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- Scotch wines and climate change
I have a friend in the wine industry here in Japan who's been bending my ear on this subject for more than a decade. I first encountered Gallic paranoia on this subject in Chamonix, from worried ski industry service providers, earlier this decade. Now the major chefs of France?!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/wine/6040419/Best-wines-will-come-from-Scotland-if-climate-change-is-not-stopped-French-chefs-say.html
I have to wonder, though, how much even a properly motivated Sarkozy can do...
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98 - Reply by penguinoid, Aug 20.
Yes, I've read about this too. The idea of the best wines coming from Scotland is a new one. The comment that the south of England might be too warm for grapes by 2080 was the most worrying. Hope not! That would have to be a *very* dramatic change in climate.
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1246 - Reply by mark, Aug 20.
Even the climate change critics in the scientific community are starting to believe in the mounting evidence.
There are a lot of proposed solutions, but also a lot of bad habits to reverse. Let's hope we're in time!
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43 - Reply by Robert Johnston, Aug 21.
Ahem -- now I speak with some authority here being a proud Weegie: the only Scotch things are Whisky, eggs and mist. Wines from Scotland would be Scottish (like me).
That aside, we had an enlightening chat a while ago with the crofter who lives next door to my in-laws' holiday cottage in the Isle of Skye. He knows his stuff, because it's his livelihood, and he reckons that climate change will make Scotland warmer, sure, but also wetter. Now anyone who has ever been to my beloved homeland will know that it is pretty moist already. I can't imagine year-round rainstorms would be beneficial to a vineyard.
We do have plenty of south-facing hillsides, though -- that could make for some interesting micro-climates. But my bet would be on Scandinavia and the more northerly bits of the eastern European mainland to be the up-and-comers in the toasty future.
Given that most folk will be desperately trying to emigrate northward from the uninhabitable equatorial zones, though, we may have more to think about than vinifaction ...
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1164
- Reply by dmcker, Aug 21.
RJ, I was wondering if anyone was going to pick up on my intentional borrowing of the adjective for water of life...
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1164
- Reply by dmcker, Sep 13.
Here are a couple more articles on the subject. The piece from Edmonton gives an interesting Canadian perspective and overview:
http://www.seemagazine.com/article/city-life/lifestyle/booze0903/
While the older article from Wired points to an interesting genomics project at the U of Nevada Reno that hopes to enable winegrowers to cope with the environmental stresses from climate change:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/11/genomics-could/
For those more academically or otherwise seriously interested in the subject, there have been a couple of related international conferences, one in Spain, and one in Greece. Sounds like a justifiable excuse for a wine-tasting junket, to anyone in the wine or climate-change worlds... ;-)
http://www.climatechangeandwine.com/eng/index.php
http://www.wijninfo.nl/site/nieuwsagendaforums/newsitems/page2747.php
The conference in Spain seems more established, with its third iteration scheduled for 2010, while the symposium in Greece may have been a one-off in 2007, though it might be worth keeping eyes peeled for future versions.
