by J. Michael Wheeler
From the Washington Post Foreign Service 9.2.07
The Washington Post reports that wine growers the world over are harvesting their crops earlier each year, and that this year, in the Alsace wine region of northeastern France, the harvest began on August 24 – the earliest ever recorded. The Washington Post continues:
Throughout the wine-producing world, from France to South Africa to California, vintners are in the vanguard of confronting the impact of climate change. Rising temperatures are forcing unprecedented early harvests, changing the tastes of the best-known varieties of wine and threatening the survival of centuries-old wine-growing regions.
Scientists and vintners say wine grapes are the best agricultural measure of climate change because of their extraordinary sensitivity to weather and the meticulous data that have been kept concerning the long-lived vines.
As terroir (the French term that encompasses the interplay of soil, slope, climate and locality that produces the particular personality of an agricultural product, especially wine) evolves due to shifting climates, wine makers are forced to adapt.
Some champagne producers in northern France are looking to southern England; in the hot southern France, the harvest is done at night to protect the fragile grapes; and some vintners want to experiment with planting the heat loving Syrah grape in Alsace, home of the cold weather grape, Riesling.
Read The Washington Post article…