Cork & Foil Wine Blog

Apologies for the recent lay-off in posting. I’ve been focussing on getting my thesis ever closer towards the finishing line and as a result the motivation for writing has waned a little.

Nonetheless, it strikes me as a moment which is definitely comment worthy as I’m currently enduring the heat of a summer in London. Lovely as summer is, soaring heat and increasing droughts are symptomatic of global climate change. We’ve all heard the confident predictions about England’s future ability to produce greater volumes of wine and the quixotic dreamers who are planting vines and olive trees as far north as Yorkshire to get ahead of the trend.

Climate change is about much more, however, than simply improving the ambient weather in the British Isles.  Clearly for every net ‘winner’ during a period of global meteorological change, there is a requisite ‘loser’. I once had a winegrower from the Languedoc talk about how France’s South was moved ‘North’ when they joined the EU. He was worried that Spain’s introduction meant that part of what made the Languedoc unique in France (its weather, its soils) was diminished and this would affect the region’s development. Nonetheless, the region has soldiered on.

Yet climate change has the potential to very realistically alter the experience of countries which right now are perfect for winegrowing. This observation has been motivated by a report which focussed on the future of Californian & West Coast winemaking and the impacts of Climate change. Last summer I had the goof fortune to drive down the West Coast, from Portland OR to San Francisco CA and the beautifully dramatic coastline made its impression strongly. Along that jagged coast, the vineyards of the West have been at the forefront of changing wine trends since the famous Judgement of Paris in 1976 and continue to innovate with delicious boutique wines and commercially savvy crowd-pleasers.

The Climate study, undertaken by researchers at Stanford University, projected the 30 year impact of global warming on four West Coast winemaking regions: the Napa valley and the county of Santa Barbara in California, Oregon’s Willamette Valley (Yamhill county) and Washington’s Columbia Valley (Walla Walla County). The potential impact on these regions is severe and the report warns of a decrease of almost 50% of viable land for vines.

The study’s findings are based on an assumption of a 23% increase in the ouput of greenhouse gases, yielding a 1 degree centigrade temperature increase. this would, in turn, exacerbate the number of exceedingly hot days where the thermometers top 35 degrees centigrade along America’s western coast. Such intense heat would produce challenging conditions for Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and reduce the area where they thrive in Napa by potentially as much as half. Santa Barbara would shed 20% of its suitable area, whilst The Columbia Valley might expect a requisite figure of 23%. In Oregon, the Willamette Valley might actually see an increase in the amount of suitable land, benefiting from temperature increases along the often rainy Western seafront. Such a dramatic loss of arable land along the west coast would prove extremely challenging for America’s wine economy during already difficult times.

One potential example to look to for advice on managing such change however, is the Languedoc. Even as it faced the challenges of expanding European markets, the region was also beset by a variety of measures designed to improve its quality and reduce its yield. Often touted as the ‘new El Dorado’, as was California, the Languedoc was the focus of targeted ‘arrachage’ progammes, which rewarded winegrowers for uprooting high-yield vine stock. This led, in part, to a 29% reduction in the Languedoc’s vine coverage between 1970 and 1994, as regional development policy shifted away from bulk production towards better quality grapes and better quality winemaking. Now the Languedoc stands as one of the wine world’s success stories – although it is not without its problems – and it will be interesting to see the means by which California adapts to similarly enforced reductions in volume.