Climate change may be coming for your wine

The long fingers of climate change have begun to disrupt our lives in ways we may never have expected.

In a recent paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, two scientists say we can expect a disruption in the world’s wine supply in the near future.

Wine grapes are fussy little things, requiring just the right soil composition, sunlight, moisture, and temperature. When wine grapes don’t get what they want, wine quality suffers. Each factor on its own changes the grapes.

For this study, ecologist Elizabeth Wolkovich and climate scientist Benjamin Cook wanted to get a big-picture view of how drought and temperature affect grape harvests and wine quality. They analyzed climate records from the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as earlier records of temperature, precipitation, and soil conditions. They also consulted more than 500 years of vineyard records from France and Switzerland.


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