Climate Change Affects Wine Industry and Gives an Advantage to French Winery

Climate change affects winery industry since grapes, the primary ingredient in winemaking needs a cold environment to grow. But global warming could bring good business to some most esteemed winery and vineyards in France.

According to Southern California Public Radio, the human-induced warming had become worse that even summer rain cannot always be reduced. The heat can help ripening the grapes to develop sugar and acids.

The heat may cause Bordeaux and burgundy region warmer that gives them an advantage especially for winemakers. Benjamin Cook and his co-author focused their research about winery.

According to Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City said, "Before 1980, you basically needed a drought to generate the heat to get a really early harvest." "There is a very clear signal that the earlier the harvest, the much more likely that you're going to have high-quality wines," he added.

The traditional reasoning according to Cook was hotter weather and earlier harvest means better taste wine that may only hold true to a point. "But the wine quality was kind of middling,' "That suggests that after a certain point, it could just get to be so warm, and the harvest so early, that you move into a situation where the old rules no longer apply," he added.

According to co-author Elizabeth Wolkovich, professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University said via I4U News, "There are two big points in this paper, the first is that harvest dates are getting much earlier, and all the evidence points to it being linked to climate change. Especially since 1980, when we see a major turning point for temperatures in the northern hemisphere, we see harvest dates across France getting earlier and earlier."

The research also states that early harvest can make better wines. "You want to harvest when the grapes are perfectly ripe when they've had enough time to accumulate just the right balance between acid and sugar," she added.