The people who work hard everyday to present a positive image of wine and wine culture like to emphasize wine’s ancient lineage and unbroken continuity.The simple process of harvesting grapes and fermenting them into something brimming with gastronomic, mood-enhancing and social lubrication talent has been familiar to, and appreciated by, who-knows-how-many generations of grateful wine enthusiasts.
But wine isn’t like a mountain that has stood in the same place largely unaltered since before recorded time. As a product of human ingenuity, it has its own history of change, evolution and revolution, advances and retreats, fresh habitats and shifting personae. In short, wine is ever on the move, and right now it’s even a little upside down. Or downside up, depending on your perspective. It’s climate change, and more particularly the stunning rapidity of rises in temperature in places where wine has long been established, that’s driving the current turbulence.
For some winemakers, warming is a threatening prospect indeed. Others are already beginning to see an upside.
As an example of the former, consider the vineyards of California where the climate has always made it relatively easy to ripen wine grapes. In pursuit of quality wine, winemakers there must often work against nature’s tendency to ripen fruit prematurely, which risks the loss of freshness, verve and delicacy in the resulting wine. Current trends appear set to make their problems worse.
To address them, some properties are seeking cooler sites and considering more heat-resistant varietals. Others tell us that their adaptations are somewhat less drastic, taking the form of multiple tweaks to their vineyard and cellar work. In either case, some departures from familiar norms are surely in the offing.
For examples of those now looking like winners, we can point to winegrowers at work near Europe’s northern viticultural margins, where the challenge has historically been just the reverse of those in balmier climes:
Namely, how to urge fruit toward minimum levels of ripeness required for successful, sustainable winemaking in the short summers and slanting light that is their lot.. For these fortunates, warming is producing higher sugar and more moderate acidity levels in grapes at harvest. Shall we call them the winemakers who came in from the cold?
In light of all this — and any number of events not yet in our ken — what might wine look like a century from now? I think I can confidently answer that one …
Different.