.5C since 1980. That kind of change can affect harvest times, grape ripening, and thus the taste of the wine,” she said.
In that same statement, Dr. Victor van der Meersch reaffirmed the difficulties for Europe’s winemakers. “For vines already near their heat limit and for regions in Europe that rarely saw such temperatures before, it’s a big challenge,” he said.
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By GlobalDataWhile South America also recorded similar increases in “mean temperatures”, the researchers found it did not show the same increase in “extreme heat”.
Van der Meersch stressed that not only European producers are at threat. “Regions that are already hot, like northern Africa and western Asia, are particularly at risk.”
Still, Dr. Wolkovich had some advice for producers. “We need more diversity in the grapes we grow. Choosing heat-tolerant varieties helps, but we also need to be mindful of when those grapes grow and ripen. Timing is everything.”
Dr. Wolkovich added that the global approach to tackling climate change would dictate the course of wine production. “It’s definitely not the end of winemaking as we know it – but it is a major challenge… The type and quality of wine in our glasses tomorrow will very much depend on what we do in the vineyards today, and especially on the global decisions we make to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
