Climate change will force wine makers to plant new varietals, says new study
Winemakers may be forced to start planting lesser known grape varieties to cope with global warming, according to a new study.
“It’s going to be very hard, given the amount of warming we’ve already commited to… for many regions to continue growing the exact varieties they’ve grown in the past,” said Elizabeth Wolkovich, an assistant professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University's Arnold Arbororetum and co-author of the study, Nature Climate Change. With over 1,000 varieties in the old world alone, many of those with higher drought tolerance are better suited to hotter climates than the 12 varieties which currently make up over 80% of the wine market in many countires, she pointed out.
“We should be studying and exploring these varieties to prepare for cimate change.”
However, persuading wine producers to switch to different varietials is difficult, she claimed, with the reason boiling down to the concept of terroir.
“There’s a real issue in the premier wine growing regions that historical terroir is what makes great wine, and if you acknowledge in any way that you hae climate change you acknowledge that your terroir is changing,” continued Wolkovich. “So in many of those regions there is not much of an appetite to talk about changing varieities.”
Strict rules on labelling also make it difficult for winemakers to take advantage of the diversity available to them, she added. "The more you are locked into what you have to grow, the less room you have to adapt to climate change," Wolkovich said.
Growers in the New World, meanwhile, have to contend with the opposite problem. While there are few restrictions on what grape varieties may be grown in any given region, growers have little experience of the diversity of grapes widely available in Europe. For example, in Austalia, only 12 varieties account for 80% of all the grapes grown, while in China, three quarters of all grapes grown are Cabernet Sauvignon.
Wolkavich said the reason that wine makers were reluctant to change to different varieties, even though they are better suited to a warmer climate, is that consumers haven’t heard of them. Wine producers face a stark choice, she said; either experiment with new varieties, or risk suffering the negative effects of climate change.