Your Favorite Wine Regions Will Feel the Heat
Geographic designations have protected Europe’s greatest wines for over a century. A hotter planet means something has to change.
Frost, hail and mildew left shortages of Burgundy in 2016. An end-of-summer heatwave baked Chablis.
Photographer: Philippe/Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images
What’s the first industry to fall victim to climate change? There’s a decent argument that it already happened — more than 600 years ago.
When the Norman Conquest in 1066 installed a French feudal aristocracy in the British Isles, the invaders brought with them a love of winemaking. Those skills flourished in the conditions of the Medieval Warm Period, a patch of unusually high temperatures from about 950 to 1250 that allowed vineyards to spread across the well-drained chalk soils of southern England. The mild conditions gave way to a frigid period known as the Little Ice Age, however, which held sway until the 19th century. As the climate cooled, English viticulture collapsed.
That should be a worrying example if you’re a winemaker. Grape vines are notoriously sensitive to the smallest changes in landscape and climate. Those with a skilled palate (I’m not one of them) can supposedly sense the subtlest of environmental effects in a bottle of wine — whether the winter that preceded the vintage was warm or cold, the harvest wet or dry, the grapes grown on a slope facing to the north or the south.